# SQ install Tune



## grtpumpkin (Nov 25, 2016)

This is a bit long winded but I just wanted to report some install findings for anyone that may want to perform this install in the future. The original thread dates back to 2012’. I had many questions along the way and a few of them I could not find answers for. Fast forward now to 2018’.

After further study, I believe I found the answers to my questions. As far as the left and right channels of the minidsp inputs being reversed, it’s just not so. I did have to swap the left and right RCA’s for the front channels in order to achieve the proper left and right balance from my head unit. I verified this by playing track 1 of Fleetwood mac’s Rumors album, as my test tone cd does not have a channel identification track. This track starts out with the music fading into the left side briefly before the right channel kicks in. I verified this on 3 different systems for comparison. I believe the PAC-LOC unit is the culprit and is mismarked. What leads me to believe this is the Pacloc seems very cheaply made and it comes with different harnesses for multiple applications. Although the end result is good and it does perform the job. There are 2 harnesses that come with the pacloc that are interchangeable between the input and output of the unit. So depending on your configuration, swapping these harnesses from input to output changes the color position of each wire as they end up being 180 degrees when swapped. I did not think at the time to actually look at the layout of the pc board of the unit to trace this all out. I used the RCA outputs and did not even think there could be an issue as the 4 channels on the output are clearly labeled. I used my cd and test tones to check things out with the head unit and minidsp. I will say the instructions for this particular pacloc suck. The housing of the pacloc is so bad I had to grind down, on one half of the housing, a small ridge along the entire perimeter, in order to get it to stay snapped together. If you’ve ever used this LOC you know what I’m talking about. I blame all the confusion on the Pacloc. If I had to do it over again I would use the audiocontrol LC2i.

As for the tone controls on the head unit still being audible, I found the reason from the mini dsp help forum people. The mini dsp is a cumulative processor and not a meta data system. This is a bit above my understanding but the gist of it is the dsp applies it’s eq settings to what ever signal is passing through it. So if you add treble from your head unit, the dsp will still add more treble to the signal if that is what it is told to do.
Below is the response I got from the minidsp help forum about EQ-ing:

“EQ applied in a source unit and applied subsequently in a MiniDSP unit or similar is cumulative.
The audio file or perhaps more correctly, the waveform, is altered and passed on to the next unit which further alters the waveform. EQ units have no knowledge of what alteration has been applied previously, I.e. EQ filters are not stored like metadata in the audio file.”

When I originally purchased the DSP I was under the impression that it cleaned up the signal from the head unit to initially start with a clean digitized signal but apparantly I was wrong. In any case, it works just fine. 

The last issue to comment on with the DSP is that I found out I originally did not have the tune file loaded into the dsp. This is where it pays dividends to read the manual very carefully. I did not have the dsp in online mode when it was connected to my laptop via the usb port. I loaded the tune file, via the load button, into the program and got the message it was successfully loaded. Sounded simple enough but…… What needed to be done was to click the online (synchronize) button before loading the tune file. Once that was done the system came to life.

So now that I have my install up & running and almost completed, I can honestly say the SQ is amazing. I highly recommend it. 
Rich.


----------



## XtremeRevolution (Jan 19, 2012)

This has been a long project for you man. I'm glad to hear it's finally reaching completion. My apologies in my lack of availability lately.


----------

