"Tuning" Alpine 8.4" System

[deeve]

Hello all,
I have had my 2022 Backcountry with the Alpine system for 9 months, or so. Does anyone have any tips or places to go to learn how to properly adjust the system for best performance. I am NOT an audiophile but do like to listen to music, but not crazy loud. What I am noticing is that the bass does not sound clear to me. I am not super educated out terminology so excuse my rudimentary language but the mid or highs are "uncomfortable" to listen to. Hard to explain because it is not loud, just not nice to my ears. If I adjust the EQ to get rid of that it sounds dirty.

Any advice or directions to look would be very much appreciated.

 

[Bigskyroadglide]

Replacing the speakers in the front door and behind the front seats seemed to help mine alot. I have alot more bass now and had to adjust the EQ to address it.

Please know, I ride a motorcycle and my hearing is permanently impaired, just ask my wife, so just passing on my experience. Yours may be different.

 

[deeve]

Thanks. I was wondering if I could fix before replacing speakers but the more I read the more I think speakers might be the way to go. I too have damaged hearing from motorcycling and other work related things.

 

[RamDiver]

OOPs
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[chopperman1]

Have you tried adjusting your EQ in the radio settings? My Apline with the factory sub can make the whole truck vibrate. Very pleased with mine for a factory radio.

 

[RamDiver]

I'm quite fascinated that so many users are dissatisfied with their Alpine systems.

There must be a significant difference in the quality used in the different truck models or different production runs or... who knows.

The sound system in my '21 Classic Warlock isn't the same as sitting at home but it's no dog.
I've tweaked the EQ in settings to move the center slightly rearward and attenuated the bass because it was booming far too loud for my liking.

It sounds great to me, I have a background in television broadcast, AKA, I'm a bit picky about video & sound quality. I should state that I only use Sirius satellite radio and I do notice occasionally that some of the vintage tracks are still a bit too loud for bass even with my reduced settings.

The few times I've listened to an FM station, I wasn't impressed with the quality, it had no punch and sounded like a poor frequency range.

Maybe we should start a vote and see if we can correlate these poor-performing Alpine sound systems to a specific source, i.e. Sirius, FM, or other.

After I build another fire in the woodstove, I may wander out to my truck and grab a pic of my EQ settings. Although the though of fighting through snow drifts is not too appealing.
.

 

[Bigskyroadglide]

I listen to XM, the in truck CD player and stream via Bluetooth from my phone. I've only noticed a change when using the phone as the eq settings on the app I play music with on my phone will somehow impact the sound system in the truck making it louder and heavier from a bass standpoint.

 

[RamDiver]

Hello all,
I have had my 2022 Backcountry with the Alpine system for 9 months, or so. Does anyone have any tips or places to go to learn how to properly adjust the system for best performance. I am NOT an audiophile but do like to listen to music, but not crazy loud. What I am noticing is that the bass does not sound clear to me. I am not super educated out terminology so excuse my rudimentary language but the mid or highs are "uncomfortable" to listen to. Hard to explain because it is not loud, just not nice to my ears. If I adjust the EQ to get rid of that it sounds dirty.

Any advice or directions to look would be very much appreciated.

Maybe, I don't understand exactly what the problem is. I know when I first got my truck, the sound was all messed up and the bass was so loud it was booming, vibrating dash parts, and just sounded distorted. Is that similar to what you're experiencing?

If that's the difficulty, you may be able to tweak some of that away.

As mentioned by chopperman1, there are EQ settings to reduce the booming effect and also balance/fade adjustments to get the best sound between the front & rear speakers.

The front speakers produce more mid & high range while the rear speakers are more low-end. Adjusting the center listening position more rearward provides more power to the rear speakers (and less power to the front) and can be used to customize the sound to your listening preference. I found the tweaks made a huge difference.

These settings will likely be different for everyone's ear/listening preference.

This is how I tweaked my EQ settings to reduce overdriving the bass and causing all that distortion. Even with this significant low-end reduction, certain songs still boom too loud (for my liking).




Then I tweaked the center listening position to get to my preferred combination of sounds.
I did go back & forth between EQ & center listening position many times to identify my preference, so, this may require lots of fiddling if you're as picky as I am.



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