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April
is time for Spring Break, which is a prelude to summer
fun. And what's more fun than adding bass to a factory
sound system? New vehicles manufactured in the last
few years come with great factory decks -- except for
the fact that they all lack real bass.
[Ed's
note, I just got a new car and Dave is right, the deck
is great, but the bass... :(
Adding
serious bass to a factory system requires moving a lot
air and this takes woofers, enclosures and amplifiers.
Since most vehicle interiors and trunks are sealed,
placing woofers on the back deck into an
"infinite" baffle works great for the
majority of systems. Or a simple sealed or ported
enclosure can offer even more bass -- albeit over a
narrower range. As for the power amplifiers, we have
long stated, "Buy all the amplification you can
afford. It's like money in the bank. You can't have
too much amplification in a car."
This leaves us with the only tricky part of the OEM
upgrade -- the interface between the factory system
(i.e. OEM deck) and the aftermarket bass (woofer,
enclosure, and amp). Like the proverbial weak link in
the chain, the OEM interface device makes ALL the
difference in the quality of the sound. Several years
ago, Richard Clark and I designed the N-85V
Variable Low-Pass High-Quality Stereo OEM Adapter
so that we could achieve the maximum signal with
minimal noise. The N-85V features full transformer
isolation to keep the factory systems completely away
from the aftermarket components. The frequency
response of the N-85V (and also the non-variable N-85)
is centered at around 40 Hz and the output level is
9.5 Volts rms. When compared to a typical aftermarket
car audio deck with the standard 2 Volt pre-amp
output, the output of the N-85V is over four times
better. As with never having too much mobile
amplification, there is no substitute for signal
level. Boosting the signal with line drivers, etc.
also boosts the noise levels -- which can be done at
the power amp for free!
Why do you need 9.5 Volts of signal from your OEM
Interface Adapter? The answer is that we adjust the
gain structure of our mobile audio systems for maximum
signal and minimal noise. This requires that we first
set all of our pre-amp components (deck, eq,
electronic cover, etc.) so that they clip at the same
time the deck clips. However, at the amplifier /
speaker part of the system, we set the level for 3:1
gain overlap. This means that if the amplifier clips
at 2 Volts, we can feed it 6 Volts. If the power amp
clips at 3 Volts, then we can feed it 9 Volts. Other
settings in the gain structure result in: 1) A system
that lacks power and punch, or 2) A system that is
noisy, hissy, etc.
So choosing a 9.5 Volt OEM Interface Adapter is
important to adding lots of clean, non-hissy, bass to
your factory system. Until next month, stay tuned."
N-85V details here.
Order here.
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