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Am sharing some ICE tuning experiences here for general discussion. Comments are welcomed. 1. Amp gain matching not optimized to harness the full potential of the source, amp and drivers. The advent of advanced DSP today allows users more flexibility and control in sound reproduction. However, poor understanding of and the reliance on instruments to achieve balance and tonality, short of human ears to fine-tune, often leads to boring sound reproduction. In one use case, the Helix DSP source (volume) was maximised but there was utter lack of dynamics and resolution. It turned out that the gains on amplifiers were very conservatively tuned and did not match the source output. 2. Not optimizing the crossover points and the slopes to maximize the full potential of the drivers. The academic and conservative use of crossover points and slopes very often reproduce defined sound stage and neat presentation. However, such practices also generally produce less engaging music. While the overall presentation is neat, it became less realistic and doesn’t engage the listener over a period of time. Do use tech spec of the speakers as reference and in doing so, attempt to fully exploit the bandwidth in which the drivers are capable of reproducing. This allows the full potential of the sound system to be presented. 3. Generally, the presentation of soundstage in some cars is confined BETWEEN the speakers rather than OUTSIDE the speakers. This may sound normal to some of us, especially when most tuning today is geared towards achieving certain competition guidelines as benchmark. However, the overall spirit of sound reproduction becomes artificial and confined to a certain space. The goal of sound reproduction should be that of achieving as wide a sound stage as possible without losing the focus. Sound should appear to come from everywhere other than the speakers themselves. Best is that we can tune the soundstage to the extent that the speakers are “transparent”. In my opinion, soundstage should never be defined or limited by the size of the car windscreen and the depth of the car bonnet. The objective is to make your car cabin THE space in which the recording is made.