BurnPC.com

So I finally got a computer running in my car! Anyways, I’m using it to process the audio and correct for the position where I sit, phase, eq, all that stuff. It’s actually a very involved. Holly took some pictures of me yesterday sitting in the car with a laptop, a computer, mixer, mic and everything running off a UPS (the UPS helped w/ ground loop 60Hz hum).

My first impressions weren’t that great. I could tell the bass was cleaned up yet the highs sounded funky. I finally figured out that the inputs on my soundcard were swapped. So not only was the left channel coming out the right side, but it had the right-side filtering applied as well. Oops! A bit of analysis and a change to my .brutefir_config file and all is better.

I have to say I am very happy with the Opus 120W Power Supply I’m using. I have it tied to the headunit’s remote turn-on lead, so when I turn the stereo on and off in front, the computer powers up and down. It then waits 20 seconds before turning on my amps to avoid the initial ‘pop’ when the OS enables the sound card. The only complaint I have about the power supply is the wire they provided to run from the supply to the motherboard’s power pins was too short. Not a big deal, as I just hacked up an extension.

For now it works great, but of course there are many improvements and additional integration with the car that I want to do. One thing at a time right? Gotta get back to that pork loin that’s on the smoker!

Here’s a link to the before / after graphs for my left channel. Beware the 30MB file!

DRC-Graphs pdf