055-058 Rockford 360 DIY.indd
Transcription
055-058 Rockford 360 DIY.indd
DIY OVER THE PAST HALF A DOZEN YEARS THE HUMBLE ‘BLACK BOX’ SIGNAL PROCESSOR HAS ALL BUT DISAPPEARED AS OUTBOARD CROSSOVERS, EQUALIZERS AND OTHER SUCH TUNING DEVICES HAVE BEEN INTEGRATED INTO SOURCE UNITS AND AMPLIFIERS. BUT OUTBOARD SIGNAL PROCESSORS ARE MAKING A COMEBACK, WITH A NEW AGE TWIST. ROCKFORD FOSGATE 3SIXTY.2 RRP: $999 – CONTACT: WWW.AZTRADING.COM.AU F or a long period it made perfect sense to integrate signal processors into sources and amplifiers since this minimizes the chances of induced noise and made installation much easier. But today things have changed, and thanks to OEM sources being too difficult, flat out impossible, or just plain undesirable to remove from your car the world needs a new little black box to step in and save the day. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the coolest car audio product we’ve ever come across – the Rockford Fosgate 3Sixty.2. FEATURES The basic concept of the 3Sixty.2 (RRP $999) was for it to act as a speaker level converter to be placed after your OEM source unit and allow conversion to line level so that you could use external amplifiers in your ride. While the more basic 3Sixty.1 version (RRP $499) does exactly this, once Rockford’s engineers began exploring the possibilities of new technologies and had created a wish list of ideal features and functions the more advanced 3Sixty.2 was developed to become something altogether more useful to the sound quality aficionados. Now when it comes to factory sources we all know they have severe limitations, and even the ‘premium’ sound system options you get slugged heavily for at a car dealer are utter rubbish in realistic terms, especially when it comes to tuning the car to your liking. What real tuning power requires is excellent crossover control, comprehensive individual channel multi-band equalization, time correction for all channels, and high voltage RCA line outputs to feed to external amplifiers. The 3Sixty.2 gives you all of this and more, and then it ups the ante by allowing all of this to be tuned in real time via a Palm PC using Bluetooth. Oh yes! The 3Sixty.2 itself is actually very compact, offering a footprint about the size of a DVD case and only a few centimeters tall, so it tucks easily behind the dashboard out of sight. To connect it you have a row is neat insert terminals to feed the speaker level signals from your OEM source, then you have RCA pre outs for each channel. Inputs include front, rear, subwoofer and centre channel if your OEM source has all of these, with corresponding RCA outputs, and if your source only has one pair of inputs to work with the 3Sixty.2 will automatically sum them to provide full output from all channels. You also get a remote level controller that can either act as a master volume control or dedicated subwoofer level control depending on your preference. A key feature, however, is that you also have the option of RCA inputs for each channel, which makes the 3Sixty.2 an ideal signal processor upgrade for aftermarket system’s as well. That’s right; you can take advantage of the 3Sixty.2 with any kind of source! Reading through the options offered by the 3Sixty.2 reveals some very impressive stats. Each main output has a choice of 12 or 24dB per octave filter slopes variable from 50Hz to 10kHz in 62 steps, giving you the choice of high, low or even band pass filters for all main channels. The subwoofer output also has 12 or 24dB per octave low pass filter slopes with up to 200Hz as a cut off point. 55.0 055-058 Rockford 360 DIY.indd 55 24/10/06 12:02:29 PM DIY INSTALLATION We took our test vehicle (a new Suzuki Swift) to the Lifestyle store in Parramatta, who are an authorized RF dealer, and had them perform the installation for us as they’d already fitted a dozen of these processors before and had a Palm PC on hand for tuning duties. Note that to do any tuning on the 3Sixty.2 you’ll need a Palm PC, but models like the Zire PalmOne that Lifestyle used can be bought for as little $100 on Ebay. TUNING Anyway, the OEM source’s speaker level signals were diverted into the 3Sixty.2’s inputs and new RCAs were run to an Alpine V-Power series 4channel amplifier to power the Swift’s stock speakers in the front and rear doors. We also had Lifestyle install a new Alpine PLV-7 powered subwoofer enclosure (see review elsewhere in this issue) which sat in the hatch area to provide bass. Meanwhile, the remote level controller was mounted into a blank plug in the centre console and set for sub level control. Once completed you would never know that the 3Sixty.2 was part of the car’s installation, leaving the interior looking completely factory