SQ Vs SPL, Whats The Difference?

What is the difference between SQ (Sound Quality) and SPL (Sound Pressure Levels) ? What is better? And what do you as a music lover prefer?

These are questions I get asked all the time and in the end of the day it all comes down to personal preference. In this blog I am going to try explain it as well as I possibly can and also give my own personal opinion on this subject!

First of all, SQ (Sound Quality) is about having clarity and fidelity while being able to hear every single frequency of the song nice and clear.

SPL (Sound Pressure Levels) on the other hand is about being loud & measuring cabin pressure in dB’s (Decibels).

The usual trade off in most cases is that you can either have an insanely loud SPL car or a beautiful sounding SQ system, it is possible to build a SQ car-audio system that will be loud but it will never be as loud as say a SPL setup.

SPL car-audio systems are built around what people call a “Burp-Box” which is a Sub-Woofer Box built to get the highest dB rating possible and usually sound absolutely horrible for music! They are designed to do a frequency “Burp” which in most cases is between 50-hz to 80-hz and in some case’s can damage Sub-Woofer’s if music is played on them.

Also there are companies that make SPL Sub-Woofers made for such “Burps” but I am yet to hear one that sounds nice on music!

SQ car-audio systems are built around having a overall equal sound without being Treble/Mid/Bass heavy and usually will take a lot longer to set-up to get everything sounding just right! SQ Sub-Woofer boxes usually will be tuned lower than an “Burp-Box” which sacrifices its total SPL output but that isn’t important here, because in the end of the day we don’t drive around playing 1 frequency “Burps” (Well I don’t) .

There are companies out there (DD Audio, JBL) that make SQ Sub-Woofers that are truly capable of doing SPL and still sound beautiful on music but this is dictated by the Amplifier, Sub-Woofer and box design!

What is better? Well, that depends on who you talk to really. I myself like to listen to my music (Even if it is loud at times) clearly and appreciate it, others like to have the loudest SPL car and I truly believe that is just for bragging rights.

What do I prefer? Well I think I’ve made it pretty clear, I will always choose SQ over SPL any day of the week but this is my opinion and preference.

Overall as I stated at the beginning it comes down to personal preference and I’m going to end this with a question…

What do you prefer? (SQ or SPL) And why do you prefer it?

Now here is Ashley ‘Mad Bass’ Burrell’s opinion on the subject!

Ashley has been building SQ boxes since 1982 and even now his concentration is still on SQ boxes, he has even said that he doesn’t understand why some people would want to “Burp” their set-ups as a “Burp” is not Music.

In the last 6 months or so he has made a few SPL boxes with multiple 150+dB results but this was more to see what entry level Sub-Woofers were capable of. All of this though has birthed Ashley’s new SQ & SPL Sound-Off Class “SOUNDS ALIVE” (Music Only Class) and as Ashley explained, its like demoing your set-up to your friends but it is a SPL microphone and the feed-back from this has been great!

I myself have entered a “SOUNDS ALIVE” event and netted a 147dB while sitting inside the truck and it seriously messes with your head so I say KUDO’s to people that claim they can sit in a car at 150+dB!

At the end of the day we all have our own preferences and ABTEC as a whole have always been about SQ, however we are willing to help anyone with there SPL needs!