audio set-up for beginners [continued]

**jhnkvn** · April 10th, 2013 03:26 PM

Originally Posted by crazy_boy

im a newbie in audio set up. after reading the whole thread, it seems na ang dapat na unang gawin is to replace stock speakers and tunable HU.

the set up that i want is basic SQ only. i am not and dont have plans of joining competitions naman. i just want to have a more pleasurable sounding music during my drive to and from work. i also want to retain the OEM look of the tweeter pods and the speaker placement. i plan to start with good HU and budget seps and slowly upgrade if i want better sound next time.

so i am thinking of replacing my pioneer 3050ub HU and my stock front speakers and tweeter to Alpine 9887(used)/117(bnew)/the newer model and targa/kinetic KD6.

i want to hear the comments of the audio gurus if im headed to the right direction. i am considering the Kinetic KD6 cause i read in KAC that this is a copy of some high end brand daw and uses Bennic (?) capacitors/components? car is Fieldmaster pala. thanks!

SQ is composed of three things: tonality, imaging, and soundstaging. You can get tonality easily, however imaging or the ability to pinpoint instruments and soundstaging or the ability to visualize the placement of musical instruments and vocalists in a music recording is not achievable unless you have a capable head unit with extensive tuning features at hand.

The thing is, your everyday consumer is not used to proper imaging and soundstaging and I myself am fine as long as I have good tonality. So I will first suggest you upgrade your separates, deaden your door, and amplify it before splurging on a good head unit. You see, having a good head unit is like having a great engine (think: Nissan's RB26 engine). Out of the box, it'll already be great. However, you need to take time in tuning it to get the most out of its potential. Problem now is that you'll need to find somebody who is competent enough to tune your setup and THAT is where you'll have difficulties.

Now forgive me because I love drawing analogies. I do think it helps people understand the concepts behind my walls-of-text.

Re: Kinetic KD6

Okay, to be frank, I'm not a fan of boogie (the distributor of Kinetik) of KAC. If you've followed his posts, I've been trying to shoot difficult questions at him and what he does is simply... ignore it or at best, post an answer that isn't really relevant to the question. This gives me the impression that he's a salesman.. not an engineer. Having Bennic capacitors isn't really relevant.. because it's like saying your car is now faster because it has Cosworth oil filter cover cap. Big names are useless unless it's actually put into practice. In the realm of audio, this means paying attention to the signal path and board design layout.

Want another example? McIntosh Audio is absolutely legendary in audio. You can purchase their amplifiers for around 300,000php from Mickey (who's the authorized distributor of products) and that's bordering on their cheap-range already. But if you open it up, you'll find rather... generic components inside. You'll see cheapo China/Taiwan/etc. capacitors and other internal mumbo-jumbo.. and this is all in a 300 grand amplifier! Yet, it sounds "godly" as many would say. Why? Because of excellent circuitry design.

Okay, if you didn't get that, I'll give another car analogy. Let's say you want to go fast and you have a Toyota Camry 2.4L engine. For the masses, they wouldn't really care if you throw the engine at the back of a Camry. For them, it's plenty fast from 0-100km/h compared to your Vios. However, for the more... uhh... extreme people, we'll be throwing it in the back of a Lotus and race it on a track. Same engine, different designs.

According to posts, the Kinetic KD6 is a rebranded speaker from MDS Sweden. Now I'm scratching my head on how you come to terms that it's a high-end brand (that's probably thanks to his extraordinary claims to persuade the general public) because it looks like an ordinary manufacturing facility to me. Want to know what differentiates your everyday company to a company that has their heart and soul into the industry?

Here's a true example of a high-end audio brand - Dynaudio: http://www.dynaudio.com/int/pdf/DYN_...ochure_INT.pdf. Notice the difference? Here you have your everyday marketing flowery words but it's backed up by real data from engineering. You'd hardly find any T/S parameters, FR tested response, and impedence graphs on any run of the mill audio company. Do you think Firland, MDS, Targa, etc. have them? Not really. But Focal JM-Labs, MicroPrecision, B&W, Scanspeaks, etc. have them.