The SoundQ Garage Podcast Ep 1 Ft Ryan Cotrone

Ryan Cotrone, known as "Truth Hunter" on DIYMobileAudio and the "Dirac Whisperer" to many, shares his journey from car audio enthusiast to competition winner. His 2015 Toyota Camry with a Mini DSP and Dirac Live setup demonstrates that thoughtful component selection and proper integration can outperform systems costing many times more.

• Ryan's car audio journey began with admiring Larry Chisner's ODR system in an Eldorado, focusing on sound quality rather than bass from the start
• Unlike most enthusiasts, Ryan didn't install a subwoofer until his current build, prioritizing overall sound quality
• The Toyota Camry platform offers excellent acoustics and accommodates 8-inch midbass drivers in the doors
• Ryan's infinite baffle 15-inch Acoustic Elegance subwoofer installation includes a custom fabricated ski pass to improve bass response
• Creating a ski-pass opening in the rear armrest improved bass response by 3-4dB compared to playing through the closed seats
• Mini DSP with Dirac Live provides excellent results when properly implemented, though Ryan suggests several potential improvements
• Chasing perfectly smooth RTA curves often leads to disappointing sound - measurements are tools, not the ultimate goal
• Building a system for your own listening preferences is more important than impressing judges or following trends

Join us for the next episode of SoundQ Garage where we'll continue exploring advanced car audio topics for DIY enthusiasts.

Transcript

0:19

All right, I want to welcome everybody today. This is the first ever, the official kickoff of the SoundQ Garage podcast. So, what separates this podcast from the others is this one is going to be a little more technical where we talk about sound quality car audio uh what a heavy lean towards a do it yourselfer. So the sort of like the advanced uh do-it-yourselfer. Today we have Ryan Katron. I hope I didn't butcher your last name, Ryan. Is that how you pronounce it? Yeah, that's pretty close. Okay, so some of you people might know him as Truth Hunter at Dyma, and that's uh the do-it-yourself mobile audio forum. That's I met Ryan back in 2020 during the height of COVID at a Dyma get together. Uh he's helped me countless times with Dirac and troubleshooting the mini DSP. I know he's a patient man. I bombarded him with questions myself. I know he's helped countless others too, as uh he's known as the Dirac Whisperer. He's just an overall good guy. So uh Ryan, why don't you introduce yourself to the people out there? Yeah, so my name's Ryan. I live in uh Hudson Valley, New York. I got into car audio like most of us when I was in my late teens, and uh I didn't have any money to buy anything, but I was really into, you know, I had all the manufacturers brochures that I, you know, got the mail order from that I uh car audio magazines where you would send in that you wanted more information from different manufacturers, and I would sit in my bedroom and just study those things. I read all the magazines, I drool over soundstream amplifiers. This was back in the late 90s. So I kind of lived in New York and Ohio because my parents were separated at the time. And when I live when I was in Ohio, there was a a shop in the town that I was hanging out in. One of the one of the customers at that shop was Larry Chisner. Oh, okay. And he had his he had his red El Dorado at the time. I was younger than him, and he probably saw me as a little brat kid, but one day in the Kroger parking lot. Yeah, one day in the Kroger parking lot, he let me listen to his El Dorado, and I never heard anything like that. I was completely blown away. I think he had a full ODR setup in that thing with horns and stuff like that. And so that really, really got me interested in sound quality. And uh funny thing is, you know, most people start off with putting a sub in their car, and I never even had a sub in my car until I actually built this car. Yeah, like 99% of people that's you asked them when they get interviewed, they're like, Yeah, I I wanted more bass. Right. And and that's not what impressed me about Larry's car because it was so well integrated that you really couldn't pick out the sub while for smacking you. It was the quality of the sound. Yep. So at the time I had a 92 Honda Accord, I think, and I put an Alpine tape deck in it with a CD changer, and I had Boston Acoustic Pro two-way on the front front end, and I didn't have anything in the rear. And powered the speakers through the head unit, and I used the head unit's EQ to adjust stuff by ear, and it sounded great to me at the time. So, how'd you fund how'd you fund your hub, your uh your passion at that point? I mean, you were a young guy. What were you doing? So I I I was working full-time, so I I did have a little bit of money to buy a head unit and uh a good component set at the time. And but that's all I could afford, you know. I I couldn't afford amps or any uh at the time I wanted like EQTs and stuff like that. I I could never afford any of that. So but then uh you know, I was in my early 20s. Um I got my first real job, started having lots of girlfriends here and there, and the car audio just kind of took a back seat for many years. Yeah. Until until about 2015, I got my current car. And around 2016, after I had the car for about a year, I thought, you know what? All those things that I wanted to do back when I was in my early 20s and never got a chance to, I'm gonna I'm gonna go with that now. And um at the time I had a classic Honda motorcycle that I sold to help me fund my current car, yeah, audio system. Tell everybody what your current car is. So it's uh a 2015 Toyota Camry XLE, you know, it had the uh it didn't have the JBL, but it had the premium system right below the JBL in it. Now, did you pick that car based on your audio plan? Like, did you look at the car, or did you look at the car and say, you know, I like this car because it's got a lot of room, good looking car, you know, like the typical car buyer, or did you look at it like an audio enthusiast and say, what can I stuff in here? Yeah, so really the only thing audio-wise that uh helped me with the decision was I knew I could replace the head unit. And that was like a big thing for me at the time. I wanted to be able to replace the head unit if I needed to. Yeah. Uh other than that, I was looking at uh chords, I was looking at uh the Subaru uh legacy, and I I just I got the best deal on the Toyota, so it