Norcross

Read your posts - you respect no one. You would appear to be more interested in trying to impress people with your drivel which few understand and even fewer care about. The original OP was inquiring as to how many shared his view. Clearly, there are many. However, you repeatedly choose to spout your 'facts' thinking somehow that will make people suddenly have a revelation, discount their own ears as evidently being ignorant because clearly Bose simply makes better performing stuff. After all, you can prove it!

As I said, you only hear what you choose to hear. You would rather discount the masses who collectively hate Bose simply because, according to you, the Bose product is superior. I have news for you - People hate Bose because they sound like garbage to them. End of story. You trying to convince them otherwise is as pointless as me trying to make you understand your opinion doesn't matter any more than mine does.Throngs of people hate Bose. I am one of them. You arent. So what.

SBC_and_a_stick

Well facts matter.

I can show evidence that Bose actually does engineer something that other OEMs do not. Maybe you don't find it impressive that something as crucial as linear output is very well done in the Bose.

I can also show evidence that JL and DYN are not very innovative and that given the same constraints imposed by GM it's not likely that they'll come up with something better. I can also show you that the Bose has some very attractive performance characteristics that can trump a Dyn or JL.

Then I showed evidence that there really is some neat technology out there that can make for a true premium setup in the Corvette or a car in general.

Brilliant engineering ideas die everyday because of management neglect and buying by brand consumers. I merely argued that as a car buyer picking one top name (Bose) to bash in favor of another (JL) might net very little improvement. If GM is listening then I would say let's give them some good advice.

Norcross

What about SUBJECTIVE do you not understand? Do you actually believe your 'facts' are going to make a difference in what I hear when listening to Bose versus DynAudio? And frankly, if you were correct, there would not be so many people who hate Bose and conversely would rate JL, DynAudio or focal as a substantially better product. You seem to relate to the empirical. Do a few searches on "I hate Bose" and see the masses who think this. Stop trying to convince people they are wrong to hate Bose and prefer these other brands because you have proof Bose is better. I'll say it one more time - it's SUBJECTIVE! And all the proof you want to provide isnt going to change what I hear nor anyone else.
I'm done with you -

SBC_and_a_stick

Here is a leading source of research and tool development into speaker design and performance evaluation:
http://www.klippel.de/
They make a $20,000 machine that spits out a whole series of parameters that sum up speaker performance. I interpreted the one that puts most of them together for some of the brands mentioned. You can call it a speaker dyno if that makes it easier.

Here is JL Audio's representative posting some in house tests using this exact same machine to showcase their new slim woofers:
http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum/1464710-post45.html

If you don't believe in it because it was posted on a forum, here is Alpine posting the same Klippel testing on their own shallow subwoofers:
http://www.alpine-usa.com/product/view/swr-t12/

"These two graphs are from the industry standard measuring system, Klippel which illustrates the excursion of the subwoofer both relative to the strength of the magnet system, and the stiffness and linearity of the suspension."

The problem with subjective assessments of objective material:
https://www.google.com/search?source....1.gf5IvRRW2f8

SCM_Crash

Wow... What a weird conversation.

SBC offers facts, and Nor talks about opinion.

One thing you can never have is a mix of opinion and fact when talking about the exact same concept or subject.

I've heard lots of bad stuff about Bose from people who are total audiophiles. But what is the one thing all audiophiles do that people like me (non-audiophiles) do? They rip out the old audio system and put in something else.

The thing here that matters is that when you put in a completely different system, you alter the dynamics of the car's previous constraints. Adding a sub box, kick panels, etc... Now I don't know very much about audio at all, especially when compared to the obvious technical knowledge SBC has shown, but I know that when you add stuff to the car and change the dimensions or space/power constraints of the original car's audio system, you leave yourself more room to build a better audio system.

That being said, adding a sub box uses up room that GM would rather leave to people like me who like some truck space. Adding amps, again, uses up room that people like me would want for trunk space. Even putting the amps behind the seats would cause safety issues that GM wouldn't be OK with. When you alter the car to suit better audio needs, and you ask yourself why <car manufacturer> didn't make the sound system like this stock, keep in mind that the majority of car buyers DON'T alter their sound system and they AREN'T audiophiles.

It's easy to rag on GM for not putting in the $10K audio system you would put in the car, but I'd rather not pay extra for a sound system I couldn't appreciate, let alone adds weight and cost to a car I plan to buy for performance. I don't need 1000+ watts of sound, nor does the average Corvette owner who is in their 40s or 50s.

