Thanks to Swiss Tony for enlightening me on the PTY button; sadly, knowing what it is hasn't encouraged me to use it but knowledge for its own sake is good. }:---)
The Volvo audio unit has another button, marked 'Dolby Prologic'. I do know what that one's for, but I don't use it any more. It probably does something immensely clever below the surface, but all it seems to achieve is to add a shrill, glassy, 'processed' quality to whatever CD is in the slot. Are there CDs specially encoded to benefit from this treatment? If so, I seem not to have any, and the CDs I do have sound much better with the thing switched off.
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No problem WillDeBeest.
anything for a neighbour....
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The Volvo I had with the Pro-logic had three settings: off, 3 channel and Pro-logic. Off was, well, off! 3 channel split the stereo signal into three distinct channels, using the centre speaker to balance the sound, Pro-Logic added to this by intelligently changing the sound in the rear speakers to create a more atmospheric sound.
To any unfortunates in the rear, with pro-logic on the sound is just muffled, but it does improve (IMHO) the sound in the front. It makes the sound warmer and rounder. I liked it!
If it sounds naff in your car, either you ears are fussier than mine or maybe it's not working correctly? Perhaps it was naff and I have low standards... :)
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i prefer haffler
to prologic
but then again i dont encompasse hd
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In that case, OB, I'd expect the Prologic system to be quite sensitive to the size, shape, layout and acoustics of the car's interior, so it's entirely possible that what worked well in your S80 (IIRC) is not so effective in the smaller cabin of my S60 - or in the much bigger one of an XC90 for that matter. I wonder if they did any tuning of the Prologic settings for the different models that came equipped with the same HU-803 audio unit.
Or maybe we just have different (not right or wrong!) ideas of how music ought to sound.
}:---)
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You must all have very quiet cars or like loud music!
Ideally, I'd like to listen to quiet, relaxing music in the car - but I just can't hear it for all of the other noises. (And I think of my car as being much quieter than average)
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Funny thing is that you can enjoy quiet music more easily with a fairly high-powered audio system like the Volvo one because you can crank it up loud enough to overcome the noise of the car without it sounding strained and fatiguing. By contrast, our Toyota Verso is probably no noisier inside than the Volvo, but the feeble audio unit makes it very difficult to enjoy any kind of music properly because it always seems to be working so hard.
Hardest music of all to enjoy properly in a car is big orchestral works by the likes of Mahler; if you set the volume high enough for the quiet passages to be audible, the loud bits will melt your brain - which doesn't help concentration on the road. Chamber music works well - much less dynamic range to accommodate. And then there's Back in Black...
Ahem. I may be straying from the point.
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Oh, my goodness ..guys.....It's a car, not the Albert Hall !
I've often wondered if all these ' improvements ' to car radois make a lot of difference when you factor in.
Road noise
Engine noise
Wind noise
Bangs from potholes and speed humps.
Trucks and buses passing or being passed
Etc,Etc.
I have a radio, it can play cassettes. Apart from that I know nowt about it.
I'm not sure I could improve the quality of my home copied, pre WW1 John McCormack, Enrico Caruso and similar wax recordings.
Classic FM all other times except when SWMBO wants the Archers......strange woman .
Still, enjoy what you've got...I do.
Ted
Edited by Webmaster on 12/08/2009 at 01:15
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Oh my goodness ..guys.....It's a car not the Albert Hall !
I hear similar sentiments from SWMBO too.. ;)
I've often wondered if all these ' improvements ' to car radois make a lot of difference >> when you factor in. Road noise Engine noise Wind noise
Very much so. To overcome these factors you need to turn the volume up a little, and that's when you soon see the difference between an OK audio system and a great one!
IMO an average car stereo sounds just fine when the engine is off. Once on the move, most of them are just rubbish, they can't compete with the background noise at all.
Even (or even especially?) Classic FM can sound much better on the right equipment...
I think WDB makes much the same point more concisely than do I! :)
Edited by Webmaster on 12/08/2009 at 01:16
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Even (or even especially?) Classic FM can sound much better on the right equipment... I think WDB makes much the same point more concisely than do I! :)
That's the point, surely? Classic FM uses OPTIMOD, I believe, which tends to level out all the highs and lows thus making it easier to listen to in a noisy environment. However it also takes all the 'fun' out of listening to it in the home, where their music sounds too compressed and interfered with.
In a way, I wish that it were possible to have treated some of my CD collection, that I had transferred to my USB memory stick, in this way so that the quieter passages (of which there are many) were audible, when played back in the car.
I have found that some of the classical works, I had chosen, are just not suitable and so have deleted them.
Edited by oldgit on 12/08/2009 at 09:56
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>...I wish that it were possible to have treated some of my CD collection...
I think you could do this at home with something like Audacity. Haven't tried it myself, but I'm using Audacity to make CD copies of my LP collection to play in the car, and as well as simple recording and format conversion it has some options for removing noise and modifying levels. I'll have a go with some classical titles and see how well it works.
Note to mods - I know we've drifted off topic but there's some interesting and maybe even useful stuff here. Do you fancy spinning it off into a separate thread on enjoying music on the road?
}:---)
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Halfway there: Audacity does indeed have a utility called Compressor, which does exactly what we've been discussing. Seems reasonably easy to use, with the proviso that if you're compressing a multi-movement work, you have to start by concatenating all the individual .wav files into a single long one. Without this step, it boosts even an entirely quiet movement to a peak of 0dB, so the loud parts of the quiet movement will be as loud as the loudest of the loud.
Anyway, I have a CD to play on the M40 tomorrow and I'll let you know how it sounds.
Come on, mods, can we have a separate thread for this bit? Pleeeeease?
}:---)
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If you want an idea of how much variation there is between DAB, FM and Freeview (radio stations) transmissions, go to:
www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/digital_radio_samples.h...m
and listen to the audio samples...:-)
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I think you might be right WillDB. I did have the S80. IIRC the dual zone climate system was originally tuned for the S80 interior and wasn't quite as spot on with the other cars for this reason. Entirely possible the audio was the same.
I had the HU-850 with 9 speakers, that might explain the differences in experience too.
Although I would say the audio wasn't perfect in my S80 anyway, as the 2008 new shape S80 I tried with the premium audio package was superb and blew away my car in all respects. That didn't employ the Pro-logic system at all, from what I could tell.
Probably the best audio I've ever enjoyed on the move, and great seats too. Shame I couldn't afford one!
Lots of gadgets that most folks on this thread wouldn't use too. :)
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I hate any prologic crap. For music you just want simple stereo and add nothing to get in the way of the signal path.
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I bought a DAB seperate about 3 years ago for £100 as I was sick of the hiss I got from my Sony tuner. I used to have a Denon 260 MK2 but I stupidly swapped it for this brand new crappy Sony FM tuner.
However my DAB is the biggest waste of money ever, I just cannot listen to it at 128kbps, you can imagine fed into my Cambridge Azure 640A it sounds pretty damn awful!
At least the old Virgin station is in 160kbps and sounds half decent.
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