it ended up because I I was just able to get such a great deal on it uh compared to the other two. Yeah, sounds like we got something to watch in. Yeah, other other than that, at the time there was nothing you could do with the Subaru head unit, no one made a kit for it. Uh same with the Accord, you know, that that generation Accord at the time you were just stuck with the with the factory head unit. So but the but the Camry, they did have Metra had a dash kit and you could put a double DIN if you want in if you wanted at the time. Yeah, it's ironic that the the car companies, you know, of course they don't give a hoot about the audio enthusiasts or the aftermarket for people that wanted to upgrade their cars and stuff like that. Because back in the day, before those cars came out, like let's say uh, you know, was it 2000? But by 1998, 1999, the car companies would let Metro get in there and do all their measurements and whatnot, and Metro would have a kit for that before the car was even out. You know, that that was the good old days, like we say. But it's funny that uh the car companies uh went that route where they made it basically those type of things obsolete, and the uh aftermarket companies had to get creative with their kits. Yeah, that's for sure. So you got a 2015 Toyota Camry. Did you what did you start off with? Like what what what led you? What type of research did you do to I I just thought, you know, I'm gonna get some new speakers and put a new head unit in. I started researching what would fit in there. I opened up the door. Uh I was amazed to see that you could just fit an enormous mid-base in there if you wanted. Yeah, you could fit an eight-inch, right? Yeah, yeah. So I found out from reading on the forms and stuff. I saw the JLZR 800 was very highly regarded. They were selling them on eBay brand new for $300 for a pair at the time. So I picked up a set of those. Yeah. That was actually the first piece of equipment that I bought for the car. That's dirt cheap for even back then. Yeah. That's the for eight inch, that's that's dirt cheap. Yeah, and that's one of the eight-inch drivers around, too. They had multiple listings on eBay for that price at the time. I think it was basically JL was getting ready to, you know, obsolete those, so they were getting rid of inventory. I bought a JL subwoofer one time. I know you knew you heard Garmin bought out JL, right? So that's recent news. But back in the day, uh JL was was uh regulated with who they sold their inventory to. So you when you bought in, you had to buy like at least $60,000 worth of inventory. They just didn't sell to anybody. So on top of that, they they held strong on selling their equipment at MSRP. So a lot of the uh dealers would turn around and sell the stuff on eBay, but they would cut out the serial number on the box. So I remember I got a subwoofer one time like that, and you know, I don't know if it fell out of a van. I hope not, you know, because that's that's not the type of person I am, that's not how I roll. But uh yeah, I got uh uh the uh the popular subwoofer back then. What was it, the 12W7 or the 13W6, whatever it was called, the the big boy. It again, it's funny because I knew JL was very popular for their subwoofers, highly regarded. Yeah, but like I was never that whole subwoofer thing never was appealing to me. You weren't a bass head is what you did. I knew what it I I was never a bass head, right? Yeah. I mean I I like songs with bass and it's impressive sounding and everything, but uh daily listening, I don't listen to that stuff. So you had sound cue taste right off the rip, but you you know the songs, the fundamental of music, it does get that low. So whether or not you're a bass head, uh a subwoofer is a necessary evil, wouldn't you say? Oh yeah, absolutely. It's definitely for sound cue, you need you need to have those low frequencies in there. But you know, the the design of the subwoofer made for SQ compared to a bass head type sound, I think is different, you know. So when you say sound cue subwoofer, give me an example of a sound cue subwoofer. What what type of what do you look for in a sound cue subwoofer? What what do you think makes a good sound cue subwoofer? I don't know, there's lots of things. Uh I'll just say that uh when I was younger in my 20s and I was researching all this stuff and reading all the magazines that infinite baffle really intrigued me. And I had an experience in a in a mid-90s Lexus GS that had the Nakamichi system with uh with a free air 10-inch subwoofer in the rear deck. It was a 10, maybe it was an eight. I never heard anything like that. Like it just blew my mind how clean it sounded. So that's why Infinite Baffle at the time. And Kicker made the IB series stuff, so that was like what I thought I was wanting to get into at some point. But by the time you know it rolled around when I could, that stuff was long gone. And uh doing my research, I found out that acoustic elegance was the go-to subwoofer for infinite baffle and sound quality. So that was the subwoofer I chose for my car. Uh in 2017, 2018, I think I bought it. Yep. Again, back then, you know, this is only what seven years ago, eight years ago, I paid $240 for that thing directly from AE, and it only took like four weeks to get. And total totally different story today, you know. That's because they blew up sort of, you know, everybody got word spread how good of a subwoofers they make. So now a lot of people want those subwoofers, you know. And and and out of all the changes that I've made to this system, I've never even considered changing that. It's been in the car ever since it went in. Uh, you know, I'm not a speaker driver designer or anything like that. But uh, and I've only owned really one subwoofer that I've actually used in a car my entire life. Probably not a good uh good guide to tell you what I think a sound cue subwoofer or what to look for a sound cue subwoofer. There's there's a lot of stuff you can read on the forums or Facebook or whatever. People's people's opinions, or even people who design speakers are on there will give you their Yeah, yeah, things could get heated because everybody's got a different um opinion on what they look for in a speaker. But yeah, the way I look at it, if you put that subwoofer back there, infinite baffle, you like like you said, you heard a car with infinite baffle. So if you know what it is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, you know. Yeah, exactly. And