AI tuned my Mobridge!

[hilmerdm]

I’ve had my Mobridge DSP in my 2023 Wildtrack for a couple years now and while I love it, never been thrilled with my tune, and in fact almost preferred the sound in the Tuson I bought last year. I tried earlier to do the self-tune with the REW software but just never had the time to truely devote to it. So, figured I’d try AI since it seems it can do everything nowadays. After asking a few questions and messing around, including adding my specific speaker set up uploading EQ screenshots etc., I finally wound up uploading my entire .rax file and it was able to read and recode the entire file- even putting tunes in the respective profile! Claude was the best at it, but Grok now has the best tune for my ears so far, and all I have to do is ask to adjust!

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[jabrax]

That sounds interesting. Im an AI newb, however can handle a some tech as an old timer. How do you do something like this? I would give it shot

 

[jabrax]

Are you using the release from 08/24 (mac) or 08/25 (windows)?

 

[hilmerdm]

Using Mac. I just asked Claude if it could help…told it my configuration and what was trying to achieve sound wise (fuller bass, less noisy treble) - and I was able upload my .rax file. It then was able to open it and even assign the revised tune to a specific profile/tune 1-4. I then actually took the same file over to Grok and had it do the same thing but assigned it to a different tune! Comparing the 2 Grok won, but it was improving on the tune Claude gave me. I did start with ChatGPT first but it never took me down the road of uploading the .rax file like Claude did. I’ll try the same thing again with ChatGPT with the correct prompts now.

 

[Squatch]

Did you use a calibrated mic at all or was it all self-tune, then AI fixed it?

 

[hilmerdm]

I tried the mic with REW but never really dug into it. Used a tune for my speaker setup provided by Fraiser and modified a bit. AI improved on that.

 

[Ape Factory]

If you still have the dialogue, it might be helpful to some of the AI newbies if you copied/pasted your prompts so they know how to approach it. Great idea though, going to give it a try myself!

 

[hilmerdm]

Sure thing! Here’s some of my initial dialogue:

Prompt:
I have a mobridge dsp A2b amp/dsp in my ford bronco with hertz speakers and a tailgate subwoofer. Can you help with the dsp settings for more bass, bigger punch and less noisy trebel?

Reply:
Happy to help dial this in. A few things will shape the actual settings, so let me ask before throwing numbers at you.

—-Then I put in my speakers setup and configuration and uploaded the .rax file.

Reply:


It’s actually XML under the hood — readable. Let me dig in.

I can read this cleanly. Let me extract the full per-channel config — crossovers, gains, EQ, and time alignment — and build a complete picture.


This confirms the input/output routing layer. Now let me find where the actual per-channel DSP processing (crossovers, EQ, time alignment, gain) lives — that’ll be deeper in the structure.


Found it — there are multiple <profile> blocks (presets), each with <speaker> sections containing <filter>, <eq>, and <timealign> data. Let me find which profile is the active/current one and extract it cleanly with a proper script.


Wait, those input/output <profile> blocks are different from the DSP <profile> blocks with speaker/eq/filter data. Let me check the actual structure with proper XML parsing instead of grep, since indices are getting confusing.


Now it’s clear. The root Project has profile="1" as the active profile attribute, and there are 4 top-level DSP profiles (presets, id 0-3) outside the inputs block. Let’s confirm and dig into profile 1 (the active one) in full.


This matches your screenshots showing “Preset 2” and “Preset 3” — confirming the software is 1-indexed for display (Preset 2 shown = profile id 1 internally, etc.) or similar offset. Let me extract full detail for every profile so we can identify which matches your screenshots and compare cleanly.


This matches your screenshots exactly — timealign values (4.43, 3.35, 3.39, 2.47, 0.00, 2.62, 0.00, 3.91 ms) line up perfectly with Image 1. So profile id=1 is your “Preset 2,” the active profile. Now let’s pull the full filter/EQ chain per speaker.


Now I have the complete, exact picture — every channel’s crossover, slope, gain, time alignment, and full parametric EQ chain. This is much more revealing than the photos, and it changes my read on a couple of things. Let me also check the master EQ and check for a tweeter channel I might be missing (you mentioned 4 zones — I only see mids/woofers here, no dedicated tweeter channels, which matches your active components running through the midrange channels with built-in crossovers, or the amp only has 8 channels mapped as shown).


