Geeky or interesting?

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I was listening to Radio 2 on FM on a 13 year old BMW car stereo and Sweet Child O Mine came on. Shock! I could hear cymbals at the start of the track which are not apparent when I play my CD through my CA640 combo and Wharfy 9.1's.

Now I know the cymbals are there I can hear them...just.... but until I heard the track on the car radio I had no idea the gentle touch on those cymbals was there!

What is letting me down in the system?? My new chords have improved bass and the CA is quite top end as we all know.

Cheers

Mike
 

jaxwired

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That's a mystery. I will say that often car stereos have way too prominent and zingy treble. This can accentuate the treble quite a bit. This will make thinks sound more detailed, but it also is a distortion of what is on the track and most people tire quickly of that type of sound.

Try the same track on a really good pair of headphones and compare that to your 9.1s.
 

fatboyslimfast

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Sit with your home speakers approximately 2.5 feet from each ear. Bet you can hear it now...

I'm not being daft here - it's just that you will hear more with the speakers at ear level, and close to your ears, which most car tweeters tend to be these days.

Basically, sound tails off in accordance with the inverse square law - at 1 foot it might drop to half, by 2 feet to 1/4, by 4 feet 1/16th etc. High frequencies seem to suffer worse.

It's also the reason why headphones can provide so much more detail-per-pound than speakers, but miss out on the feeling of "being there" as the sound is left-and-right of your head, instead of in front.
 
fatboyslimfast:Sit with your home speakers approximately 2.5 feet from each ear. Bet you can hear it now... I'm not being daft here - it's just that you will hear more with the speakers at ear level, and close to your ears, which most car tweeters tend to be these days. Basically, sound tails off in accordance with the inverse square law - at 1 foot it might drop to half, by 2 feet to 1/4, by 4 feet 1/16th etc. High frequencies seem to suffer worse. It's also the reason why headphones can provide so much more detail-per-pound than speakers, but miss out on the feeling of "being there" as the sound is left-and-right of your head, instead of in front.

Exactly. So damn close its like wearing headphones.
 
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Anonymous

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Thanks for the input....Yep the tweeters are in the doors only inches from the ears which seems to make all the difference on the high end.

On the subject of the 9.1's would the EB 1's be a sensible upgrade for the 640's. Would they temper the brightness?

Any other suggestions for speaker upgrade to ensure the brightness is handled better in order to create an audition shortlist?
 

Gozaradio

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Something else to consider is which album you are listening to the trck from and which album Radio 2 were using. The track played from 'Appetite for Destruction' could well sound different from say a 'Rock Anthems' compilation which Radio 2 may have used.

I have come across many examples where a very different mix of a track has appeared on a compilation, sometimes it just sounds different played on the same equipment from two different CD's. Could be that a track is poorly transferred or taken from an inferior source or even that it was EQ'd a little for a compilation album.

One possible way to check is have a look at the playlist for that show on the R2 web site. Often it will state the album that a track was played from. One thing I do know is that it would have been a 44.1k linear wave file

I may have taken any possible 'Interesting' elements from this thread and made it all 'Geeky' now. Sorry!
 
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Anonymous

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No worries ...My eyes glazed about the linear thing. My comparison was from my G & R greatest hits album ..second track in. Your point about different mixes is another issue I hadn't considered.

I guess all this stems from the fact that we pay increasing sums of money to achieve a better sound and maybe a bit hyper sensitive to what we think we should be hearing. Don't want to think about moving away from budget kit
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richardw42

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Think cars are naturally better, than all the variables involved in a home system. Even ny standard Fiesta comes pretty close some times. Car systems have got so much better.

I bought an ex-demo BMW that had a (£3k?0 HK upgraded stereo. Got nowhere near it at home so far.
 
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Anonymous

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I suggest you also play the cd in your car audio system for comparison: FM broadcasts may involve audio processing, e.g. to increase loudness, If you like the prcessed sound, you may have a look at dsp options like the SRS HD Audio Lab at srslabs.com (free trial) for your home audio. You will be amazed, I think,
 

StevieC

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I think you'll find most of what's going on here to be the processing that the engineers at Radio 2 use. I've often heard stuff on Radio 2 that has sounded better than my own copies, and generally speaking they manage it without making it overbearing (imo).

Also interesting to note the comment about possibly different mixes used on different albums. Not surprisingly I have Free's "All Right Now" on a number of albums and at least one sounds flat while another sounds as though it's had an injection of life into it!

Cheers

Steve
 

Gozaradio

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StevieC:
I think you'll find most of what's going on here to be the processing that the engineers at Radio 2 use. I've often heard stuff on Radio 2 that has sounded better than my own copies, and generally speaking they manage it without making it overbearing (imo).

I completely forgot about the processing! That'll be what makes the most difference. There's not likely to be much (if any) going on in the studio itself (to the music), but there is plenty of processing applied as the audio hits the transmitter. And these days, there are different processors and settings for different broadcast paths (The DAB output will have one processor while FM will have a different one altogether).

Radio 2 generally have a reasonable balance of processing, just lifting the sound enough to give it some oomph. Radio 1 is way OTT but that's in the battle to be loudest on a little mono tranny or rubbish car stereo with road noise leaving a dynamic range similar to the range of Michael Caine's accents. At the other end of the scale is Radio 3 where processing and compressing are acts punishable by death!
 

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