Best sound system you've heard in a vehicle?
12-21-16, 10:36 AM
#31
Former Sponsor
I have yet to hear a stock sound system that doesn't sound over processed, or has dead spots. I had a close friend who designed the system in my car that for only $2,000 including install [by myself, shop labor rate I would assume $1,000] and I've yet to hear a better system under $5,000 at shows/competitions. With the proper tuning and raw drivers you can achieve an amazing result.
12-21-16, 11:41 AM
#32
Regarding the sound quality of CDs:
For the past 15 years I've had a fascinating career recording adult and children's choirs and producing CDs for commercial purposes. The mastering software I use allows one to take a wav master (no "compression" per se) and then mathematically "subtract" an mp3 version of that master by precisely aligning the two versions vertically on two separate tracks. On playback, the resulting sounds represent the material that the mp3 encoding process threw away, so it's an excellent way to actually hear just what was being compromised in going with an mp3 version. The result?--at an encoding bitrate of 128Kb/sec (pretty typical) the noises are surprisingly subtle and consist mostly of sibilants and splatter whenever very high frequencies are present, such as a cymbal strike. But even at 128K it's easy to imagine that it would be hard to pick out such low-level "noise" when added to the mp3 version. And at 192Kb/sec and above, the errors are reduced even further.
Thus, my own experimentation has demonstrated to me that an mp3 recording at, say, 192K is definitely high quality. I think double-blind audio tests pretty emphatically back up this conclusion. But the mind is rather analog in its logic and one can be easily convinced via the placebo effect that, say, running speaker wire the diameter of ones thumb makes the sound more "pure". But that doesn't make it so.
For the past 15 years I've had a fascinating career recording adult and children's choirs and producing CDs for commercial purposes. The mastering software I use allows one to take a wav master (no "compression" per se) and then mathematically "subtract" an mp3 version of that master by precisely aligning the two versions vertically on two separate tracks. On playback, the resulting sounds represent the material that the mp3 encoding process threw away, so it's an excellent way to actually hear just what was being compromised in going with an mp3 version. The result?--at an encoding bitrate of 128Kb/sec (pretty typical) the noises are surprisingly subtle and consist mostly of sibilants and splatter whenever very high frequencies are present, such as a cymbal strike. But even at 128K it's easy to imagine that it would be hard to pick out such low-level "noise" when added to the mp3 version. And at 192Kb/sec and above, the errors are reduced even further.
Thus, my own experimentation has demonstrated to me that an mp3 recording at, say, 192K is definitely high quality. I think double-blind audio tests pretty emphatically back up this conclusion. But the mind is rather analog in its logic and one can be easily convinced via the placebo effect that, say, running speaker wire the diameter of ones thumb makes the sound more "pure". But that doesn't make it so.
12-21-16, 12:20 PM
#33
Former Sponsor
Thus, my own experimentation has demonstrated to me that an mp3 recording at, say, 192K is definitely high quality. I think double-blind audio tests pretty emphatically back up this conclusion. But the mind is rather analog in its logic and one can be easily convinced via the placebo effect that, say, running speaker wire the diameter of ones thumb makes the sound more "pure". But that doesn't make it so.
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