In responce.......
Ok first of all I said COMMERCIAL BRANDS. So get off your high horse!
I am on no high horse. I was simply pionting out that the brand you are saying are "high end" are not. They might be good not not truely high end.
It's funny becuase what guys like you know about brands, you lack in electronical understanding about circuits and materials.
Hmmm, funny, I sure did spend I lot of time and money in school to get that cheesy piece of paper to hang on my wall. And I guess all the electronics that I have either design, biuld and/or repaired, I guess that was just all luck then. That makes me one lucky guy. Now if that luck would only pay off in the lottery
The brands you mention are all S.S.(solid state) The key thing about SS is that none of it is much better than the rest. The circuits are all generally the same and there's not much improvement to be made by using a $3 part instead of a 30 cent part. Generally everything is jfet and mosfet based.
Here again just confirms the fact that you might not know as much as you might think about high end car audio. I would have thought that out of all the companies I named that one would have jumped out at you. That company being Melbert. Yes their gear is tube, mostly hybrid and a few are full on tube.
If you were able to say to me well these brands are all tube then that would really mean something to me but they aren't. If you really wanted to make a BIG difference in the sonic quality of car audio there'd be tube technology incorporated into it.
Again I state the fact that I did include the likes of an all tube brand. There are also a few others that use a hybrid design to get that tube sound in a smaller size and output of a transistor amp. Companys like Butler Audio do I fine job of this. I use then in another one of my cars.
In all my research and studies in audio there is one common thing with SS equipment. Generally none of it is really any better than the rest. Loading a car with 15 amplifiers and 20 speakers is going to scream and have great clarity regardless of brand.
There are more then one basic design to make a amp. Actually there are 1000s of then out there, some way better then others. To make such a general state is only misleading. If this is so true then let compare a Pyramid and a McIntosh for example, both 400 watts......or what they say is 400 watts. (Just to let you know I see, tested and worked with many many products and the very first thing I do when dealing with a new amp is open it up. You can learn alot about an amp that way). the first thing you will notice is the parts count (not always a good thing, AKA, Pass Labs amps), you will also notice the quality and thickness of the PCB board itself. Most cheap amps use thin single sided PCBs while high end stuff using thick, mill spec, double sided boards. Some even use multi boards for PS and output sections. I big thing you will see is the size of the power supply. The Pyramids I have seen use small board mounted standard type trannies while high end amp large large custom made triod tranformers. The power supply is the heart and soul of any amp, car or home audio. Click
here for some good reading on power supplies from the master himself, Nelson Pass, the guy that invented class A audio amps. They are a lot of huge differences between amps, I only touched on a few as starting pionts
So what one brand woofer gives a little more thump or definition than this brand. Speakers are still made the same way they were almost 100 years ago. Just look at an Altec Woofer from the 30's. All these so called HUGE and NEW innovations were actually used almost a century ago.
Yes the same basic design is still used but with todays tech. and the use of CAD it have changed things quit a bit. Its all about linear displacement. Without getting into the math of it I will use a simple example. If you have a 15" with a few MM of Xmax and I had a 10" with a few inches the end resalt would be close....give or take. Now, in a car where you want to use your space as best as you can, for most people the 10" is looking to be a better choice. Also there are a few companies that dont biuld speakers anywhere close to the way they used too, example: Phoenic Golds Cyclone. It have no cone at all. You can read up on it
here I myself have even biult something close to it and mixed resalts but man will they play LOW and flat.
Best of all I'm glad you mentioned JL audio. JL audio started off as a generic brand you could buy online
Hmmm, they might have been some cheap copies because JL Audio was started by a few guys that owned a car audio shop and was tired of all the bad sub that took huge boxes to get then to sound good so they started experimenting and biuld a few subs that worked better. JL have never sold there stuff online and still to this day advises people not to buy there product online.
Are you familiar with Orevox
Yes, but a 15" sub with an Xmas of only 3.5mm at a cost of $165, not in my book. There is probably a good reason why you can get it at only $15. In retail audio you dont make crap for money of of high end stuff, you make your living off of sell the heck out of lower end stuff. Way more markup in it.
I mean the lower the level of harmonic distortion the more cold and sterile the sound actually is. So with that greater clarity you gain with this ultra high end audio, the more lifeless the sound.
WOW, that a new one in my book. Think about that one for a second. So your saying that if I play a good recording of some live jazz on my higher end gear that is repoducing it as close it the original recording as posably that it will sound lifeless but using cheap stuff will make it sound better. That one just makes not one bit of sence. The whole object of audio is to reproduce as closely as posable the source you are playing WITHOUT added or taking away anything. <------the short version anyways!
From a musicians standpoint, which I am, nothing sounds as good as a tube for the most part. Yet look how high the level of Harmonic distortion is in tube.
I will agree that I too love tubes and yes they do tend to have a high THD. But if you would do a little bit more research into this topic you will learn about even and odd order harmonics and how the human ear precieve this. I will leave that rest up to you.
The method for preocessing the sound and judging everything is completely different and when compared to Pro Audio for instrumentation purposes , ITS CRAP!
Apples and oranges, near field, far field acoustics. Getting anything in a car to sound as good as live music is close to imposable, but we can sure do our best to try and come as close as we can.
To respond to the rest of your post the acoustics of a car make it ever hard to get anything perfect. The chalenge is to get it as close as you can. I was an still am into home audio. I like to hear live performances too. No my car audio setups are not perfect, but for cars they do sound very nice. I use as little as posable in the way of any processing. Its not just about buying the biggest $$$ gear and throughing itin the car. Its about setting everything up right, measuring it, redoing it, measuring, redoing..................then resetting it by ear and then when you think you have it reset by ear again. I will even use the same CD, bring it in my house, listen for a while, then run back out to the car and listen again and compair. I try my best to fix any nulls or peaks with either OX piont changes or box design. I think this helps keep the sounds truer in form, just MO though. Also probably the biggest overlook thing is car audio is speaker placement. An inch or two and with tweeters a MM or two, can make a world of difference in the imaging and sound stage. I wish you lived closer or I would gladly invite you over for an audition. I think you would find it pretty amazing that a good recording cam sound like that is a car. I have blindfolded people and put then in one car and then asked then to piont to the sound is coming from. If they are honist and not thinking about the fact they are still in a car, they would be pionting all over in front of them, just as in a live performence. Using some recording you can place insterments and voices quit clearly. IMO live music is 3D, some car audio is pretty much 2D but with some work and a lot of experimenting you can make it as close to the live sound as you can.
Rick