and and I think what I really like about it is just got an effortless sound. Like it doesn't sound forced like a a bass head car, you know. Yeah, it just it's just sounds musical, it doesn't sound forced, it's it just sounds natural, like you know, string bass and cello, stuff like that. It sounds real to me. Like once you go infinite baffle, you know you don't go back. I've heard that many times. Yeah, well, I I know people who have that opinion. I also know people who have gone infinite baffle and and then said they like a sealed system better. So it all depends on who you talk to and what their opinion is and their experience, you know. And to make the infinite baffle work, like in a card, that has to be sealed, everything has to be sealed really well back there, right? Uh that's what it seems to be if you read on the internet and everything. I think uh if you're if you're a base head and you like the base head sound, then I think sealing everything up as much as you can helps us helps with that. My rear deck is not completely sealed. I actually left all of the vents along the rear windshield open that are meant to equalize the pressure in the car. Yeah. Because I didn't want my HVAC system to you know struggle, or I didn't want my ears popping when I'm closing doors. So I left all of those open. There's probably, I don't know, six or eight of them back there, you know, two inches long by three inch wide slots. And I left all those open, but I sealed everything else up. And I sealed everything around the baffle really well. It depends. Infinite baffle can work. Uh, and whether you seal everything up or not is really uh I think what you're after. If you're if you're if you like bass head music and you're after the most bass, then I think that would probably be best. But I have no issue getting the the amount of volume that I need out of and and the bandwidth that I need out of uh my 15 that I use uh without sealing it up hermetically, you know. So for people who don't follow Ryan on Dyma or on Facebook or personal friends with him, like I said, I've known Ryan for about five years, five or six years since 2020, and I follow his bill log. And uh just one of the things that you did, you also fabricated a ski hole, right? Because your car didn't originally come with a ski hole. Yes. Yes, I did. I know I always felt like in the back of my head for an infinite baffle, and to get the most accurate sound, is the driver needs to be directly coupled to the listening space. And with the seats folded up, that's not the case. It's there's an impedance there that you're adding with those seats. The bass can get through it, yes. RTA, you can you can see that it's getting through, you're getting those frequencies. But how how clean, how clean is it? What's what's the impulse response look like? So I actually did a few tests with with the seatbacks up, half the seatback down, both seatbacks down, and even on RTA, you could see there's more output with the seatbacks now, which makes sense. Yeah, but I also listened to music. Um, and I can tell with the seatbacks down, it sounded more natural to me. So instead of driving around with my seatbacks down all the time, which I did probably for a year or two when I first installed that woofer, yeah, I decided to make a hole in my armrest and have have a free-flowing uh access to that woofer cone so it's not impeded by the seat as much. Yeah. And uh, you know, after I did that, I did all those tests again. And if you're if you go look on my build log, I've I've posted that that uh information on there, the RTA graphs of of those different configurations. And basically with the hole in the armrest, it's very close to having both seat backs down. Wow. It made that much of a difference, huh? Yeah, as soon as you close that armrest up, you're losing like three or four dB. Yeah. Wow, that's amazing. Yep. That's like doubling your power, basically. Pretty much, yeah. So not only and again, it's not it's it's not just an output. It's to my ears, listening to music. Uh you're getting more texture with the bass. It sounds more natural. Yeah. You just took the words out of my mouth. That's what I was gonna ask you. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Well, it's sort of like putting uh, you know, like a like a something in front of your mouth when you're talking. If you put your your hands in front of your mouth, it's gonna change the the tonality and the output. I mean, you know, so it's a given. But yeah, that's a good uh pretty much I know that you know you had to do the the labor and whatnot, but that's almost like a free upgrade if you're willing to put in the time and the effort to do that. Yeah. Oh, okay. So uh, you know, I learned as I went, I you know, as I was going through this build um and listening to stuff and and I attended some get-togethers and stuff. Yep. Um, the first the first get-together that I went to was in 2017, Ian Fisher's get together in Virginia. I met Ian and and Jason and a bunch of other guys, and they helped me out so much to really bring me up to speed on everything. But uh, yeah, so I learned as I went incrementally. I wanted to, I didn't just want, all right, let me stick a system in the car, and I'm happy. I I have I have a technical mind, I'm an engineer by trade. It interests me to push the limits, keep incrementally improving things, you know, and trying new things out to see if it if it helps or not. Yeah. So what I was saying before was um it's ironic that you made the ski hole because on previous models or previous years, the ski hole was already there. Like on uh and remember earlier how I said you and I have similar taste in cars because I've owned the Subi, I owned a Camry, and I owned an Accord, and the older models had the ski hole. So they they take things away on newer models, and it's like to save a dollar, you know, it's like, no, leave this in there. I wanted that in there. Yeah, I think probably their marketing department realized that that wasn't a real big selling point, so they could save themselves whatever, however many dollars they could save themselves by removing that, and it wouldn't really affect their bottom line of sales. Oh, of course, yeah. I mean, how many how many people open the ski hole to stick skis through it? How many people put gloves in the glove box? Yeah, that's there you go. Yeah, if they can save a dollar, think about it. They make, I don't know, how many million, 30 million cars, you know, per