SBC is offering real-world ideas that may produce a better sound reproduction at a smaller cost than even having the Bose system. But you're giving him crap for it, even though what he's saying may be true. If you oppose what he's saying, give us (and I say "us" because I'm interested in this conversation as well) reasoning for it. Being that I hardly know what I'm talking about in the technical aspect of car audio, it would be easy for me to throw brand names out saying they're better because the price tag on them is higher. After all, the theory is you get what you pay for, right?

Back to my point, SBC is offering a technical and factual point to what GM could do as an alternative that wouldn't break the bank and wouldn't mean the Corvette is going to cost more for a better audio system. I'm not quite sure why anyone would argue that's a bad thing. My only objection to SBC's solution is that the speakers would come from China. I personally like to buy all-American, but that doesn't mean he's wrong.

Nor, please, offer up some details. Subjective or factual, I'd like to know how you'd redo the Corvette's audio system in more detail. And let me know what this would end up costing me, the guy that hardly notices the difference between systems since I don't blast music that loud.

SBC_and_a_stick

You mention one of the big points I was trying to drive home, big amplifiers and MDF sub boxes are not something you will easily see in an OEM vehicle. Consider what GM would do to make them stock items:

*First with killowatts of draw you have to beef up the alternator.
*Then that big fat wire has to go through a firewall proper, and once it does it has to be insulated. Proper care has to be give so that wires are run together, there is little radiated noise in places etc
*The amplifier needs to be grounded oem style, which means you can't just tack on to any screw you see, scratch the paint and bolt to it.
*An EE will have to make sure ground loop noise is not introduced at this point and that proper conductivity is ensured. This may mean beefing up the ground points throughout the engine bay.
*The sub box will have to be made out of a better material
*Both the box and the amp have to be secured well, and placed for proper weight distribution.
*A composite $$$ box will have to be specified because let's face it, it's a Corvette.
*All materials have to match interior materials

These are all things on top of a properly done midbass and tweeter in doors!! Even if you start up with $10 speakers, which is not uncommon, the rest of the install costs $$ and has to be coordinated with other electricals, panel designers, and so on.


Compare this to what Bose has done, they made use of the large surface area of the car door (but rather small depth) to fit a large driver + mid. Big sound, no interior intrussion, very light.

Pros:
Large drivers are great, larger cones mean air moves way more effectively with 1W, higher sensitivity especially for bass frequencies.

The problem is depth, and this where I think the design can be improved greatly. Bose now inverts the motor so that it rests in the concave portion of the cone. Much better than standard approaches like a full basket 10" Dynaudio, which won't fit.

Then I assume either with Klippel or a Dumax they optimize that motor and suspension so that per mm of cone movement all parameters remain very linear.

So what are the problems?

Cons:
Well, the motor takes up a small part of the cone so you lose some surface area.

Then, the woofer still uses a spider and while it takes up little room it still takes up some.

We can improve the Bose design by not having the motor pierce the cone, and increasing displacement of the cone overall by deleting the spider.

There are two designs on the market that can get more cone movement per inch of depth. One is designed by Alpine:
Motor goes through a reinforced but now chopped up spider:

,and the other by Tympany where the spider is replaced with some pleated material:

Japan and Denmark OEM buildhouses, sorry no U.S. company in on this.

What they do is virtually identical in result but different in approach, they both eliminate the space the spider would normally take and free up the room for more stroke. Secondly they create a cone that is optimized to be flat, which is harder than it sounds because flat cones sound horrible usually. Here is the usual spider that is ribbed, so when elminated is frees up a lot of room:




If you want an American company to do the job I'd say pick JBL, they design everything from HI FI, to Pro Audio. They also make the best 6.5" American speaker ever tested as far as I can tell, the 660 GTI:



Notice how they implemented waveguides on the tweeters, very cool!

ajrubincpa

Maybe I am the only one who feels this way, but as long as the Corvette remains noisy without any noise insulation, no car stereo will sound that great. I ended up putting in a lot of Dynamat insulation in the firewall, interior and trunk to reduce the noise and heat. My car stereo sounds great, but I also upgraded that to Eclipse. Obviously, I am not concerned about listening to my exhaust like some are. I don't think GM will ever understand the concept of providing upgraded stereo options to compete with the likes of Mercedes, BMW, Audi or even Ford. They always seem to be behind the eight ball.

SCM_Crash

I think GM isn't trying to compete with more costly cars as far as audio goes. They've provided reasonable audio in a budget performance car. A Corvette was never designed to be a boombox on wheels. It was designed to be a nimble track car that can show the exotics you can have exotic performance without the exotic price.

