# Car audio measurement with REW



## robbo266317 (Sep 22, 2008)

My previous car died just before Christmas, unfortunately, it was a Mazda Sp23 which came with Mazda 6 engine and a turbo charger.
Great car, fun to drive, except it did a big end bearing. Upon searching the web I found this is a common problem with the big end bearing in the Mazda 6 engine on cylinder one. (poor design? who knows)





So I was quoted au$8,000 to rebuild the engine plus au$2,000 to replace the aircon unit and "while we are there we may as well do the gearbox and clutch"

I wasn't going to spend au$10k+ on a vehicle currently listed at 8-10k so I went looking and finally settled on a Toyota 86

Now the question is about the audio, it doesn't sound right. I have adjusted the equalizer to sound good to me but how do I verify this in REW

note: - not my actual car! Mine is the current model.


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

> I wasn't going to spend au$10k+ on a vehicle currently listed at 8-10k so I went looking and finally settled on a Toyota 86


Sorry to hear about your baby. 

Are there no junk yards Australia? Couple grand for a used engine, another grand for a shop to put it in, and your down the road.

Regarding REW measurements for your new car, If the stereo has an AUX input you could feed the headphone output from your laptop to it. You could also burn a pink noise signal to a CD, play it, and measure using REW’s RTA feature.

Regards,
Wayne


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## robbo266317 (Sep 22, 2008)

Wayne A. Pflughaupt said:


> Sorry to hear about your baby.
> 
> Are there no junk yards Australia? Couple grand for a used engine, another grand for a shop to put it in, and your down the road.


Yes but unfortunately it was more than likely the replacement engine would do the same since every forum I looked at said it was the number one cylinder that failed. To me this says design flaw. 
Also the rebuilt engine only comes with a 12 month warranty... :surprise:

But hey, I am more than pleased with the Toyota 86 which is a collaboration with Subaru. The Subaru is marketed as the BRZ and the suspension was tuned by testing at the Nurburgring track. > 


To get back on topic, I saw an article of Sonnies talking about car acoustics from way back when that had a similar curve to a house curve and wondered if anyone had followed up on it.


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## subterFUSE (May 10, 2014)

robbo266317 said:


> To get back on topic, I saw an article of Sonnies talking about car acoustics from way back when that had a similar curve to a house curve and wondered if anyone had followed up on it.


I am not familiar with the article you are talking about, but I am a car audio hobbyist and sound quality competitor.

Yes, some of us do use house curves when tuning our systems. Not everyone uses the same curve, because each car is unique and 1 curve doesn't always translate well to every car. But, in general, the shape of a desirable response in a car will have a bit more boost in the bass regions than you might expect from a home setup. I'm using a curve with about 20 dB difference between 20Hz vs. 20kHz, and it has done well in competition.


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## robbo266317 (Sep 22, 2008)

subterFUSE said:


> I am not familiar with the article you are talking about, but I am a car audio hobbyist and sound quality competitor.
> 
> Yes, some of us do use house curves when tuning our systems. Not everyone uses the same curve, because each car is unique and 1 curve doesn't always translate well to every car. But, in general, the shape of a desirable response in a car will have a bit more boost in the bass regions than you might expect from a home setup. I'm using a curve with about 20 dB difference between 20Hz vs. 20kHz, and it has done well in competition.


Thanks, That is similar to what I had seen in the other post, I think they wound it back to about 8 dB of boost in the end. 
I guess I will just have to see how the curve I have set up relates to what REW measures. Hopefully I will get a chance to test it this weekend.


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