year. If they make 30 million, they're saving 30, 40 million dollars, probably triple that with all the you know the the labor and the parts exactly. Yeah, let's let's say that he pass costs them an extra 10 bucks. Yeah, and the prices of the cars haven't come down, they've gone up. So, you know, it's it's compounded, they're saving a lot of them. They're making a lot more money by not including that stuff. Your your first intro to sound quality was Larry's car, and then you kind of got out of it. You weren't, you know, when you so you were an enthusiast, but you put it on the back burner, and then when you got your car with the Camry, you said, I'm gonna make this a sound cue system, correct? Yeah, like that's there wasn't even a thing where I was thinking, like, oh, what kind of system do I want? I I knew that I just wanted a system that was as accurate as possible. I I installed those ZR800s in the doors. Uh initially I had a Morel Virtus uh four-inch component set that I installed on the deck in the dash, and I just basically double-sided taped the tweeters to the pillars at the time. And I I replaced that head unit with an Alpine. Um, and that was interesting because you know I was looking at the double din kits, and my car has a really large space in the dash for the radio. Yeah, and a standard double din just didn't look right. So I saw that Alpine made an eight-inch uh screen and that for the 2014 2012 to 2014 cameras, they had a Alpine made a kit to fit that eight-inch screen in your dash, and it looked excellent. Yeah, I remembered that Alpine looked really nice in your car. But they didn't make the kit for the the 2015 and up when they you know had their little update on the car. Okay. So um how'd you get it to fit? So I so I just took a standard Metra double din kit and a Dremel tool and whatever else I could find in my garage and and cut it out. There you go. To fit the heating screen, yeah. Okay, yeah. So why'd you get rid of the Alpine? I uh the Alpine was really uh really nice looking uni. So that was that was an Alpine. It was probably sold in I don't know, four twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. Uh and the reason I I changed from that was because first off, it did not play lossless music uh from a USB. Okay. Um it did have a CD player, so that was basically the best sound you could get was through a CD player, but you had to play a CD. It didn't have optical out. It did have optical out, but um again, you couldn't play lossless music unless it was a CD. And in order to use the optical out. You lost uh volume control. Oh. And a bunch of other things on that head unit. Yeah, this this is the Alpine. So the 957 was the double din unit, and the X008U was the eight-inch version. Same guts, just different screen. Um so they had their uh also you couldn't just use a standard toss link cable. They had their own proprietary cable that cost over a hundred dollars just for the cable. Really? And then again, uh you lost volume control from the head unit because it was made specifically to be used with their DSP system. Of course. Where the volume was controlled through that, you know, where there was there was uh uh a data communication between the head unit and the DSP to control the volume. So here's a fun fact when I was installing way back in the day, long, long many moons ago, um Alpine made all the uh radios for Honda and Acura. So remember when uh the CD changes were all the rave. So basically, if you wanted a CD changer, you had to go through the Honda dealer, which they would basically charge you up the wazoo for it. But a lot of people didn't know. All you had to do was go to your local car audio shop, purchase an alpine CD changer, and it would be compatible with your factory Honda uh cassette deck that you controlled from the front. Yeah. Oh, that was that was that was next level when you bought a uh a CD changer, you had six or eight CDs, and you know that was just yeah, it was awesome. And then they and then they just started putting the CD changer right in the dash. Yeah, there was no external CD changer. Yeah, it's always been a cat and mouse type game. The the uh the yeah, the OEM manufacturers have been flipping the wings of the aftermarket manufacturers, and I think that might be one of the reasons why they made those their back in the day. It used to be a standard din size, which was what two and a half by seven or something like that, and double din would be four inch by seven. So, you know, uh every manufacturer was an unwritten rule that they did that standard din deck. Uh, not really sure what year they started to just say, you know what, we're gonna put triangular shapes in here and screw you guys. Yeah, yeah. It was about the 2000s. I think it was in the 90s actually. I remember like the 90s uh Ford Tauruses had like everything was oval. Oh, yeah, yeah. Everything on the car was oval, even the radio. Yeah, I think that was their design theme because even the headlights were oval and it was just an oval-ish car all around. Yeah. Yep. But you know, the aftermarket companies would get pretty creative too, because they would make some some pretty creative uh kits to make the radios fit in there regardless. You know, so where there's a will, there's a way, you know. Yeah. So where there's money, where there's money, there's a way. Oh, of course. Yeah, it's all about the money. So at this point, so you're putting your card together. I'm gonna assume that you're looking at DSPs. Like I said earlier in the show, uh, you're known to some people in some circles as the Dirac Whisperer. Where at what point did you start looking at the mini DSP with the uh the Dirac version in your in your sound cue journey? Uh I'll tell uh yeah. Let's see. 2017, I did not have a DSP. I was just using the equalizer and delay functions in the Alpine head unit. Um and 2018, I had gone to some meets. I went to uh uh a meetup here, you know, I knew DSPs existed, I didn't understand them 100%. Yeah, I I understood like equalizers and I understood delay and what that what that was for, and I understood crossovers. Yeah, you know, an external DSP was kind of like I don't know, I was a little uh just didn't understand it or was comfortable with it. So um I actually learned how to use REW so that I could properly adjust the DSP built into the Alpine head unit first, yeah. Um and it made a tremendous difference, just what I could do with that. And so I was thinking about a DSP and I was reading