Sounds completely right -- try to flatten/tweak/improve things as much as you can before fiddling with equalizer. Here's what I did recently with my new install (of a bunch of lower-cost, mid-brow components):

After shoehorning my install, for the princely sum of $12 U.S., I bought an Autosound 2000 test CD with a series of test tracks (30 freqs in 10 tracks) and used it (playing with flat settings through the other head unit) with a Radio Shack sound meter to baseline the stereo. I put all the measurements in a spreadsheet so you can draw bar graphs that give a better view of the response curve. I decided early on on a head unit volume/gain setting that would register fairly high DB values on the meter but not be painful for me while I measured -- on the Kenwood, that was "20".

I replaced some "bass blocker" capacitors with lower values to bring some midbassback into the front doors, then measured again -- a bit more midbass. I then adjusted the gain for stereo channels and the subwoofer channel to smooth things out again (and measured again).

I then ripped the 10 test tracks to MP3s so that I could more easily use them in the future. I put them all in an Empeg Playlist called Test/Tones and ran through them one time to compare with the last set I measured from the CD. They were pretty darn close, so I called it good. Also, under the directory Test, I created a playlist called Test/Sampler with 8-9 favorite, representative, but very varied tunes that I can run through whenever I tweak equalizer in the future.

My last adjustment was to actually get into the equalizer and bring up 3 midbass bands by just 2 notches each. It sounds pretty good and I'm going to leave it there for a while. Doug's point is very true, make too many changes in a short period and you suggestibly feel like you are improving, but you lose track and wind up in a muddle.

For all of these tests I picked a single spot -- an isolated section of the parking lot at my marina shaded a bunch of trees with very little traffic noise. Oooh, and I just got my green faceplate from Paul and I can see my display. Drove home from the marina with the Del Fuegos "Don't Run Wild" at 11. Life/weekend is good.

Jim

Then