Showcasing the Best in the Mobile Enhancement Industry
I was recently rewatching the YouTube video from GoldenSound about how he tested the quality of the MQA file format by uploading several test tones and part of a song to Tidal. His results showed without any shadow of a doubt that the MQA format didn’t meet many of the claims made by the company. This article isn’t about MQA, thankfully. I’ve often wondered about the quality Read more
Our first subject in this series of articles about understanding subwoofer quality is a low-cost 10-inch driver from a local electronics parts store. This manufacturer markets this transducer as a “full range” speaker that “looks and sounds great” and not a subwoofer. We’ll start by measuring the Thiele/Small parameters of the driver, then break it in to see if things change Read more
Picking new speakers for your home, a new set of headphones or upgrades for your car audio system should all involve the same auditioning process. Take two or three of your favorite songs on a memory stick to a local mobile enhancement retailer and audition the speakers under controlled conditions. We can’t count the number of times people have purchased speakers based on a Read more
Few people in the car audio industry seem to grasp that speakers are typically the weakest link in audio systems, in terms of adding distortion to what we hear. Whether it’s a poor design with improper voice coil centering in the magnetic gap or poor magnetic or compliance linearity, speakers add significant amounts of unwanted information to what we hear. This article will Read more
Last week a friend of mine sent a link to a YouTube video by Steve Meade, who was experimenting with line output converters using an oscilloscope and an SMD DD-1+ distortion analyzer. Several statements in the video and the comments made it clear that people don’t understand the concept of audio signal distortion. That’s OK. It’s a complex subject and requires looking at Read more
Have you ever looked at something and thought you were only getting part of the story? Many previous articles have discussed amplifier distortion at length but haven’t delved into how power output levels and frequency affect distortion measurements. If you’re looking for the best amplifier for your car audio system, especially for midrange drivers and tweeters, this information Read more
If you’ve been a reader of BestCarAudio.com, you know we’ve published a lot of articles about distortion. We include detailed measurements of harmonic and intermodulation distortion in our Test Drive Reviews to help show you the quality and performance differences between products. In this article, we’ll make a series of speaker distortion measurements using our new Clio audio Read more
No matter how hard he or she tries, the installer who’s calibrating your car audio system can’t use a digital signal processor to tune distortion out of your system. We aren’t talking about the harmonic distortion that happens when a signal overloads the processor or an amplifier’s input stage. Preventing clipping is a simple process and one that’s fundamental to completing an Read more
If you were able to grasp the concepts outlined in the first article about audio distortion, then this one will be a piece of cake. If not, head back and have another read. It can be a bit complicated the first time around. Undistorted Audio Analysis When looking at the specifications for an audio component like an amplifier or processor, you should see a specification called Read more
