There's been talk here and again about having the empeg digitally compensate for the shape of the car's interior or inadequacies in the speakers, etc... Here is Alpine's shot at it: http://www.alpine1.com/html/D2_n_1_n_n.html (click the first link). Here's a quote:


The car interior is an acoustician's worst nightmare.

From the hard dashboard and windows to the plush seating - not to mention the irregular shape of the interior itself - the physical elements inside the car obstruct and disturb the sound in extremely complex ways.

High-quality sound reproduction is impossible when the various frequencies in the music reach our ears at different times. Imagine if the members of a band or orchestra played ever- so-slightly out of time with each other!
More importantly - and more devastating - is that this time lag adversely affects phase relationships, cancelling some frequencies while unnaturally emphasizing others.

Worse yet, each vehicle interior is different. Which means there is no solution that can cover every car.

Or so we thought.

Alpine engineers came up with a digital system so advanced, so sophisticated, and so powerful, that it accurately measures your car interior and automatically time-corrects the various frequencies - as the music is playing!


Calvin

Pioneer has had this for about a year now. They call it "auto-EQ." Haven't tried it yet though, the theory is sound if you can use a pre-calibrated microphone and a test tone that the DSP understands.

Auto adjusting EQ's came out in the 80's for the home and I believe some auto EQ's had it after that, though not in digital format. A mic hooked up to the EQ then generated white or pink noise and compensated for the room.
What I think is funny is they make it sound like the home sound enviroment is harder than the car, well maybe slightly, you still have irregular shapes as well as hard and soft surfaces.
Nice unit, I still prefer Alpines green block buttons (circa 80's) to the new, the units looked futuristic for their time back then.

#090000695Mk2BLUE12Gig

I think one of the big differences that you get when you go digital is that you get to do more than just frequency-response correction, but time alignment (or impulse response correction) as well. In other words, not only do you correct for notches in the frequency response, but you also significantly reduce phase distortion as well. Modern in-home digital room correction systems do this, but this is the first I've heard of it for the car.


Michael Grant
12GB Green
080000266

I think one of the big differences that you get when you go digital is that you get to do more than just frequency-response correction, but time alignment (or impulse response correction) as well

Paul Wayper (paulway, the mad Aussie) is working on an add-on box that will make our empegs do pretty much the same thing. See here for some of the preliminary details.

Paul -- How are you coming on that? Need a beta tester yet?

tanstaafl.




"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Need 2 of them Paul ?

Cheers,
Hans


Mk2 - Blue - 080000431

Current situation - we're talking with SRS Labs about licensing details of their SRS and Focus products, which, combined, will do just about all of that. However, actually designing layout, etc, has to wait until we can start getting design specs from SRS.

Can people interested in this product talk on 3rd party products thread about this - I'm trying to keep the discussion together there.

And any word from empeg about the I2S header would be appreciated :-)

Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.

I like SRS technology a lot. However, their biggest problem is when their algorithm kicks in, it adds a significant noise floor to the sound. Look at the specs and see for yourself. Having an SRS in the audio path will add noise in a significant way. It won't matter if you're going fast enough of course... :)

Calvin