about all the different brands, and uh I knew mini DSP existed. I didn't at the time Dirac wasn't a thing. I didn't even haven't even heard of Dirac yet. Yeah, so I was at a meet up here in Pennsylvania. There was a guy that had the mini DSP that he had bought, and this was the standard 8x12 V1 when they first came out. Yep. Everybody knows they had a floor noise issue. The guy was not happy with it, and at the meet, he was having it swapped out with uh a helix. Okay, and the thing was still, you know, he just installed it months before. Yeah. So I asked him, I says, Well, what do you are you gonna return this or what are you gonna do with this? He says, Oh, I'd probably just sell it. And I'm thinking, Well, let me this is I'll take it. Yeah, so basically I ended up buying it from him at that at that meet um for 280 bucks. And uh this is funny. So it would it was the V1, you know. So he sold it to me. He didn't have like the packaging and stuff, but he sent that to me later in the mail. And so I I started using that. I think it was at least a year later. You know, there was a floor noise. You can kind of manipulate it so that it wasn't as noticeable, but it was there. You weren't getting rid of it. What was it? Something to do with the grounding or uh because I know in the meaning DSP there's like three settings. Yeah, well, now there is at the time there wasn't. Oh, okay. I think it was just whatever the design and the components they used inside. I don't know. And they came out and said, you know, we we understand there's a floor noise issue. Uh we want to make it right. Uh so if you send us your serial number and your receipt or your receipt number and the serial number of the unit, we will send you a new DSP board. Free. Free of charge. Didn't even have to pay for shipping. And is that original? Yeah, so I got that original uh order number from the guy I bought it from. Wow. And I sent it, sent it over, and and I don't know, a couple weeks later, they sent me a brand new DSP board. So basically, my DSP is the original chassis from the V1, which is the same as the V2. Um, and it was just the board itself. And I I opened it up, I took a couple screws out and put the new board in, and that's the DSP I've been running ever since 2018. Wow. Um that's incredible. Not a lot of companies stand behind their products like that these days. Yeah, yeah, that had to cost them a lot. Oh, yeah, yeah. So if if people took advantage of the uh the offer. Yeah, yeah. Right, yeah. So um, so then in 2019, I started seeing Dirac mentioned on the forums by a couple of people. I had no idea what it was or how to use it. So I read as much as I could, and then they were using Dirac with like home audio mini DSP's processors, and then 2019 uh mini DSP decided to offer Dirac Live on the 8x12, and you could actually just upgrade, pay an upgrade, and they would send you the firmware revision so that it would work with Dirac Live. Yeah, and that's that's how I ended up with the mini DSP with Dirac Live. So it ended up being the original V1, then a V2, and then upgraded firmware for Dirac Live. Uh that was 2019, and you know, I've I've never felt the need to replace it since then. I've always gotten I've always been very happy with the results. With with my application, it doesn't need any you know factory integration or anything like that, which you know there's other DSPs out there that offer so much more on that end. Of course. Um obviously, obviously Helix being one of the you know the kings of that. Yeah, Helix is one of the big boys right now in that we could pretty much say Helix dominates that market at the moment. Oh, absolutely. And and uh if I needed if I needed a DSP for and I had to my application required integration, I would definitely probably have a Helix in there. Yeah. Um maybe maybe I'd put a two-channel Dirac box in front of it, I'm not sure, or behind it, or I'd figure out a way to implement it because I I really like that signature sound that Dirac did. So you've won countless competitions. I've never seen your car take less than third place. Is that is that accurate to say? Yeah, I've done pretty good in competitions. Not not always in the top three, you know. Yeah. So but I've been happy with the results. You know, it it's not just because of the DSP, it's there's so many other factors involved. Oh, of course. There's a there's a lot that goes into Yeah, so you so I don't I don't want people to think, oh, you know, you can win competitions if you get Dirac, because that's not true. No, I think the audience that we're targeting knows there's a lot more work into treating the car, uh experimenting with angles, experimenting with drivers and uh changing all drivers, going back to old drivers. This is a this is a crazy wild hobby. And and the biggest thing I think is the natural acoustics of the car. Yes. Um you know, and where where you could easily fit drivers and if they work out well, and you know what the nulls and the peaks are at your listening position. And uh, I think part of the reason why my car's done so well in competition is it's just got great acoustics. Yes, great cabin acoustics from the get-go. Yep, you know, yeah. So a lot of people don't I don't think many people, you know how we were talking about this a little while ago, that they don't take the car purchase into consideration that that type of thing. I think the hardcore people who have been in it now, like you know, they did their car and not they plan their next purchase with that in mind because I know I have oh absolutely, yeah. I work in the car market, and when I get in a car, I'm like, oh wow, this would make you know the the windshield is further back. And look at this, there's no yeah, there's no uh middle console. You know, and I'm like, you know, most people are like, oh, what kind of miles per gallon does this car get? We're over here looking at speaker locations. Like, I don't know, there's something wrong with it. If you're if you're following car audio and you're on the forums and on Facebook or whatever, um, and you're following competition, you know, you get to know which cars people talk about being really good and and people saying that have good acoustics. Yep. Um that's that's not how I got into the Camry. The only reason I chose that, you know, again was the price and I could change the head unit. I didn't know at all. You know, uh I didn't know much about cabin acoustics at all back then. Yeah. Um but now when when those