There is another alternative.

Sony and Pioneer both sell sampling equalizers, complete with microphone. Some IASCA competitors use them on the pink noise track of the RTA analysis portion of the competition. The competitor places the microphone on the judge's microphone stand right next to the judge's microphone, presses some button or other, and the equalizer self-dials itself into a perfectly flat response. Takes about 30 seconds or so, I believe.

Understand, however, that if you tune your stereo to give you a flat response to a pink noise track, it will sound *terrible* when you play regular music. Don't get too carried away with this auto-equalization idea. Perfect, flat equalization doesn't sound like what the human ear is expecting to hear. Other than for esoteric competition purposes, you might be better off equalizing by ear, making it sound the way that seems best to you, rather than trying to conform to some arbitrary "ideal" of flat equalization.

Some competitors actually have their cars equipped with multiple equalizers and switch between them during competition: one for sound quality, one for RTA, and one for SPL. Others (such as myself) just make notes of the system settings that are optimal for each phase of the competition, and re-adust them as appropriate. This is a bit risky on a complex system, as it is quite easy under the pressure of competition (you have very limited time to make changes) to make mistakes, tweak the wrong band or forget to turn a Loudness switch on or off. My system is simple enough (not even an equalizer) that I can do it pretty easily. For example, to tune for SPL, I just swap the output plugs on my amps so the "big" amp (a mighty 100 watts) feeds the subwoofer, and set my head unit volume to 34. At that point I produce an incredible 112 decibels, and other competitors laugh at me because a lot of them actually *listen* to their stereos at volumes louder than that. (By the way, they stop laughing when the sound quality points are tabulated...) The judges have told me that I have the quietest car that has ever competed seriously in IASCA.

Anyway, I still think I would trust a good ear more than I would turst any automated equalization process.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"