Background on my truck sound
It is 2004 STX regular cab and I have sound deadened the truck.
It has 4 Pioneer 6870R speakers.
Also two fairly low mounted generic tweeters.

I also have a small amp and an 8 inch woofer. This is not relevant to my problem as I can shut it off from the head units and it makes no difference to what I am experiencing.

I have been using, mostly, an MPV622 Kenwood headunit. I have been very pleased with the sound through the Pioneers, very full sound, good sound stage, a fraction low.
It sounds like the performers are sitting on my Climate Control switches. With the low mounted tweeters that is not surprising. While I would like the sound stage to be a little higher, it is not a worry to me.

I ‘upgraded’ to a Kenwood Z910DVD that I had available. The unit is almost three years old but has been seldom used in my motor home so I transferred it to my truck. The acoustics of the motor home make anything sound lousy, so I figured why waste it there?

The Z910 comes with an external amp, (no internal amp). So I wired it in, installed it and everything works as it should.

Except; the sound is ‘tiny’ unless the volume is up fairly high.
No settings I change seem to alleviate this small sound.
What I mean by small or tiny sound is hard to express. Simply put, with the 622 if you close your eyes it sounds like there is a piano, or singer, sitting in front of you. With the 910 it sounds like you are listening to a radio.

If I turn the volume up till it is uncomfortably loud, the sound quality improves dramatically.

I can swap the OEM socket back and forth between the headunits and compare them.
The 622 at comfortable volume blows the 910 away. Turn the 910 up to 20-22 (14-16 is comfortable listing) and the 910 sounds great.
So where do I go from here? I don’t want to have the music blasting, but I really want the DVD in dash and still keep good quality sound.

The 910 is a much more expensive unit that the 622, plus it has the separate Kenwood amp, so it SHOULD sound better. Or so I hope. Any useful advice from experienced stereo folk would be appreciated.

Before saying I need a bigger amp, bigger woofer, better speakers, etc. recall that with the 622, no amp, it sounds gorgeous. I am just trying to keep the sound I already had.
Chris

 

fade to the front then balance to one side listen for a moment then balance back to middle. If you lose bass or midrange one of the speakers is playing out of phase, simply swap the +&- of one speaker then do the same with the rear. The external amp may be the culprit but ints an easy fix.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, nothinbutaford. I did try that already, tried it again after I read your post. When run through only one speaker it looses quite a bit but all four sound exactly the same, mid and treble come through.


I also tried it with the 622 (dang that sounds so much better than the more expensive one) and the results were the same, allowing for the cheaper one putting more sound out.

The amp puts out more volume than I can tolerate, even on tests. There is plenty of volume, but the voices/instruments just seem smaller or farther away.

On thing on these Kenwoods they use a built in equalizer called System Q. You also have to set the speaker type. That setting throws the other settings around. Of course Kenwood never heard of Ford...
So my choices are no speakers (seems to work best) OEM, 5.25 or 6.5.
By playing with the Q settings I got it sounding what I thought was much better, then hooked up the old Kenwood for comparison.
Nope, I was just getting used to smaller sounds.

Any other ideas?
Thanks
Chris

 

How about a straight through setting ? Alpine and eclipse have both used this feature on some models, that would get rid of the eq and speaker settings. Or how about a compressed setting ? Unfortunately alot of manufactures are trying to do new things to drive up sales, and possibly cutting costs on others. A dvd setup is more expensive than a cd so some quality may be sacrificed to fit a price point. I sat through a 3 hour alpine training listening to them ramble on about 5 channel surround sound like its the latest greatest thing for a car. Your lucky to get 2 channel stereo to sound good without adding 3 more channels, and as far as 5 chan surround thats dark ages for home theater. So I know sound quality is not on everyones mind.

 

There is no straight through possibility.
The unit requires an amp. RCA outputs only.

No compressed setting that I can find. That compressed setting on a 2006 MP3 OEM Ford deck sure improved the sound quality on the one I tested.

This thing has the equalizer built in, ‘spatializer’ plus every kind of crossover setting you can imagine, etc.
This unit was next to Kenwood's top of the line in 2003, the only one more expensive was the one with the built in monitor. And it shares all the electronics and amp. This one needs a separate monitor. Can't see them shaving money on their top of the line.
And no reason to sacrifice two channel for five because to do five channel you swap out the four channel Kenwood amp for a five channel Kenwood amp (an option I never got).

Thing that bugs me is that the much lower priced Kenwood, bought the same month from the same vendor sounds so much better.
To put it in perspective, the DVD unit sounds much better than the stock CD, but not in the same league as the 622. I guess if I hadn't heard the 622 for the last year I would have thought the DVD sounded pretty good... Ironic.