questions come up on Facebook or the forum, you know, if you were gonna buy a new car, which one would it be? The Camry's always mentioned there somewhere. Yeah, you know. Uh so it's it's become known as a a good car for natural cabin acoustics right right from the get-go. Yeah, I would say the Camry and the Avalon would make a good platform. Yeah, and they're so similar. I mean, you've got the same speaker locations, you got large openings in the door for mid-base, if that's you know, if that's what you want to do. Yeah. And then and the newer camries have the nice uh JBLA pillars that you can just buy for fairly inexpensive right from the dealer that you can fit a tweeter on. So yeah, it's it's a it's an easy platform to work with. Yeah, you know, if you're if you're okay with owning a vanilla camry, you know. Well, I don't think it's vanilla, but some people might. But I've I've gone into Camries and I've been pretty, even if I wasn't into sound quality or you know, I I think they're pretty like the the TRD Camry and uh the TRD Avalon look pretty pretty cool looking. They're not gonna win any uh you know quarter mile races versus the hardcore muscle cars, but they do look right pretty sporty and they look pretty nice to me, at least to my eyes, you know. Yeah. The only thing is, you know, the the interior, the the quality of the materials in the interior just aren't the same as if you were to get an Audi or a BMW or you know, whatever other brand. So you're still driving a Camry and the quality of the materials, you know, are aren't gonna be as great as some other other vehicles. Well, I'll I'll tell you what, I you know, I'm not gonna say where I work, but I work in the car business and I see different cars every day. Like literally, I see you know, BMW, Mercedes, uh Tesla, uh Honda, Toyota, you name it, Lexus. Yeah, the luxury brands do have a little bit of nicer interiors, but believe it or not, it's not a you know, I mean, I guess if we were to take a um bottom of the line, like Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla versus, you know, uh a Mercedes Cl K or whatever, yeah, there's a there's a stark difference. But if you have like a you know, like a Honda Core, Toyota Camry or you know, like a mid-size sedan, believe it or not, the uh the the the German manufacturers, the European cars, they're they're not that much uh higher in quality. Uh I don't know if this is a a current thing, uh but I I will say this one of the cars that I'm surprised in quality, now I'm not giving it you know uh a thumbs up or anything like that, but um the Mazdas have really quality interiors. I don't know how reliable the car is, but but the interiors are are are like the the cars of the 90s. I've noticed as of recently, like 2017 and up, almost all the manufacturers are kind of um cutting, cutting trimming the fat and cutting pennies here and there on on things that they can get away with and giving you thinner carpet and less sound than any material in the car and whatever they could get away with to save a save. Yeah, they're the you know, to save a nickel, they they're gonna do it. But yeah, I would agree with the Mazda, they're they're really impressive. I've sat in a few of them. Yeah, and I've noticed that the interior is really nice. If I was looking for a new vehicle and it was gonna be an SUV, I would definitely Mazda would be at the top of my list. How does Dirac help with the tune in a car environment? Can you tell people? I know not you know, most people they they the the first TSP that they look at, because you know, a lot of people, there's a lot of forum boners, and a lot of people I I don't want to call them sheep, but a lot of people do follow what you know the latest, greatest uh internet sensation guy is using and what this guy. So I think the market with the helix is kind of pushed along by those guys, you know, and and and favored in in that way. But um mini DSP is nothing to sneeze at with the Dirac version. Can you tell people how Dirac helps? Um, anybody can go look up on uh their website and read about Dirac Live and you know what what the premise behind it and what it can do. I think there's a lot of misinformation online about Dirac. You know, people just call it AutoTune, which it it kind of is, but it it does more than that. Like it does your EQ, it does your delay. If you set it up, there's multiple ways you could set it up, but there's not just one way. Yeah, um, there's multiple ways you can get good results with it, just like there's multiple ways to use another DSV, whatever. But Dirac is more than just doing your EQ, your delays. You know, you still have to choose your crossovers, you still have to have knowledge of tuning terms and all that stuff. And and I think to get the best out of Dirac Live, you still have to have most of the understanding you would need to manually tune. So you need a basic understanding of DSPs. Yes, definitely. Yep. Um, you know, for for a new person, you know, we came up with that guide, and you can get great results with that. If you got good measurements and your install is solid, you can get really good results with that. So for people that don't know, the guide that Ryan is talking about is the uh the Dirac guide. Uh you can find that on Facebook or you can find it on the do-it-yourself mobile audio forum, also. A few of us kind of input it on that, and our friend Anu put it all together and published it. Yeah, and it's a really good guide for uh those of you out there that are thinking of getting you know the mini DSP. I I think it's called the Dirac Quick Tune Guide or something like that. That's right. Yeah, and that's exactly what it's for. It's just it's just a quick way to get a really uh really decent tune in your car. Yeah. If you're you know are not knowledgeable and you just you just want to get it and get something to listen to quickly. I don't think you there's ways to use Dirac and the other things you could do with the DSP that you can make a lot of improvements uh beyond that. Again, it it's a quick guide just to give you a quick tune to give you really good results quickly. So I know that Dirac, or not Dirac, I'm sorry, mini DSP doesn't have as many features as the Helix. If you can uh tug on the engineering on the dev team for mini DSP, what what kind of things do you wish they would add on to the next mini DSP if they make one, like the next the version three? Yeah, man, I hope I hope they're working on something. But they