Wayne: Amp power today is cheap, way cheap. Back in the '80s when I was competing with the Terminator, I modified my amps for more power, but 600 watts was a really powerful amp. And, I remember, my amp heatsinks were at least 2' long [you can see pictures of the famous Terminator on Wayne's site, termpro.com, in the audioforum, WH Biography section]. Today, I think I've seen 10,000-watt amps, but 1,000 watts is common and not that big. The power ratings seem real. dB Drag Racing competitors are closing in on 180dB. To do that, woofer manufacturers have had to make huge improvements to make the woofers last with all this cheap power. The whole market is better because of it. But without real improvements in power, that wouldn't have happened.
EQThat leaves me with just one more topic: EQ. I don't know where it came from, but a lot of guys, once they start tweaking, think a perfectly flat response is the ultimate in sound quality. Is that true?
Mark: Equalization is almost a requirement in any high-end car. It's something that if you overdo it, it's going to sound over-processed. Equalization shouldn't be looked at as the primary tuning tool; that should be the proper installation of the gear. Put the speakers in the right place, make sure everything is in polarity, adjust the crossovers, set the amplifier gains properly and then EQ. The best technique is to do it by ear while you're listening to music you're really familiar with. It should also be a good clean recording - some old Black Sabbath isn't going to do it. Pick something that's well recorded that you're not offended by and then make it sound like a reference system you've heard. I think there are very few installers who can take an EQ and honestly make a system sound better, and that's because they've taken the time to learn a reference system and taken that over to how to get that sound with the tools available in a car audio system. But making all the dots line up on an RTA (and this is from a lot of personal experience on my part, I mean a lot), is a recipe for an awful, awful sounding system. That's because the way a human ear works is so different from the way a microphone works.
Garry: EQ is the most misused adjustment in car audio, period. A properly used EQ has the potential to take a mediocre system and make it sound wonderful. But in most cases, they take that system and make it sound horrible. Tuning a car with an EQ is an art, it's something that should be done by someone with experience at listening and understanding what the music sounds like, not someone who puts an RTA in and lives by the RTA. A flat response on a loudspeaker measured with a microphone is a good thing. A flat response of an overall car stereo measured by an analyzer doesn't tell you a single thing about how a car sounds. Reason is, when I measure with a mic, the mic only measures each frequency and it ignores all reflections. But an RTA in a car measures everything, all the reflections, all the frequencies at one time and it can't tell you anything about sound quality. The curve might be perfectly flat but the car sounds horrible.
Look for more conversations with car audio experts in the future as we tackle other basic issues as well as audio myths and misconceptions