Vehicle Stereo Systems

Filter it like crazy. High pass everything. If you need sub 40 hz sub for weight, slower roll off to have some.

Control your low mids and proximity effect. Dynamic eqs rule for this. Nova GE and Oxford Dynamic are great and clean. TDR Arbiter is a god. It’s so good.

Oaksound Bloom is great for skewed tonal response premixed garbage you get in.

Honestly there are 70s and 80s records that are thin on monitors or a stereo but sound perfect going above 60. I realized this going over 70 listening to Thin Lizzy and Morrisound death metal. The engine noise and murk filled everything in. Bass heavy, distorted modern mixes and under mixed rap beats with no low mid control just turn to crap.

Yes they are always bass heavy.

Consumers what to feel the bass while driving down the road. Plus to a lot of people: More bass=Better stereo

Small sealed bass enclosures are more compatible in small enclosed spaces such as vehicles than larger vented closures.

Small sealed enclosures have a smoother, more linear roll off which tends to counter the bass build up that occurs at lower frequencies in smaller enclosed spaces and typically provide a more accurate and less boomy, low end response all things considered.

Yes, no kind of sort of. Yes a sealed cabinet has a more gradual roll off but first : that roll off being more gradual means there will be more SPL at say 2 octaves below the corner frequency. Second it’s still all dependent on the driver/ cabinet combination. Third a fair amount of stock systems that have sealed boxes use a DSP EQ that negates that gentle roll off.

In other words theoretically you are more right than wrong, in application your more wrong than right 😁

The other major issue is nobody really isolates the sub from the car itself, good isolation is big and costs money.
The absolute worst is when they hang a LF driver off the rear deck and use the trunk has an enclosure, putting anything in the trunk changes the response and nobody builds in a system to compensate.

Well, I know how get rid of the bottomw...the question is do we mix like shit for people with shitty car stereos? Are there tricks that modern mixers are doing where it doesn't sound like crap on systems that actually have woofers.

If you want to know where current sub actioin is, study this video.. 5.8m views in 1 month. Play it in the car, the TV. By the end do your ears hurt?

Actually I’ve never seen the video until today, but it is in my references lmao

I’ve learned to factor in what limiting does to a track. Once a track gets squished down, the bass can really get ugly. If I’m self mastering, I can adjust individual track low end/low mids. If I’m mastering I’ve done some pretty intense low end roll off/ low mid cuts, and when I get the track around -10 LUFS it will have plenty of bass. Mixing/mastering with a sub and referencing a lot of tracks has been super helpful.

Agreed. It’s kinda the low bar, to me they went too far whereas some other more established stars are a tiny bit cleaner: they’ll have a low end that’s not so incredibly low. Most modern stuff doesn’t light up the meters that much below 40Hz, maybe a little 30Hz here and there. Here they are going deep. And 6m views… = doesn’t really matter, do whatever

Also, car manufacturers will talk about their great stereo consoles with all the wizbang apps and shit while using speakers with fucking paper tweeters.


i am no audiophile by any stretch but I certainly know when something sounds awful.  

Controlled low end and good arrangements man. Filters and cut 120-400 hz mud regions. Don’t really let basses bloom. Have the impression of bloom. Only have one thing in each region like Dr. Dre if you want it fat but don’t mix as deliberately distorted and fast as digital Dre. You need to clean things up and not really fart at all. Even slight harmonic distortion from a plug or a colored pieces or transformers (and just on the bass instruments) give a diff texture to make it stand out in the mix from everything else and sound fat without being fat. It doesn’t have to be expensive. An ART VLA or Molot GE or a ton of plugs you already have can make a bass or kick stand out without being weird. A lot of records we like just don’t have enough low mid control (limited console eqs or 150-300 hz cut + low shelf didn’t take enough off) or are way too thin there in a car or on monitors that can show bloom.

Amphions needed a sicko amp in my experience to open up there but something like a KRK Rokit 5 or some of the cheap old Focals, Proacs, and BBC LS3/5A just resonant and rich there. Others are more accurate and can convey the bloom like old expensive KRKs, the current Focal ST6 and Shapes, Questeds, JBL 708 (might be discontinued? Who knows with Samsung). Yamaha style (including atc) and weirdo pre eqed hifi stuff (big 8” woofers to 1” tweeter, genelecs, pmc near fields) can lead to weird results or too skewed in one direction

These popular artists, their arrangements, and their productions. They all just suck and try to hide their nasty distorted vocals behind gross bass. When you play something like Madonna’s Ray of Light (frozen, drowned world) or for something heavy nobtwiddler produced Immolation (especially the stuff with Alex Hernandez on drums), they’re loud and they translate to everything and they’re fukkin’ loud, too loud to be perfectly hi-fi but not disgustingly distorted loud, and they work. Now everything is multibanded to death or slammed by something that sounds like a clipper because it is a clipper (pro l2) or guitar pedal or amp (Oxford limiter and elevate)

There really isn't that much sub bass in that song.  It's all harmonic stuff higher up that makes it sound like there's a lot of bass.  But the levels of the vocals are much higher than those of the "bass" too.  It's just that the sparse mix makes it seem like there's a lot more in the bottom than there is.

I would mix for the room first, especially if you can get it to translate well to something like Airpods.  I would trust something that translates on Airpods 100x more than random car stereos.

Then I'd probably try to figure out how to set your car stereo to sound good with your mix that already sounds good in the studio and translates to Airpods.  

For me, I found that once a mix sounds good in the studio (on monitors, AND earbuds) and sounds good at work (on earbuds) then it usually sounds 95% as good in the car.  Although I have my car set "flat" I still find that it sounds *too good* sometimes, usually hard to figure out midrange problems in the car due to the way the tweeters are high up in the pillars and the midranges are in the doors.