Just to share my most recent discovery brought over from home audio diy projects.
You can actually clean up the car's power supply with a small upgrade!, For some reason this little tweak gave me more positive result with ICE than with home audio!
Perhaps it's just to show our ICE 12V power supply from the car is very polluted!
Here's what you need to do.
Go buy your self some 0.01uf/50V (can also be 63V)film caps. I had some 0.01uf/50V left overs from my home audio projects and decided to try them in the car audio. Here's how it's done.
You'll have to attach one leg of the cap to the 12V+ supply from battery and attach the other remaining leg to the gnd of you component. Yes, you are effectively shorting your 12V+ to your ground via the use of the film cap. The cap acts like a filter shunt to ground. As the cap is not polarity sensitive, it can be done in any direction.
I installed one film cap each for HU, Tube Pre amp, and each of my two power amps.
The sonic results?
In my well already tuned ride, i got everything snap in to focus! The highs were more extended and airy, the mids more body and the bass better controlled, it even went lower by a frequency or two more distinctly too. However, a quick retune by lowering my treble gain on my e-x over and deleying the tweeters by another milisec brought the whole sound stage alive!
I play Patti Austin Live!, an R&B concert and in my car, I was tranformed in to the concert hall!
For once in the last 18 months or so, I could sit in the car, finish a song, before willingly step out of the car once arrived home! It's that addictive!
Total cost? Possibly RM$10.00 for the 4 pcs film caps
Another RM$50.00 for my dear installer to cari makan a bit, because I too lazy to pry open dash and lift up my 2 seats! However, this part, you can save if you can diy!
Good Luck!
Note: as with usual diy tweaks caveat, I cannot be held responsible if you unfortunately burn your stuff during the diy work or if your installer not skill competent enough!