they don't they don't give any inklings of anything when you try to talk to them. Yeah. Uh they're very they're very tight-licked. There's a few things that I would like to see that could make a tremendous improvement. First of all, when you upgrade the 8x12 to a Dirac Live, uh you lose input EQ. That in itself would open open up the Dirac thing to a lot more audience if you if you could have that input EQ, because that would give you at least some sort of uh that would give you more integration type thing. Um like the V2, you have input EQ on each input. So uh you could integrate with a factory system with that. Now, depending on the factory system and how much wattage is, that's that's another discussion. Um, I'm just talking about the input EQ. Yeah. Um, so the one thing, and I've I've messaged them about this, you know, input EQ, because when Dirac does its thing and you want to make some adjustments, and you can make it in a target curve in Dirac, but also a quick way to do it is if you had an EQ on the source end, like either an input EQ. I use the EQ in my head unit. Yeah. To make to make some live as you go adjustments and see how it sounds. Because then you could take those changes and you can you can uh redo the Dirac curve to implement that those changes. So input key EQ is probably the biggest thing. Yeah. Um, and I wish there was more presets. I mean, I probably would never have a need for more than four, but I know other people would. There, there shouldn't be any reason why they can't offer more presets. Um it would be nice. The four, and you know, I I kind of stick to the same preset, but yeah, I could see, you know, I I wouldn't mind having a couple more. I wouldn't complain. Yeah, that's for sure. And and there's some features that Helix, you know, is trailblazing with. Like uh, I don't know what they call it, their their name for it, but basically dynamic loudness control. Oh, yeah, turn up the volume, the bass and trouble go down, you lower the volume, the base and trouble come up. Yep. And you can actually stuff like that. You can actually have like three different EQ curves. It's not just choosing one, you can actually have multiple curves for that. The other thing is so it only has eight channels of Dirac processing, even though it has 12 channels output. Yep. So a lot of people are turned off because they want to do rear fill. And if they're if they're doing the multi-channel setup, there's no real way to do rear fill unless you combine and pre-tune some drivers together into a single direct channel, and then you would have the extra Dirac channel to do rear fill. And the other thing is you have to go through it in the routing of the DSP, it has to get routed through Dirac. Somehow it's got to get routed through one of those eight channels to get to the outputs. So I wish they would make it so you can you could have your eight channels of Dirac and then just have a straight pass-through for additional channels, the other the other four additional channels. Yeah. If you needed to for some reason, whatever application. So I do know that with the Helix, it's expandable also. You have, I think they call them the heck card or something, and you can get in there and uh add things like Bluetooth and add yeah other things. Absolutely. That that would have been nice with the mini DSP if they had a some sort of slot on the side to add. Because the mid the mini DSP doesn't have Bluetooth either. No, it doesn't. I I think they they might sell a Bluetooth module, but it doesn't work with the 8x12. Yeah. Um, yeah, there's there's lots of features. If you go onto their, they have like a little support form on their website. Yeah. And you can read everybody's recommendations to them. Uh it's it's all the same stuff we're talking about. Yeah, the wish list that people have, right? Yeah. The wish list, yep. Uh the other thing is You know, mini DSP came out with a new user interface for just about all of their DSPs, except it was never made for the eight by twelve. And probably because the hardware on the eight by twelve is kind of dated now. So maybe that new that new user interface plug-in they call it, you know, they just can't do it. It would be nice if their user interface was more modern feeling. So the eight by twelve came out, the version one came out in about what 2017. What did you say? 2016, 2017, I think, yeah. Yeah, and then they came out with the version two because of the noise issue. Like 2018. Yeah, the version two came out in 2018, yep. Okay, so do you know from version one to version two, the only improvement was the the them isolating the noise, or did they put better I thought they put better uh uh a DAC chip in there. Yeah, they they I think I mean the main the main purpose was to reduce that noise, but I I'm pretty sure they in order to do that they chose some better components. Uh you know, not not only the design of it, the circuit design, but also the components themselves were improved. Yep. I don't know the specifics about any of that, but I thought I read that they they had put better DAC in there, that the the new DAC that was in there was a little bit better than the DAC. I could be wrong because I I thought I read that a long time ago. And this isn't to off-put anybody or anything like that. The mini DSP 8x12 with Dirac is a powerful little machine. Ryan has proven it. He's won I don't know how many first place, second place, third place finishes. He gets a lot of compliments on his car. A lot of people love the way his car sounds. And he's also teed off a lot of people with how good his car sounds because they have tons of money and all kinds of famous tuners tuning their cars. And here comes Ryan with his simple car and his simple mini DSP setup, and he blows them out of the water. Sometimes keeping it simple is the best way, believe it or not, you know. But um, yeah, do you have any aha moments for people out there that in this hobby, getting started with this hobby, or maybe even you know, are have been in this hobby for a long time, and that aha moment just hasn't clicked for them yet? Well, do you have any aha moments that you were like, oh, something that may have not mattered as much as you thought, or something that, you know, that made you that took your car to the next level or your experience with SoundQ to the next level? So uh I guess one of those things is I feel like when people go on there and they're and they don't know much and they start reading the forms