Apples to oranges.

 

No, Emelia has not had her car delivered. She has driven a press car for a week. Her personal car has not been delivered.

 

Not yet per se...but she's been driving them for months now. She won't NOT have one until her personal one is finally delivered. GM might be being nice to base C8 owners in slowly releasing them (ZO6s) to the wild since they know the base C8 will be immediately forgotten (or as boring as any other base corvette) once the ZO6s become abundant in public.

 

Forget "per se". Her car has not been delivered period. You statement was unqualified and completely wrong.

 

Apples to apples. I know what high quality sound reproduction is, and it doesn't exist in a car, period. I am glad you like your sound system in your car, but it is not high quality sound reproduction. It may be loud, but it doesn't come close.

 

I have found that if you stream your content from your phone (Spotify, Tidal, etc.) using a higher quality feed, your listening experience will greatly improve and you get to select only the stuff you want to listen to. It is an easy way to improve the sound without a great deal of investment.

 

How many times have you been in my car? That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. My friends and I do BOTH, rooms and cars, and even on the instruments (mics/RTA's), the reproduction can be identical if your DSP (and RTA) is good enough. I'm sorry you've never been exposed to a car setup correctly, but I can assure you, cars can be just as dramatic and clean as a room.

 

Great synopsis and explanation earlier in the thread. You are clearly an audiophile. My audio specialty shop doesn't want to start audio in my C8 until navTV comes out with a device to process the digital signal.
I typically run HAT Legatia drivers in my cars with active processing using Audion Bitones. Two other cars all running multiple Audison Voce amplifiers, 3 way active front stage , legatia rear fill, W6 (1 or 2) woofers. you can create a phenomenal audio system with these 9 or 10 speakers. beyond that is, IMO, unnecessary. That's not me talking, that's the judges at every IASCA competition.

Again, great explanation...

 

I don't even think you need 9-10 drivers. 6 and a sub is more than enough in most cases. But the final "product" is all in the tuning.

 

The fact that you believe that digital manipulation of a signal can accurately reproduce sound in a space that won’t acoustically support an 80 hertz sound wave tells me all I need to know about your qualifications.

How do you adjust for phase distortion in a car?

At best a car system will sound good…. For a car system. It just can’t support accurate sound acoustically. The physics just aren’t there.

 

Hello Folks,

I mentioned some of this previously, but it bears repeating. In many cases it comes down to experience and reference. Compared to the stereo in my 2002 Camero Z28, the 14 speaker C8 system is miles better. That Monsoon system in my Camaro is boom sizzle crap.

Compared to the Meridian system in my Range Rover, the C8 system is lacking. I am not a big fan of putting band aids on a wound, but an additonal EQ might help matters. Most likely the whole system needs replacing. I doubt the speakers are great. As someone mentioned, Bose typically does EQing that makes the general public think they are getting good sound.

Sources matter as well. A high quallity recording on a USB stick should sound better than the FM or Satellite sources in the C8. So far I have not gotten high resolution files (above CD quality) to play in the C8 as they will in my Range Rover.

To restate concisely my initial point, most people have never heard a good playback system, home or vehicular.

Y'all be cool,
Robert

 

I have to have my rear fill … I know, for a proper sounds stage, those rear drivers are not critical , but for me, I have settings on my bitone where I use them more …

My CTSV is a ‘14, which was all analog, but also came equipped with DVD-audio (and DVD discs) … I love listening to DVD- audio discs in that car with exaggerated (by me) rear fill

also, I watch movies in all of my cars as well … a high quality rear fill driver is also very useful for those …
but I agree, for a proper front stage , you don’t “need” rear fill drivers

I’ve also run a competition level two way front stage , again using HAT drivers where the Legatia SE handles both midrange and tweeter frequencies

Scott Buwulda won a number of expert level competitions with this exact same setup (same drivers) as a proof of concept in one of his competition vehicles

 

Phase can be adjusted the same way time alignment can. If you can measure for it, you can adjust it (if your DSP has that ability, my Helix does, so does JL). The fact that you have no experience with adjusting phase in a car tells me all I need to know about how much time I'm wasting trying to explain it to you.

