Interesting...I guess I'm going to trust the man himself and do it this way.

 

Try it as suggested , one each, and let uos know. the amp has the EQ so this doesn't make sense to me????

Mark

 

I've spoken with Mr. Navone on several occasions. I find him to be convinced of how smart he is, and a poor listener. His advice has failed me on several occasions, where he has been just plain wrong. He's good at self-promo though.

It's a total BS test unless you use an o-scope to match levels. Listener studies show that if you A/B two sound sources, and one is a hair louder than the other - less than 3dB, so not discernable to the human ear as a VOLUME difference, but audible as a tonal difference - we will tend to pick the louder one as the better-sounding one if we don't hear heinous differences in the louder one.

That's why A/B listening in sales showrooms is so difficult - if you don't have a complex calibrated switching system, small sensitivity differences will sound like tonal differences that they really aren't.

Sounds to mee like he's commenting more on how his product works than on the better signal to grab.

 

What's your opinion on his actual product though?

 

I am the farthest thing from an expert, but...

Seeing as the product description is
"connect the speaker level outputs of a factory deck into the pre-amp level inputs of an aftermarket equalizer, electronic crossover, or power amplifier"
Connecting after the bose amp is the only thing that makes sense. The board here seemed to say that before the amp is best, so I tried that first. The signal was so quiet as to be inaudible without cranking up the gain to max levels. After the bose amp worked like a charm.

I'm not saying the product is the best, I can't really comment on the sound quality (haven't completed my setup yet), I'm just relaying my experience in getting it to work.

 

I asked him about the Bose equalization within the stock amp and his response:

 

What amp were/are you using?

 

I have a cleansweep, overkill with the flat signal from the Bose. Something like a Phoenix Gold's new piece sld 44 should be good. It will take the signal before the amp and boost it to 4-8 volts which is good for most amps.

Mark

 

WHen you sum the signals together you get full-range, but not flat full-range. The signals cancel somewhat in the stopbands and you get a roller-coaster of a response curve.

He is right that if your signal level is too low and your gain is too high noise is the common result.

However, if the signal IS high enough, it's not an issue. I haven't measured this signal, but I know that passive balanced to single ended converters like the Navone piece I think you are referring to essentally lose 1/2 the amplitude of the balanced signal. I know that SOundgate makes an active adapter called the LOCB.2 that has a preamp in it to step up the signal level. I haven't tried it in that car though.

If any PDX owner wants to let me test again ( I can tell you how many volts it is..

 

What's the "Stock" voltage on the "flat" signal coming out of the HU before it hits the Bose amp?

 

Elemental Designs nine.2

 

Their website dose not specify, but if the inputs on the amp do not accept balanced signals and instead expect single-ended, that would have created problems. The amp itself has an input sensitivity of 150 mVolt - 7.0V. I doubt the voltage on the lines coming from the stock HU are anywhere near 150mV (I expect they are higher).

 

I think I saw a 2 volt spike at high volume on the the LEDs but is is not a real good scale. It has LEDs for .2, 2, and 8 volts. This was reached with input gains turned up so I would guess it really is at the .1 level or maybe lower so I would have to dissagree w/Amthar. See this manual for my confusion, sorry. Mark

ftp://208.187.38.55/Phoenix_Gold/Man...EQ/EQ215ix.pdf

 

The only real way to test it is with a sine wave test CD at 0 dB.

Most test CD tracks are at -10 or -20 dB.

Because it's balanced, remember that there's swing from (+) to (-), not from (+) to ground.

 

please send equipment and instructions other wise I will have to wait for results from you

Not doubting you at all just giving you polite hard time cause i can't do it for both reasons above. It would be nice to know....hoping you can

Mark