Improve XM roady xt sound quality - how to do it?

[jbh]

I have big ear in ear headphones. They sound great hooked up to my Ipod. I just activated a XM roady XT that I used to use for a car. I plugged in the earphones to the XT directly with an inline volume control. The sound is very flat, not much bass at all (it was like this in the car when I used it but you could adjust the bass/treble in the car). The roady does not have a way to adjust the bass/treble output. It does have an FM modulater and I tried to use a few MP3 players I have that have FM radio to get better sound. The MP3's players have the ability to adjust bass/treble but for some reason it only works for music you have on the player, not the radio function.

Does anyone have a solution that is not too much $$ to get better base response from this XM unit?

 

[tcfjr]

Here's a $20 inline equalizer that may do the trick:

Koss EQ50 3-Band Stereo Equalizer

From the blurb:

* 10dB boost or cut per channel

* Unity gain amplifier limits power output to conserve battery power from the source

* Ideal for use with laptops or portable DVD & MP3 players

* Pocket-size for easy travel and portability

* Requires 2 AAA batteries (not included) for 20-30 hours of usage

 

[madmike2]

AND....you are going to be limited to what your earphones can deliver fighting the ambient wind noise.

 

[jbh]

I picked up a boosteroo today at radioshack. It does sound better when sitting still. When moving it is a little better (fuller sound) than without. I think this will work for me for now.

If I use my calsci shield it is pretty quiet, the stock and yamaha tall have some noise but I can still here the music, it just has helmet noise mixed in with it.

 

[Kieth]

The bass response on in helmet speakers is never going to be great, the drivers cannot reproduce a bass tone due to the size of the driver, the wind noise you hear on a bike is a bass tone so it has a tendency to overpower the bass response from your headsets. I have ordered the koss equalizer that someone else mentioned and am going to try it in conjunction with a set of custom ear mold speakers. Will let you know how that works.

I am a Autocom, mixit, amplirider, dealer, build a lot of custom systems, one really important thing is the location of the speakers in relation to the center of your ear. I recently discovered just how much this location can vary person to person. I have completely changed the way I position speakers in a helmet. It gets a little complicated, but to simplyfy it, take the speakers out of your helmet, remove the cheek pads, now put the helmet on, locate the center of one ear at a time, use a finger to mark the spot(on the inside), remove the helmet and mark on the inside of the helmet where the center of your ear is with a magic marker, do it on the other side the same way. Then I remove plastic and styrofoam from the helmet to a max depth, i.e. where the speakers are even with the inside of the helmet and do not intrude on your ear. Then using foam speaker spacers space the speakers back out to where they touch the ear but do not hurt. Now you should have increased volume from the speakers, and improved response over the entire frequency range. If your music source sounds bad, lower the initial volume level of the source and add a good amp for increased performance. (in effect you are looking at the roady or mp3 player as a pre amp, and the added amp as the real power from a clean source) (adding a equalizer to a clean source may help somewhat) hope this helps you. Kieth in Tulsa

Oh call me to find out how you remove the material in the helmet.........918-446-2245

I picked up a boosteroo today at radioshack. It does sound better when sitting still. When moving it is a little better (fuller sound) than without. I think this will work for me for now.
If I use my calsci shield it is pretty quiet, the stock and yamaha tall have some noise but I can still here the music, it just has helmet noise mixed in with it.

 

[Big-B]

I picked up a boosteroo today at radioshack. It does sound better when sitting still. When moving it is a little better (fuller sound) than without. I think this will work for me for now.
If I use my calsci shield it is pretty quiet, the stock and yamaha tall have some noise but I can still here the music, it just has helmet noise mixed in with it.

After I saw your post I went out and bought a Boosteroo from Radio Shack as well. Works great. :yahoo: :yahoo:

Didn't think about Radio Shack when I was looking for an amp for my ear buds. Just wasn't enough volume coming out of the Sirius radio..