Oh well, gonna try bigger wires to the speakers tomorrow, then if that does not work, gonna just put the 622 back in till it dies...
Chris

 

Sounds to me that your crossover settings are not correct.Seems that your trying to push the midrange and the treble range signal to the tweeters.Or you have the low end set for a sub @ a higher freq.then a sub needs and not directing the bass freq.to the low and mid range side.4-X crossover or 3-x crossover.Just sounds like your freq cutoffs are not set correctly.

 

No they are set correctly. I checked it upwards of a dozen times...
It’s not that hard as everything is on screen adjustable. I have tried every possible variant, just in case.

I also have inline crossovers on my tweeters and sub so even if I somehow managed to mess up the settings it wouldn't matter too much. Really, there is no way I can get mids to my tweeters, etc. And since everything goes down 6 RCA cables you can’t really send bass to the mids or any other of the usual crossover problems.

Plus, this unit has a reset button that restores it to factory settings, which I have used six or seven times on this attempt.

I even redid the wiring harness and swapped out the RCA cables for shorter ones.
No difference.

Again, I get the sounds, violins sound like violins, drums sound like drums, and if the volume is up just above where I like it, singers sound pretty good.

It still sounds better than a stock 6 CD Changer or single disk MP3 OEM that I have compared it to.
If I played music louder it would probably be fine. But I don’t, so I put the 622 back in the dash.
To heck with it.

Thanks for the input, though, all the suggestions were good ones.
Chris

 

I didn't read nearly all of this, but I'm about 90% certain of the problem.

For starters, you are comparing apples and oranges. One deck is amplifying certain frequencies, which are apparent at lower volumes, and the other is tuned to reproduce better sound quality at higher volumes.

Most high-end systems in automotive setups suffer something similar to this. Essentially, to keep everyhing "safe" you have to "de-tune" or back settings down on lower volumes, (Hence the Alpine invetion of the mX mode (ie media expander, it basically boosts all the settings so it sounds fuller and more rich at lower volumes, but if you turn the system up it will distort horribly).

Basically, what I am saying is that you need to decide how you want to listen to the radio on most occasions...loud, or reasonably quiet? Pick one and tuen it accordingly.

 

They include a 3D spatializer for that, Kenwood’s version of the media expander thing.

None of the settings made it sound full at say 10 or lower on the volume control. At 22-24 every setting sounds good, but unless you are going 75 on the freeway that much volume is too loud to enjoy.

Tried piping it through a house amplifier (big Sony receiver/amp) and it is the same, unless you crank the volume the results sound small. This is through 15 inch woofers, 8 inch mids and tweeters.
Hook the cables up to the cheaper deck and it sounds good at settings as low as 2.

You are probably right in the sense that the unit is just not designed to deliver low volume high quality sound. It sounded OK in a big noisy Motor home, and it would sound fantastic if you were into loud music in the truck.

It is also possible that in a larger truck (mine is a regular cab) with out the extra sound proofing I have added it would sound better as you would keep the volume up a lot higher.

I have gone back to the cheaper system, I like clear full sounds at lower volume.
But thanks for the suggestions.
Chris

 

This isn't advice, but food for thought.

I had a 01 ranger, and now a 98 f150, both x-cabs. Same audio parts in same locations. Ranger sounded amazing at all levels, F150 sounds like crap unless I have it LOUD. The detail is there, but the 'imaging and phasing of various frequencies is just 'wrong',I am just wondering if it is an issue with the 'width' differences of the trucks, causing standing waves/ interference/or whatever you wanna call it.

 

Try adding a 4 channel amp for the speakers, and then try both decks. That will eliminate some possibilties, and make it sound 10x better on BOTH decks.

 

^^^^ How is that going to address his problems?

 

It has a four channel amp, a factory stock Kenwood. This unit doesn’t even have speaker outputs, just a lot of RCA inputs and outputs.

I think it is something weak in the preamp, possibly a bad power transistor or a weak diode in the equalizer. I gave up and dropped it by Kenwood West Coast Service center today.
They will bug hunt it for me cheap enough that it ain't worth getting out the signal generator and spending a day or six looking for weak components.

I really appreciate all the input. All of the ideas expressed were valid, just not the problem, this time.

I am thinking that after they go through it I may or may not put it in the truck. On a regular cab I just plain don't need DVD... I was just using it to play 45 hours of music burned to a DVD –R.

Again, thanks all,
Chris