so in other words. You are trying to tell me. Your entire post was based on you listening to sine waves and your recorded material in the car? I hope I misunderstood and you actually used a RTA and calibrated mic to back up your conclusions. I totally disagree with your statements. As far as having muddy bass. I somewhat agree with the fact that most owners with a 100% stock bose system do have their bass set on +6. There are many reasons for that, which I'm not going to go into. But basically the bose system does not have sufficient low end at all. Especially from a system that has 9" woofers in the doors. There is a simple but not cheap way to fix the issue. But a set of titanium tweeters isnt the answer. Because obviously, tweeters dont make bass. Turning down the bass doesnt increase bass response. which is the underlying problem to begin with. While I dont question your credentials. There is a clear difference between Music creation, Recording/Mastering and Reproduction. As to disabling the center. I'm with you on that one. Its useless.

 

I've spent so many years tuning other environments (performance-venues/home-systems/auditoriums/theaters/Ballrooms) with RTA and mics that I'm quite confident tuning my personal car stereo without them and just using my reference recordings and 1/3 octave sine waves.

Apologies for my lack of clarity, please allow me to try again...and for the record I said nothing that should have made you think I was associating tweeters and bass response. I'd also like to hear more regarding your statement about the "clear difference" between those three aspects you mentioned in the music industry. I deal in all three every week so I find your statement most confusing.

Back to topic: What I have found following removal of center channel, replacement of front doorsill tweeters with 4ohm titanium models and setting the factory EQ at Bass+2 (or 3 if you must) & Treble+2 is as close to a flat response as you'll be able to get without spending a whole lot more money on upgrading the system. Please remember the operative word in the title of this thread is Cheap. With these mods & settings creating a more flat response, low-end response (from 31hz-200hz) is more clean and remains so when the overall volume is increased compared to a setting of EQ Bass at +6 which is much more muddy.

Further testing to illustrate:
Volume set at 10 and EQ at Bass +6, tracks were played with sine waves at 31, 40, 50, 63, 80, 100, 125, 160 & 200hz. The waves at 40, 50, 63 and 80 were nearly overwhelming the speakers being asked to reproduce them. In asking these speakers to reproduce regular music at this EQ setting and at even more raised volume settings, we find that not only does this cause the bass to be muddy but also distorts the Low-Mids (160-400hz). As you progress thru the upper waves (250hz up) the volume is obviously lower than the bottom end and we now have not only lost our flat response but also muddied up everything from 400hz down.

Solution: cheap mod from first post in thread prevents the distortion on the low end giving as clean a bottom end as is possible with this Bose system while improving stereo image and clarity on the top end.

Cheers!

 

Panel-dampening material on the inside of the front doors improves low-end hugely, for a weekend's work and ~$50. IMO, it's the cheapest biggest improvement one can make with the Bose, with the tweeter/mids second. Just any old tweeter won't work well 'cause they need have good response down to ~1.5 kHz. The ones I've found with the right specs run ~$100. Of course any that I would have for sale would be *perfect*.

 

Sorry I haven't had time to elaborate on your post slide. But I will later this evening as long as I can get out from under some paperwork. But thank god you did instrumented tests. And to Hiflite... LOL

 

I've been trying to keep my mouth shut on this one, despite some boldly controversial statements from both sides. If there's one thing I've learned in the entire audio industry, it's to each their own. Some people prefer a sound that I think sounds like complete ****. And despite being shown what quality sounds like, they still prefer the ****. Or maybe my ears prefer **** and their system is actually the one that is quality? Maybe I prefer "smoother" high frequencies, while the next guy prefers a more aggressive sound from his tweets. Maybe I say you can never have enough bass, while the next guy thinks the stock Bose system has too much bass. Maybe I'm content with 64kbps MP3s, while the next guy refuses to even use compressed music.

In the end, it's their system. They listen to it every day, not me. If you think bass is best set to +2 and I think -2, so be it. Have fun and enjoy yours, because I'll be enjoying mine in my own car.