Some are more equalised than others...

Here's a gadget I'd really like to have: a programmable in-car graphic equaliser.

My car audio system sounds fine at speeds below about 20mph, but certain parts of the audio spectrum tend to get lost when going faster, and I've never found a car stereo that copes well with this.

Having the volume increase with speed helps a bit, but I'd really like to be able to set equalisation to be reasonably flat when going slowly, and adjust it to boost, say, tenor vocals so that things sound good at 40mph and 70mph. Then it should interpolate between my various settings at intermediate speeds.

Anyone seen anything like this, or should I patent it? :-)

I guess it could be an iPhone app, since most of my audio comes from there, and it has a GPS...

Comments

Rob April 15, 2013 at 12:59 p.m.

I want one. Where do I sign?

Mike Edie April 15, 2013 at 2:07 p.m.

Normalised SNR for each frequency band. That might do the trick.

Aaron Huslage April 15, 2013 at 2:35 p.m.

Not sure, but it seems that equalization should not be related to vehicle speed directly, but to ambient noise and it's characterization. Having an ambient audio spectrum analyzer feed into an automatically adjusting EQ is probably what you actually want. You could probably do this just fine with an iphone app of some sort.

NotACat April 15, 2013 at 2:54 p.m.

Would it help to couple this with one of those devices which counteracts the engine noise by generating an inverse waveform? Or would that make it unnecessary?

qsf April 15, 2013 at 3:30 p.m.

Yes, in fact a really cool app would allow you to record the ambient noise at different speeds, maybe different locations (noisy road here, quiet cafe there), analyse them, and set the audio parameters to compensate when you're next in that location.

In the meantime, I've just discovered the very cool Denon Audio app for the iPhone, which has a nice flexible equaliser and allows me to save presets. Already makes my car hands-free kit sound a great deal better.

John April 23, 2013 at 2:13 p.m.

Cool idea. Wait! In-car? Graphic? Aw, not cool dude! :-)

Status-Q

Some are more equalised than others...

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