Won't support 80 Hz? What the hell are you even talking about? Here's 80 Hz in my C6. Doesn't look like it requires much "support." It's being played easily by my subs AND my door drivers; nice and flat might I add.

 

I agree pretty much with everything you said here. Weirdly, I don't use the rear stage in my truck at all (exception, on a few recent 6+ hour road trips, the kids in the back seat wanted to jam out too). But when it's just me, it's all front stage and subs. They're phase aligned perfectly in the truck, so much so that it sounds like the subs are in the dash...so rear stage actually hinders the sound quality. But in my C6, I like to have the rears on most of the time because I just feel like Joe Dirt when I drive the vette. I just want it to be loud diggit! But at the competitions, rear stage if off.

 

You really don’t understand physics do you? You can’t have phase coherence across at all frequencies with your drivers in different locations. I don’t care how many bands of adjustment you have. You probably think flat response on your RTA means it it is accurate. Even flat response on with a 30 band RTA doesn’t mean it accurately reproduces music.

The acoustics of a car are crap, it is just physics.

 

Wow. I debated on if I should even reply to this. Clearly this is not an area that you're even familiar with, let alone an expert on.

Everything you state here is an incorrect assumption. First of all, phase "coherence" is irrelevant for the reproduction of music. Music is dynamic. Because of this, you will NEVER have coherence. But we're not listening to sine waves in a laboratory. You might want to, but I sure don't. Secondly, you could get coherence with the right delays programmed. But NO level of coherence is infinite because of "drift" anyway. Thirdly, every driver has a different frequency range that it's playing. So, you could never achieve true "coherence," in fact you wouldn't want to. You'd much rather have the constructive interference between drivers. It's what gives the speaker set it's "personality." So, the whole basis of what you're trying to say is irrelevant in this discussion.

As for EQing, the RTA is ONE of the tools used to measure the desired performance against a target "curve." There are MANY curves to choose from. We normally tune to Andy's (from JBL and now AudioFrog) curve as it has won the most SQL competitions and sounds the best to most of us audio snobs. To play "flat" is a misnomer in that aligning to a true flat curve would sound awful. But getting each driver to play "flat" against our target curve is the main point of the EQ'ing process.

I get it. You're not familiar with the capabilities of modern tuning software or DSPs. Most are not. Hell, even most car audio shops are not. Typically, most shops are focused on SPL stuff, or just doing a head unit and speaker swaps, neither of which are my cup of tea. Point is, phase and time alignment are EASY in a car, (IF you have the right gear and knowledge) and we do it every time we tune. And phase alignment is NOT the same as EQing. You have to get the IR's in time and aligned BEFORE you start the EQ process. Even rookies know this.

Do me a solid, do some research on available products and techniques before you try and tell someone that they don't know what they're talking about.

 

I have the 10 speaker in my 1LT and I love it. Also as a side note in 1LT the speaker grilles are black, which I think looks better if you have a black interior.

 

Sometimes people just upgrade things to upgrade things. Especially if they are self-proclaimed "audiophiles". Listen to the system first then decide if it's not good enough. The base 10 speaker system is a lot better than many other car stereo systems.

Also make sure your source audio is not compressed with a lossy codec. Use lossless audio to test out your system.

 

One of the greater disappointments I found with the upgraded 14 speaker system is the lame 3-channel equalizer (bass, midrange, teble)...It's something you'd find in a Cobalt...Bose car systems in general are mediocre at best...

 

an audiophile, by definition , is an “enthusiast” , not an expert … big difference

and yes, most audio enthusiasts are used to listening to music a certain way, not that they are experts to the levels of hearing the difference between a speaker using copper wires vs aluminum , but they like music the way they like it

if you like big boomy bass (I don’t) you may want more sub bass than what the C8 offers (especially if you have a HTC)

but for those of us that typically spend $25k on audio systems in their car (with DSPs that have been in DTA) to try to combat the acoustically challenged interior of a car, most stock systems just won’t cut it

but all of that being said, unlike every other OEM system I’ve listened to, when I play lossless music in the C8, I’m not cringing at the sound. It, to me, isn’t horrible. It is far from great, but I find myself much more interested listening to the engine and exhaust pops and gurgles than I do music … that’s what the vette is for : fun driving