audio set-up for beginners [continued]

[jhnkvn]

Kung bibili ako sa perfect circle, sila din mag kakabit diba. Magaling din ba sila mag tune? Do all shops tune the same or may magagaling mag tune? I'm asking kasi sabi sabi na matining daw ang jbl 609c and harsh sa tenga ang tunog, kaya I think tuning is a must and must be very good.

Perfect Circle has competent installers naman. In fact, I believe most installers in Banawe are competent naman (if they aren't, how can they still be in business?) thanks to business necessity.

Tuning, on the other hand, is an art. It's art is because music is subjective. It's like tuning the ECU of your car, there's science behind it.. but most of it is art.

Same ba sila magtune? This unfortunately depends. Pure tuning as it is is easy on a regular setup as your tuning options are limited. Most have tone controls: treble, mid, bass to adjust and the occasional subwoofer level for the 2DINN models. The better ones have some sort of equalizer so you can adjust some frequency bands. The best ones have stuff like crossover, phase, time alignment, etc.

More important to getting something sound right in your car is the installation. Tama ba pagwire nila ng speaker wires? How is the amplifier's gain, crossover, and other settings? How is the attenuation of the tweeter? etc. Once this is done right, you then proceed to the tuning via the head unit.

If you hear the JBL sounds harsh, then you do two things:
(1) first is you fix the install side muna -- decrease the tweeter attenuation from the passive crossovers. Meron yan mga +dB, 0dB, -dB and you adjust that to "tame" how much your speaker shouts at you. If it shouts too much, this will come off as too "harsh" for the listener. The need for this stems from the sensitivity of the driver kasi. If you feed a tweeter 1W, most of them will produce 95dB.. if you feed a midbass 1W, most of them are in the 90dB. In other words, your tweeter is shouting at you and the midbass is barely moving. That's why you need to "balance" them by attenuating or reducing the tweeter level in accordance to the midbass.

(2) Once the install side is done, you then try to tune it via the head unit. If you have tone controls, you'll be looking at reducing your treble primarily. If you have a graphic equalizer, you'll be cutting at the 1khz to 5khz region in most cases.

How much an installer needs to tune depends on your gears. Don't expect the best unless you give them the best. It's like you shouldn't expect 1000HP out of a stock RB26DETT GTR engine if you do not plan on getting "better" parts.

If you wanna know how much "professional" tuning is in the Philippines (assuming you have good gears), one-off tuning will cost you from the well-renowned car audio shops will go around Php12,000+ and this may go even more depending on the complexity of your system.