Unpopular opinion: Pumping bass is pointless if you haven't tuned your system right

I drove around for like 6 months thinking my subs were hitting hard, but then I borrowed my buddy's RTA mic and ran some sweeps on a Sunday afternoon. Turns out I had a nasty null at 45 Hz from how the box was sitting in my trunk, and I was just rattling my plates for nothing. Spent about 2 hours moving the box 3 inches forward and adding some polyfill, suddenly the same track sounded like a different song. So many people just max out the bass knob and call it done, but you're missing half the low end if your setup isn't dialed in for your car's acoustics. My '02 Camry needed the sub facing back, not up, to hit flat down to 30 Hz. Has anyone else chased a perfect curve on their head unit or am I just the weirdo who spends Saturday night with test tones?

2 comments

2 Comments

hannahw305d ago

Same thing happened to me with my old Jetta, spent months chasing that perfect flat response in my head unit until I bought a miniDSP and finally got it right. Now I'm the weirdo who brings test tones on road trips to tweak the EQ in rental cars.

derekward5d ago

Used to be the exact opposite. Thought I had my system dialed in just by ear, figured it sounded fine so why mess with it. Then a buddy let me borrow his RTA and I found a huge dip around 50Hz that I never even noticed. Moved my box from facing up to facing the back of the trunk and it was like I installed a whole new sub. Total game changer. Now I'm the guy running test tones at 3am trying to flatten out that last little peak.