How To Set Up Your Car Stereo

Mike D.@lemmy.world to Cars - For Car Enthusiasts@lemmy.world – 4 points –
How To Set Up Your Car Stereo
fastcar.co.uk
1

For anyone interested, i have a simple method to make your car sound better:

Step 1. Sync a device such as a phone to your car audio system. We need something that can play specific frequencies of a sine wave. These can be looked up on YouTube, Apple Music, Spotify, etc., usually called “Test Tones.”

Step 2. Use a secondary device (a friend’s phone, smart watch, etc.) capable of using a noise meter app in decibels.

Step 3. Adjust volume on radio to desired amount, as high as you can without hurting your ears. I recommend playing “pink noise” from your first device and then stopping at 80dB on your measuring device.

Step 4. This will depend on your equalizer. Check which bands are available. If you have a treble, mid, bass, or just treble and bass, you will have very limited control in this, but many car stereos (especially aftermarket ones) come with at least a 7-10 band equalizer. Find what each of these frequencies are and play them one at a time from your source device.

Step 5. Measure volume of frequency (such as 150Hz) on your measuring device and adjust it higher or lower to match your initial desired volume (such as 80dB)

Step 6. Repeat for all available frequencies.

Step 7. Repeat all frequencies again. Changing one may affect the ones next to it. A second pass should average this out.

Step 8. Enjoy! You calibrated your speakers in a very simple manner, but it should sound much better. Now, if you want to increase the bass, treble, etc., just use this measurement set as your baseline, and increase from there.

Remember, your ears know best, so this isn’t a hard set result!