Car stereo observation/question.

[Huh?]

The speakers in my Dodge Durango have been blown all around, for quite a while and I finally had new speakers installed. Nice one's...the front are completely separate woofers and tweeters and the rear door speakers are combination woofer/tweeter. The tweeter is a fixed, center mounted design that can be rotated to a selected angle.

 

After they were installed I quickly realized the OEM head/amp sucked bad, so I bought a nice Alpine head unit. It takes CD's, has a Tuner, Aux input, has 2 USB ports(takes a flash drive and iPod/iPhone) and is Pandora and Sirius ready. It sounds damn good.

 

 

Pandora, the tuner, using a flash drive of my daughters songs etc, Sirius, aux input etc etc all sounded great.

 

Then I tried out some Beatles CD's. I got quite a surprise. At times the mixes sounded almost surround to me....quadraphonic or something.

 

It seemed to do with the way many of their songs are mixed, with perhaps guitar and bass on the LT and vocals on the RT.....along with the entire drum kit panned RT as well....various combinations of panning.

 

Well what would happen is a certain song might open with guitar left and the lead vocal would come in on the RT, but when the drums came in, also on the RT.......I would hear them predominantly from the RT rear door speaker....with the RT panned vocal seeming to come more from the RT front.

 

The best I can figure is the front door speakers, with an individual woofer/tweeter arrangement +/- a foot apart, handles slightly different frequencies to the rear door speakers which are combination woofers with center mounted tweeters. Maybe the crossovers are different also, whatever it is, it definitely creates an interesting spatial effect.

 

Has anyone else noticed something similar in their car?

[MikeRivers]

Car stereo systems have, for a long time, used some sort of cross-polarity system that intends to makes things sound more spacious in the confined space. I don't listen to a lot of music that produces the effect you described, but I've heard it for at leat 20 years when listening to the radio in a rental car (where I didn't have access to my own music.) There maybe some sort of way that you can turn this off, or maybe the person who installed your speakers just wired them incorrectly . Anyway, it's (sort of) explainable, but not easily changeable.

 

My car, a 2003, is just old enough not to have a line input jack and definitely not old enough to have a USB port. At one point i investigated getting a new radio unit but in this car, the pieces of the system are spread out throughout the car (amplifiers under the seats, behind the glove compartment, etc.) that no shop was willing to gut the system and replace it for less than a few thousand dollars. But the damn car won't wear out so I don't have an excuse to get a new radio along with a new car.

[Huh?]

I actually like the effect. So far it has been most pronounced with certain Beatles CD's. I also get the effect a bit more dialed in when I select a value of 3 towards the rear speakers. In general the rear handle bass better I think. Might be a different cavity size in the door itself.

 

Mike, my car had that also....separate woofer tweeter in the front, head unit with amp elsewhere and separate amp for the rear speakers I think. What Al & Ed's did was just bypass all that stuff and put in a new harness adaptor. The old system was an Infinity and this Alpine sounds way better.

 

The rear speakers still seem lower in power output than the front. This might be because of the amp being bypassed......however, it was like that before. The consensus was that that amp was blown or had some issue. It used to work nice when I got the car but over time crapped out. I thought it was just speakers so I was disappointed when I got the car back still with a volume drop at the rear. BUT this amp is so much more powerful I just set the front rear fade and use the volume to compensate.

 

The guy told me a power amp would sort that and make the whole thing sound much better. But that's another $200 or so and brings it closer to the $1000 you mentioned.

[Folder]

I can't find "any" new car stereo that has a balance knob. All the new ones have a menu button that you have to click thru to find the balance control .

 

I use to always be flipping back and forth between the left and right channels to hear which instruments and effects were on which side of the mix. I learned a lot about instrument placing and mixing while driving around in my car when I was younger.

 

Now. by the time I click thru the menu and find the balance control in my new car the guitar part in the left channel I wanted to hear is usually over. I think a balance knob should be standard on any stereo unit.

[ido1957]

My wife's car stereo has a remote. If we ever lose it we're screwed. I have no idea how to get the functionality using the buttons on the front of the unit. Stupid designers.