I personally like the sound of the car when I'm in that mood. But most of the time I don't like it loud in the cab; radio or exhaust. I like to have conversations with my passenger. Road noise, exhaust noise and radio just make me have to talk louder which eventually hurts my throat. I have very good hearing and I'd like to keep it that way. For the most part, my bone stock BOSE radio in my C5 hasn't gotten blasted other than one time by best friend blasted it for all of 3 seconds before I turned it down. (Ewww, buzz kill!)

That being said, I think GM will actually deliver in the audio department this time. I think they've gotten so much flak that they're going to at least have a considerable improvement in sound. Keeks said they'd worked out a 9 speaker sound system including a "large sub" in the trunk. I'll be curious to see how they made that happen. Interestingly enough, the large sub they put in the Solstice was actually pretty good and hit pretty hard. They put a 10" sub behind the passenger seat and it sounded pretty decent. It wouldn't surprise me if GM used another 10" sub.

racebum

this is the conclusion i kept coming to. the c6 is an improvement over c5 audio though. when you look around the interior i think a lot of folks would be happier with a few hundred more in the seats than anything else.

SBC makes a good argument on why we don't see bigger systems stock. still, it there could be an optional package but then again that's more manf time assembling the car. guy reminds me of two people i grew up next to. one of them wrote the loud speaker design cookbook. the other was an engineer at phoenix gold. learned a lot from those guys about audio and loudspeaker design

SBC_and_a_stick

Vance Dickason? Wow, I would be at his door everyday if he was my neighbor. I'm probably not exaggerating if I said he has the most experience testing speakers out of anybody out there. He writes the main publication for the industry, Voice Coil Magazine. Car audio magazines are crap by comparison, but the few times he wrote an article for Car Audio they were amazing!

I would like to say JBL should make the next premium C7 system. In reality, even if they get employed they don't have the designs to make a credible improvement over the Bose without increasing weight. My .02 would be to not only employ Tympany but force them to use either the FLT or LAT technologies. They are a huge OEM company, a lot of the stuff that you may think it's American is engineered by Tympany in Denmark and produced in China. Say for example the tweeter in the top of the line POLK speaker set (signature reference) is a Vifa ring radiator, which in turn is a company under Tympany:
http://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com...iator-tweeter/

The JL Audio top of the line tweeter in the zr and xr were also contracted out, but this time to LPG in Germany:
http://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com...e-car-tweeter/

Note how cheap they are. I say cut the middle person and demand the proper design for a car application. Not only is it cheap, but it will sound best given any constraints.

racebum

vance is a really mellow guy, his friend, glenn phillips ran a store called the speaker clinic and later engineered for phoenix gold back when they were dominating car audio.

i still have some home audio speakers vance designed for me when i was 14. pair of vifa 6.5" cones with 1" soft domes. sound great and i probably still have the papers for the crossover design and impedance correction. he did some really wild sh^t to flatten the impedance spikes as frequency changed.

i ran into those two as a teenager who was building a giant system for my car. this was back 1993-1994 in the early golden age of car audio. wound up using 12 eminence 8" subs and a slew of peerless mids and tweets loaded up in a geo metro driven with a pair of phoenix ms2125's and 2 zapco z150s on the highs, even those were modded with 100,000uf of capacitor on the output stage. system literally overwhelmed the power delivery capability of the car in a few minutes. it would drain the battery and kill the alternator...i don't even know how many alternators i went though with that poor car.

i do remember going this way after bench testing those early kicker 12's they needed something insane like 10 cubic feet to hit under 30hz on paper. most the early car subs were giant mid bass drivers if memory serves. so, with the generic eminence subs i wound up with a system that would not only blur your vision going down the road it would straight leave you stranded if you blasted on it too long. remember push starting that car many times.

webdzynes

Very Good points Crash - I cant speak for Norcross but I do understand his argument. The issue I feel he was trying to point out was that regardless of whatever data there may be which support SBC's technical opinions, the facts also support that there are hordes of people who hate BOSE. Why is that? One can assume its because these same people dont like the sound they hear and prefer what they ultimately change to. SBC seems determined to make the argument that regardless of what all these people think, the BOSE product is, and remains, better. I attempted, as did Norcross, to explain that we all form an opinion based on what we like or dont like. ON my side, there are those that DONT like Bose. On SBC's side, there are those that Do like Bose - or at least should. Both sides are correct to feel as they do. Hence my original post, remains the key point: is it too late for an upgrade OPTION? In other words, a simple second choice alternative for those that want it. Nothing more, nothing less. In my case, JL Audio makes a great sub which sits on the side and takes up almost no additional room. I replaced the speakers with Dynaudio which took up no additional room. I did add 2 amps which did take up room which for me was a non-issue as nothing was compromised for my needs (i.e. golf clubs, luggage, etc). So ultimately it comes down to personal preference - as is everything with our cars. My hope was to gather enough interest - if in fact there is enough interest - to warrant a second stereo consideration. Speaking ONLY for myself, I think Bose is terrible compared to a variety of alternatives. I just wish some of those alternatives would be made available by GM without us having to void our warranties by swapping out what they provide. Thank you for your perspective and good points.