of Facebook and people are posting their RTA graphs and everything, people start believing that in order to get good sound, you need to have the smoothest RTA you can possibly get. Yeah. And I went through that phase uh chase chasing, you know, sweat in my car for hours doing EQ work to to get it as nice looking as I could, and was so disappointed with the sound. Oh yeah. It's not it's not about that. I mean, that's that it's just a tool to use. If you look at these cars that sound really good, and I'm not gonna say cars that win competitions because not all the cars that win competitions sound that great to me. They just tick a lot of boxes that get them to points. But if you you know, if you measure a really good sounding system, it's not gonna, it's not gonna be a perfectly smooth RTA curve. So and and you know, you think uh there's people read this stuff and they think, well, if my RTA curve looks exactly like this other car that sounds so good, then my car's gonna sound exactly like that. Yeah, and that's completely false because RTA does not take into consideration uh resonances, uh they it doesn't take into consideration the time factor, uh, the decay of the sound and all that stuff. Yeah. For all those new people out there learning about DSPs and RTA, don't waste your time chasing that. We've all done it, we've all been there and we've learned, and we're we're telling you guys now, we'll save you some time if you don't do that. Yeah. Don't get don't get stuck in that rut. Yeah. Yeah, I think we all get in that that funk where you're like, why isn't this sounding good? And and I'm doing everything, you know, and and it's coming up with that correct uh RTA, and and you're like, well, what's going on here? It doesn't something's not jiving right, and then uh eventually it just clicks where you're like, okay, this is what I gotta do, because I've gotten in cars that you know people said, Oh man, you gotta hear that car, you gotta hear that car at the get-togethers. I'm too nice of a guy, and I don't tell people I think your car sounds lifeless, or I think your car is too bright or too much base. I just tell them it sounds good because if they like it, I'm happy for them. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and they might like that. They might like, you know, some people have it's just like your tongue. If I make a steak and I make it medium well or medium rare, you might not like it rare. You might like it medium well, I like it rare. It's the same steak, but it's gonna be cooked differently, seasoned differently. And you're gonna like it your way, I'm gonna like it my way. So I tell a lot of people do make the car for you. Don't make the car to impress some stranger that you're never gonna meet again, or you don't even know, and and this guy's gonna criticize your car or judge your car when if it sounds good to you, it sounds good to you, you know. I think beauty is obviously in the eye of the beholder, is true when it comes to sound as well, you know. So some people uh like a lot of bass, some people don't like a lot of bass, some people like a lot of mids or treble, whatever, whatever suits your fancy. Make the car so that it makes you happy. You're gonna you can invest all that money, you can invest all that all that time and sometimes frustration and you know, maybe a couple busted knuckles. Make it so that you enjoy it and that you get enjoyment out of it. Because there's nothing better than you're driving down the road or driving to work and and you know, it's it's like a to me, it's like my my uh that's my therapy. That's for me too. I, you know, so many times where I get to work and I just sit in the car for an extra few minutes and listen to some tracks. I'm like, oh, that sounds so. Yeah, or the track still has three minutes left and you sit in the car. I get home and I open the garage, I open the garage door and pull the car in the garage and shut it, and I'll shut the engine off and just listen to music for another five minutes. And then I get in the house and my wife's like, Where the heck were you been? I just heard the garage door like ten minutes ago. I'm like, oh, I got stuck listening to music. My girlfriend says the same thing. I'm like, hey, babe, I'm 10 minutes away. And she could see me pull up. I open the garage and I hear a song, and I'm like, you know, I like this song, I haven't heard it in a while. And I just sit in the garage and I'm in there another seven or ten minutes, and she's like, Where are you? And I'm like, I'm in the garage. She doesn't even ask anymore. But uh Ryan Oh, go ahead. No, no, go ahead. I was gonna say we're gonna wrap it up soon, but okay, yeah. So uh as far as an aha thing again, you know, the RTA, there was something else that came to mind that kind of connects to that. Yeah, and uh now I I've lost it. No, you can't do that to me, Ryan. I lost it. This that's all right. I'll think of it. I'll think of it. We'll talk about it, and maybe next time I'm on. We've been we'll save it for the next podcast. But thank you, Ryan, for your time. I know uh I know you're a busy guy, and uh hopefully we get together again and see you at the next get together. Hopefully, uh Kevin has something going on. He said he was gonna do something late summer. But um Yeah, Kevin Kevin had audio wise in uh Middletown, New York. Yep. Yeah, Middletown, New York. Weren't they in the news the other day too? Did you see that? Something happened in the in Middletown. Can't remember what it was off the top of my head. Uh you know, I met I met Kevin at a competition when he used to work down in Brooklyn Car Audio. I went to a competition down there in 2019, I think. Yeah. And that's when I first met him. And we've stayed connected ever since. And uh he's been such a big help bouncing ideas off his head and and helping me understand with fabrication and everything. Yep. Um, he's been uh he's been a great help with me too. Yeah, Kevin's an awesome guy, the type of guy he's he's just a good friend in general, even if he wasn't into audio. You can just tell Kevin's one of them good hearted people. Hopefully, I could get him on this podcast. And I know he's busy, he's mega busy, but um, he's so busy. I I just visited his shop the other day and a whole lot was full of cars. Wow, see he's going bunkers right now. Yeah, I'm glad for him. Yeah. Okay, well, thank you, Ryan. We're gonna wrap this up. Just hang on. I'm gonna uh wrap this up real quick. Everybody say thank you to Ryan.