iPhone/Portable Player Owners' easy tip for better audio

[RedMapleLeaf]

There are many posts about upgrading the audio system in the LEAF, including adding new speakers. If you are not ready to go that far, there are a couple of things you can try if you use an iPhone for the source of music for the LEAF's audio system.

1. Use the "Small Speakers" setting on the EQ. This helps the bass response somewhat, and also helps to remove the nasty midrange peak the stock speakers seem to have. Actually, I would think most audio players have this type of simple "preformatted" eq's, not just the iPhone.

2. Try an EQ app. I've been using EQu from elephantcandy, but there are numerous EQ apps out there. The app is free, and you can play your playlists or songs through it. It is not as clean as using the iPhone's native Music app, which, when using bluetooth, simply turns on and off when the car or radio is turned on or off. With EQu, I have to "pause" music before I leave the car or the iPhone continues to play in my pocket. However, the benefits of being able to tailor the sound far outweighs the minor inconvenience.

Of course none of this works for the radio or CD player; it's only for the stuff coming from the iPhone/Player.

One thing to remember when using equalizers: Cutting is better than boosting. The ear does not detect a loss of frequencies as much as it detects a boost of a frequency band as unnatural. If you find that cutting offensive frequencies makes the overall volume level too low, simply turn up the volume to compensate.

Hopefully this is a simple and easy thing to do for many of you, before resorting to replacing speakers. I've actually found that the LEAF has quite a good amount of bass in the front door speakers, it's just that certain midrange frequencies are too overbearing, so taming them really helps. Also, simply turning the treble down on the audio system in the LEAF can help. I've used a real time analyzer and found that dialing back the Bass one notch and dialing down the treble 3 notches is a good start.

Of course having said all that, I too dream of better speakers and more power....

 

[gmuzhik]

Thanks for the post! I had no idea the iPhone had that setting. I never thought to look, thinking the phone was not that sophisticated. I'm surprised. I'll try it on my Leaf, agreeing that the stock speakers are not very good.

I wonder what the frequency response is for the sound system and speakers for the Leaf, iPhone, Bluetooth, etc. It seems the days of providing specs are gone. I haven't tried to find them on-line yet. It may be there when I get time for the research.

 

[RedMapleLeaf]

I wonder what the frequency response is for the sound system and speakers for the Leaf, iPhone, Bluetooth, etc. It seems the days of providing specs are gone.

Well, specs are probably not too useful in this case. I would guess that what comes out of the iPhone and any distortions introduced by Bluetooth are probably minor compared to the craziness inside a car's cabin.

I've you've ever seen a frequency response curve for any speaker you know that it's all over the place. Speaker systems that deliver anything close to a flat response are usually sophisticated home systems with multiple drivers in closed boxes and with elaborate crossover networks. As we know, this is certainly not what is in the LEAF. Further, the LEAF's speakers are placed in a flimsy, hole-riddled enclosure which is the car's door, full of it's own resonances and unmusical characteristics -- certainly not the dead, predictable enclosures you'd find in a home system. Also, and more importantly, these inexpensive speaker "systems" are firing into a small, oddly shaped room full of hard, reflective surfaces giving all kinds of ugly reflections especially at higher frequencies, and the speakers are pointed at your feet. And to pile on further, the dimensions of the typical car's interior are close to the wavelengths of low to mid bass frequencies, which will either cancel out or reinforce certain tones, making bass response very uneven. (I had a Taurus station wagon that loved 40 Hz and I had two equalizers both getting rid of that frequency.) It's a wonder it all sounds as good as it does. And, if you move your head a couple of inches one way or the other, the response curve your ears will hear will change. The only way any published frequency response curve could be useful is for the manufacturer to average multiple readings (using pink noise) with very accurate microphones (so they don't introduce their own colouration) in the areas where your head might be, taking into account the differences in seating positions and driver size.

Sorry, you got me on a roll...

So.... the bottom line is to simply fiddle with the equalization controls available to you to make it sound good -- to you. You may find a combination of certain settings in the iPhone along with settings of the bass and treble controls that sound just right.

Now... there's the small matter of the massive amount of low frequency road noise intruding into the cabin...

 

[tps]

I run the music player on my Android "flat", connect to the LEAF via Bluetooth, and turn the treble on the LEAF's setting down one notch. This seems to tame what is, to my ear, a tiny amount of harshness in the high end. The phone's music play via Bluetooth sounds better than XM and much better than most FM stations, however the treble set works OK for them, too...