{"id":235,"date":"2014-03-13T14:45:16","date_gmt":"2014-03-13T01:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hifihq.co.nz\/blog\/?p=235"},"modified":"2019-02-12T14:58:44","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T01:58:44","slug":"sq-vs-spl-whats-the-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hifihq.co.nz\/blog\/sq-vs-spl-whats-the-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"SQ Vs SPL, Whats The Difference?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is the difference between SQ (Sound Quality)<\/strong> and SPL (Sound Pressure Levels)<\/strong> ? What is better? And what do you as a music lover prefer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are questions I get asked all the time and in the end of the day it all comes down to personal\u00a0preference. 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!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

SPL (Sound Pressure Levels)<\/strong> on the other hand is about being loud & measuring cabin pressure in dB\u2019s (Decibels)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

SPL<\/strong> car-audio systems are built around what people call a \u201cBurp-Box\u201d<\/strong> which is a Sub-Woofer Box built to get the highest dB<\/strong> rating possible and usually sound absolutely horrible for music! They are designed to do a frequency \u201cBurp\u201d<\/strong> which in most cases is between 50-hz to 80-hz and in some case\u2019s can damage Sub-Woofer\u2019s if music is played on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also there are companies that make SPL Sub-Woofers<\/strong> made for such \u201cBurps\u201d<\/strong> but I am yet to hear one that sounds nice on music!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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SQ<\/strong> 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<\/strong> usually will be tuned lower than an \u201cBurp-Box\u201d<\/strong> which sacrifices its total SPL<\/strong> output but that isn\u2019t important here, because in the end of the day we don\u2019t drive around playing 1 frequency \u201cBurps\u201d<\/strong> (Well I don\u2019t) .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are companies out there (DD Audio, JBL)<\/strong> that make SQ Sub-Woofers<\/strong> that are truly\u00a0capable of doing SPL<\/strong> and still sound beautiful on music but this is dictated by the Amplifier, Sub-Woofer and box design!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What is better?<\/strong> 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<\/strong> car and I truly believe that is just for bragging rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do I prefer?<\/strong> Well I think I\u2019ve made it pretty clear, I will always choose SQ<\/strong> over SPL<\/strong> any day of the week but this is my opinion and preference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall as I stated at the beginning it comes down to personal preference and I\u2019m going to end this with a question\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you prefer? (SQ or SPL) And why do you prefer it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now here is Ashley \u2018Mad Bass\u2019 Burrell\u2019s<\/strong> opinion on the subject!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ashley<\/strong> has been building SQ boxes<\/strong> since 1982 and even now his concentration is still on SQ boxes<\/strong>, he has even said that he doesn\u2019t understand why some people would want to \u201cBurp\u201d<\/strong> their set-ups as a \u201cBurp\u201d<\/strong> is not Music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the last 6 months or so he has made a few SPL<\/strong> boxes with\u00a0multiple 150+dB<\/strong> results\u00a0but this was more to see what entry level Sub-Woofers were capable of. All of this though has birthed Ashley\u2019s new SQ & SPL<\/strong> Sound-Off Class \u201cSOUNDS ALIVE\u201d<\/a> (Music Only Class)\u00a0<\/strong>and as Ashley<\/strong> explained, its like demoing your set-up to your friends but it is a SPL<\/strong> microphone and the feed-back from this has been great!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I myself have entered a \u201cSOUNDS ALIVE\u201d<\/strong> event and netted a 147dB<\/strong> while sitting inside the truck and it seriously messes with your head so I say KUDO\u2019s<\/strong> to people that claim they can sit in a car at 150+dB<\/strong>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the day we all have our own preferences and ABTEC<\/a><\/strong> as a whole have always been about SQ<\/strong>, however we are willing to help anyone with there SPL<\/strong> needs! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0preference. In this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech-talk"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254,"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions\/254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}