SBC_and_a_stick

Guys do get mellow turning ***** and listening to Diana Krall all day.

That was the golden age of car audio, especially for the SPL crowd. A lot has changed, and 90% is the conversion to digital audio format, processing, and so forth. Still, I'm not quite sure how car audio went so down the drain in the last decade, but then again, it's not like I was bumping in the 90s.

SCM_Crash

I'm not 100% sure SBC is trying to make the point that Bose is better. I think the point he's trying to make is that given the space, weight and power constraints, Bose is doing a good job of producing the best quality sound you can given the hurtles. I also think he's trying to make the point that since Bose has a lot of experience with the components for the Corvette that they would ultimately be the best choice.

As for others that hate the sound of Bose, I won't argue that at all since I do know a lot of people don't like the Bose system. But I think if you label it with any brand, they won't like it. I don't think it has anything to do with what Bose as done with the sound system, but it has everything to do with the fact that the Corvette wasn't designed around the cabin's audio performance where many other cars have that luxury. The Corvette was designed with performance in mind. That would likely mean that once GM engineers figured out how the car would look on the exterior and what power and weight goals they had to meet, it was up to the interior designers to work with the scraps of what was left to them.

That being said, the engineers probably never leave the interior engineers and sound system designers much room to work with in the first place. So even if all of the greatest most expensive OEMs came together to work on the sound system of the Vette, it would never be quite as good as it COULD be if they didn't have the constraints you remove when you put in a custom sound system.

I don't blame Bose at all for that.

AFVETTE

How much are you willing to spend for a factory system that no matter how good it is some folks will still bitch about it. I say buy the base audio system and design your own Frankenstien Audio System and then and ONLY THEN will you be happy.

BlueOx

The speaker I want to work best in my Corvette is the one on my radar detector!

I find it hard to believe any Corvette owner would bother to waste their time and money to rip and replace a sound system when it is a Corvette they are driving. The noise levels in a C6 Corvette are still way above any basic car I've owned so I fail to see what gain you are really getting out of it. But then, I've never been accused of being an 'audiophile'.

But hey, it's your money, so go for it.

webdzynes

@SCM - I guess we will have to agree to disagree. Regardless of what SBC is or is not trying to do, your last point summarizes the intent of the thread. Nobody is arguing anything about constraints or where the priorities lye with respect to designing a stereo around the vette. All that certainly does exist. So given that, the thread comes back around to your point: "... it would never be quite as good as it COULD be if they didn't have the constraints you remove when you put in a custom sound system." EXACTLY! So lets do that as an upgrade option!

The focus of the entire thread - is a second stereo option which does, within reasonable consensus, exactly that. Yes, it may take up some trunk space; Yes, it may add weight; Yes, some of the ergonomics may be altered, etc. For some, at least for me, thats all absolutely okay and hence why its an option.
I dont blame Bose. I simply dont care about Bose. In the end, for purposes of this discussion, its all about obtaining the preferred sound within the vette. Any of us on here would agree we all like what we like or dislike what we dislike. Understanding all the technicalities behind what we dislike isnt going to alter the sound we hear. If we didnt like it to begin with, we're not going to like it afterwords simply because we know more about the specs. That's why those arguments are irrelevant here. Like they say, there is strength in numbers and nobody needs to look far to find a discussion slamming the Bose audio system in the vette. So since there (evidently) IS enough dissatisfaction such that enthusiasts swap out the Bose for something else, then why not provide such an option to begin with?

69L79

Way more into the sounds of the Car/driving the Car than I am into the stereo system. The sound system in my 3LT is good enough for what my audio needs are.

crabman

The saying with Rolex is you pay for the brand and they throw the watch in for free. This is kind of how I view Bose. As to the stereo in the vette, I prefer to listen to the motor when I'm driving but with that said once I'm on the freeway and just along for the ride I want to crank the stereo. And I want it to sound good, don't care who makes it.

rcallen484

The standard, non-Bose system cranks pretty good