The time correction function is very cool. When you sit in your living room listening to your stereo system, the best place to be, the "sweet spot," will always be centered between your speakers and between 6' and 10' away. The left speaker, right speaker and your head will form a perfect triangle with your head at the peak. The reason the sound is so good in that spot is that both speakers are the same distance away from you. They are at the same volume level, and the sound arrives to your ears at the same time. Sound does travel fast, about 1,128' per second, but even a few inches difference between the left and right speakers is enough to confuse your ears. Try this at home by moving left and right from the sweet spot and observe what happens to the apparent image. Instead of the lead singer coming from mid-air between the speakers, his or her voice will move to the speaker nearest to your ears, and the soundstage will collapse to a mono source. Now sit in your car. The nearest speakers are right next to you, from 12" to 24" away usually. The far speaker is at least 30" away, usually farther. Two things will happen in this scenario: the far side speaker will sound less loud and the sound will arrive to your ears later. More than likely you will only be aware of the near speaker and the subwoofer in your current system. Utilizing Alpine's equalizer and time correction functions, both problems can be corrected. Turn the level down on the near side and delay the sound a few milliseconds so that sound from both sides arrives at the same time and at the same level. Now you've got your sweet spot and the lead singer is coming out of the windshield right in front of you. How cool is that? Of course your audio sweet spot is at the expense of the passenger side, but she probably doesn't care anyway.
This concept is even more applicable when played back through any of the surround formats, thus providing you a "front and center" seat for audio and video programs. (Be safe--don't watch videos while you're driving.)The results were impressive. First of all, it doesn't hurt to have lots power to start with. The 100-watt x 4 amplifier was plenty, plus a 260-watt sub amplifier and a 12" subwoofer in sealed enclosure. My system sounded fairly good before the automatic adjustments were made. My front speakers are less efficient than the rears, so the only adjustment necessary was a little fader action to get the image up front. It really didn't need bass or treble adjustment after all. The sound was clear and the i mage was higher than usual. After the automatic adjustments, the image was high and right in front of me, just like it was supposed to be. The manual suggests that you can change the mic location to achieve optimal results, but I did not find that necessary. You can also make all of the corrections manually; however, you need to measure the relative distances of all the channels and dial in each one individually. The EQ is also very powerful, with independent or coupled adjustments for each channel, but the menu process is somewhat tedious. It would take you several hours to accomplish the same results that the PXI-H990 does automatically in a couple of minutes, and you might not get results as good as the automatic settings.
The Road EQ function is very cool. You know how you have to fiddle with the tone controls and the volume when you get on the highway or stop at a traffic light? Not any more, this system does it all for you. The PXI-H990 Multimedia Manager is constantly monitoring the ambient noise in the car through the microphone and adjusts EQ levels to compensate. The trick is to distinguish between your music and road noise, but since the audio signal runs through the manager anyway, it compares the microphone input and adjusts accordingly. You can set the Road EQ to three levels of compensation or turn it off. I went with the medium setting and didn't have to fiddle with the controls at all.
On the Bench
The equalizer and crossover curves were typical of the digital domain, picture perfect. The graphic EQ frequency centers were consistently shifted to the right, though. In other words, the peak at 40Hz was actually measured at about 43Hz, and a similar pattern was noted on each band. It's all mathematics in the world of DSP, so somebody forgot to carry the "2" or something. I removed the color from the Graphic EQ response graph to make it easier to look at. The crossovers lined up perfectly--it's interesting that the 6 and 12dB slopes are set to -3dB pts; the 18 and 24dB slopes, at -6dB; and the 30dB slope, at -9dB. The Parametric EQ bands also lined up correctly to their assigned frequency.
The Good
•Enough control over the sound and time alignment to rule the world, or get yourself in deep doo-doo.
•Very smart combo. It recognizes what you're playing and goes into the appropriate mode automatically.
•Automatic EQ, Time Alignment and Road EQ.
The Bad
•Sure it's got powerful DSP, but accessing them through the head unit's six buttons is a pain.
•I have to ship it back to Alpine!
This is one marvelous multimedia setup. It does everything a high-end home theater should do except for multiple zones (Alpine noted that multiple zones can had when the DVi-9990 is used with the TMI-M990 AlpineF#1Status monitor). It supports every surround format currently available and every source except SACD. More importantly, it really sounds good. You can fiddle with it if you can't resist, but take it from the most anti-automatic person on earth, me--use the automatic setups!
You are probably wondering how much all of the wonderful AlpineF#1Status products retail for. Here's the breakdown: the DVI-9990 source unit is $2,400; the PXI-H990 Multimedia Manager is $2,600; and the MRV-F900 100 watt x 4 amplifier is $3,500. I recommend two of the latter to use all eight outputs from the PXI-H990. This is almost what my car is worth these days, but a good value in my opinion. The range of media and the flexibility of the system make this a very functional "status symbol." To equal this range, you would need multiple high-end head units and a trunk full of standalone processors (imagine an outboard 31-band EQ for each of the eight channels).
Kudos to Alpine for faithfully following their game plan for the last 20 years. They know who they are and what they do, and so do most audio enthusiasts. The industry would do well to study and emulate Alpine's long-term business plan instead of chasing fads and losing their identities for short-term gains.
Test Measurement
•Output Voltage:4V (1.4V when using Aux In)
•Frequency Response:3Hz to beyond44kHz, -1dB
•THD:0.014%
•S/N Ratio>102dB
•The S/N Ratio was above that of my test equipment and therefore could not be measured. Alpine specifications list this at >110dB.