| Wow. The installers you talked to obviously don't understand time alignment. I've been using time alignment processors in my cars since the first one was introduced by Alpine in 1992. If fidelity is your thing, there is no other good way to get a strong center image in the 300zx without significant custom work to relocate the speakers. The problem with cars and audio is among other things, that you don't sit in the middle. take any crappy home or shelf system and roughly triangulate yourself with the speakers. You will notice that vocals and other mono information will be easily distinguished as centered between the speakers. In your car, you are roughly 1.5 feet closer to the speaker on your side than the other. In addition, you have other differences in distance between yourself and the rear and/or subwoofer(s). By delaying all the speakers other than the furthest one away so that the sound arrives at the same time you restore a strong center image. It also tightens up the bass/midbass as you have corrected for slight shifts in phase that would normally cause some cancellation. The right side bias mentioned is common because of speaker axis. The closer speaker is more than 30 degrees off axis (stock door location) which diminishes it's midrange response in your location ( mostly in the 2500-6k range, depending on the crossover point of the tweeter). Because you are much more on axis with the other door, you hear more of these frequencies from that side. In my cars I time align all speakers, and equalize each channel individually to correct for the off axis response. The only downside to time alignment is that it only works in one location. The processor I currently use has "preset" positions so I can at the push of a button switch the optimization to the other seat for a guest in the car. Many head units have built in time alignment now, but the processing chips are weak overall. I've notices that with equalization and time alignment, most of these chips "bog down" and there is a point when they start to sound worse. Alpine does have their Audyssey imprint system, but like most auto adjusting processors, it's inconsistent in it's results. I use an Audio Control RTA and do everything manually and get fantastic results every time.
I have been the factory rep for Eclipse, McIntosh, Nakamichi and now Kenwood. Have also sold Alpine and Clarion back when I was in retail. Buy whatever you like to operate, they are all about the same reliability these days. Old Eclipse CD players were the best sounding of them all, better than any of the others today, with the exception of the McIntosh, which is significantly more money. If you use amps, try to use a high voltage/low impedance preamp unit if sound is important to you.
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20:20:08 07/09/11