standard and retaining the steering wheel volume and track/station up/down controls in full function. When installing the 3Sixty.2 yourself you first need to load the Palm PC with software via a home PC or laptop using the supplied software CD. Once done the next task is to synch the Palm PC to the 3Sixty.2 and run the system through a basic calibration test using same software CD that also contains test tones. Guided by prompts on the Palm PC the test CD will run through a calibration phase that takes a few minutes to conclude, after which the 3Sixty.2 will have looked at the frequency response of the OEM source’s output and will likely have made some small corrections to ensure ruler flat response from its outputs. It also asks for a reference output level to be set from the OEM source and for you to set a small input potentiometer using some clip indicator LEDs on it case, after which you will then have the maximum unclipped output level feeding to your amplifiers. Impressively, the 3Sixty.2 is specified for 10Hz to 21kHz frequency response while providing up to 5VRMS of signal output and with 100dB of A-weighted Signal to Noise Ratio. 56.0 055-058 Rockford 360 DIY.indd 56 24/10/06 12:02:41 PM DIY to be used. Sure, the beginner is going to get a bit lost in the complexity of tuning on offer, but the 3Sixty.2 was never designed for novices to toy with. Yet it still remains completely intuitive for a first time user, and the GUI is virtually flawless. Heck, even the more basic 3Sixty.1 version without the signal processing (and no need for Palm PC) will be useful to many at just $499RRP. As an OEM upgrade device the 3Sixty.2 a revelation, and even if you don’t know what it does technically, so long as you care about great sound quality this device is going to blow you away. Importantly, even if you don’t want to integrate the 3Sixty.2 into an OEM system we reckon it will work equally as well for anyone who has an aftermarket source that lacks decent signal processing. We simply can’t overemphasize how awesome the 3Sixty.2 is for virtually anyone who wants great audio. RT FEATURES CHSAixty.2 Now the real fun begins. Via the Palm PC you have a menu through which to alter every facet of the signal processing held within. From the main menu screen you can select the tuning mode and key into any channel to vary filter slopes or cut off points in real time, then flick into equalization modes and adjust the response using any or all of the 31-bands available for the front and centre channels, 27-bands for the rear channels, or 10bands for the subwoofer channel. Relative level outputs for all channels can be set, while you get the option of setting channels independently or simultaneously to make tuning easier. All this happens in real time, and after a short moment’s pause while the changes update through Bluetooth the adjustments can be heard while you listen to music for virtually immediate audible results. Finally, pre sets allow you to store numerous curves for later recalling and even allow your professional installer to load tuning curves they’ve done on other customer’s cars if they are similar to yours. We could have spent hours playing with the 3Sixty.2 and when more time permits we will do so with the aid of our Real Time Analyzer to see what kind of results we can ultimately achieve, but all in all we came away excited by the prospects of the sheer power we were able to unleash so easily. Yet even with limited tuning time we were able to achieve a far more impressive sound quality result from the factory source and speakers than we ever thought were possible. This, of course, was aided by the fact that the speakers were now powered by a larger amplifier and the system bolstered by a subwoofer, but all of this was only possible thanks to the 3Sixty.2. Fosgate 3 Model: Rockford vel: 20VRMS le t u p in m u im x Ma level: 5VRMS t u tp u o m u im Max z se: 10Hz-21kH n o sp re cy n e u Freq Ratio: 100dB Signal to Noise : 10k Ohms Input impedance e: 12/24dB/oct. Crossover slop : AP/HP/BP/LP eps Crossover type – 10kHz 62 st z H 0 5 s: e ci n e u Crossover freq B/oct. – 35Hz 12/24d 0 2 r: e lt fi ic n Subso nt: 31-bands Graphic EQ fro ntre; 31-bands Graphic EQ ce ar: 27-bands Graphic EQ re b: 10-bands Graphic EQ su 0dB 4.25” Boost/cut: +/- 1 ): 1.75”x7.25”x D x W x (H s n o Dimensi VERDICT In a word – amazing! We were simply blown away by the sheer vastness of the Rockford Fosgate 3Sixty.2’s signal processing power and magnificent user interface via the Palm PC. It is joyous to use a device that has obviously been designed and engineered by people who actually know how such a complex device is going 58.0 055-058 Rockford 360 DIY.indd 58 24/10/06 12:02:52 PM