Now I have everything: every channel’s crossover, slope, gain, full parametric EQ, time alignment, plus a master EQ stacked on top of all of it. This is a much fuller picture than the photos, and it actually answers some open questions and raises new ones. Here’s the complete read:


The setup confirmed: 8 active output channels — no separate tweeter channels. Your Mille Pro and Cento components are running through their passive crossovers internally (the “Woofer” channels feed the woofer+passive network, “Midrange” channels feed… actually this is worth clarifying, see below), with the DSP only controlling 8 amp channels total: 2 front woofers, 2 front “midrange” (likely the tweeter/upper-mid leg), 2 rear woofers, 1 sub, 1 center.


Master EQ — this is new information and important There’s a global 8-band EQ sitting on top of every channel:

• +5.44 dB at 20 Hz and +5.17 dB at 142 Hz — two significant boosts stacked at the bottom end, on the master bus, in addition to whatever each channel does individually.
• -2.81 dB at 207 Hz and 778 Hz, -1.29 dB at 1.9 kHz — broad presence-region cuts.
• -2.12 dB at 8.96 kHz — a treble cut already in place.

Plus +3 dB master gain on top of all of it.


Why your bass might feel weak despite all this boost: You have boost stacked at three separate layers that may be working against each other:

1. Master EQ: +5.44 dB @ 20 Hz, +5.17 dB @ 142 Hz, +3 dB master gain
2. Sub channel: +5.7 dB gain, plus -5.16 dB cut at 51 Hz and +4.54 dB boost at 80 Hz

That -5.16 dB notch at 51 Hz on the sub channel is directly fighting the +5.17 dB master boost at 142 Hz region and the +5.44 dB at 20 Hz — you’re cutting right in the meat of where “weight” and “punch” actually live (50 Hz), while boosting 80 Hz (which is right at your crossover point — boosting right at a crossover edge is risky, it can create a phasey peak rather than clean punch). This combination likely explains why it sounds boosted/loud but not actually punchy — the energy is concentrated at the box edge frequency rather than centered in the chest-punch range.


Front woofers — this is your treble harshness source, now confirmed precisely Both Front Left and Front Right Woofer channels are BandPass 70-250 Hz with narrow EQ cuts around 120-164 Hz (Q=3, fairly surgical notches). Left has a +2.85 dB boost at 120 Hz fighting a -3.92 dB cut at 164 Hz right next to it — that’s a sharp ripple, not a smooth curve, in a frequency range your ear is very sensitive to for “boxy” or “honky” coloration. Combined with the master’s already-active cuts at 207 Hz and 778 Hz, there’s a lot of fighting happening in the same 100-800 Hz neighborhood across different layers.


Midrange channels (your “treble” handling) Front Left/Right Midrange are HighPass 250 Hz with Lo-P listed at 150 Hz — confirming what I suspected from the photo: the Lo-P value (150) is lower than the Hi-P value (250) on a HighPass-type filter. On most DSPs that’s a non-functional or ignored parameter when type=HighPass (Lo-P might just be a leftover/disabled field), but it’s worth verifying in software that this isn’t accidentally creating a narrow band rather than a clean high-pass. Each also carries 5-8 EQ points with cuts and boosts scattered from 350 Hz to 12 kHz — Right channel has a Q=0.05 point at 4690 Hz (-1 dB) which is essentially a very broad, gentle shelf, not concerning, but Left channel’s -3.5 dB cut at 10 kHz and the various points between 450 Hz-5 kHz add real complexity.


My honest take: This configuration shows the signature of a lot of iterative by-ear tuning — narrow Q=3 notches added one at a time to fix things as they were heard, on three different layers (master, channel filter EQ, and crossover points) that aren’t always coordinated with each other. That’s normal and not a criticism, but it’s also exactly the situation where starting from a flatter baseline and rebuilding with an RTA/measurement mic would likely get you further than continuing to add fixes on top of fixes.


Want me to draft a complete rebuilt configuration (flatten the master EQ, simplify the channel EQs to fewer/broader strokes, fix the sub channel notch issue, and clean up the crossover overlap) that you could load in as a new preset to A/B against this one?

-Then just replied YES! And then came the response:

Worth flagging: there’s an upmix algorithm active too (enabled="1"), which means a DSP processing layer is reshaping the signal before it even hits the crossovers/EQ — relevant context but I’ll leave it as-is since changing upmix behavior is a bigger structural decision than tonal tuning. Now let me build the revised profile.


Profile 0 already has its own real settings — not a safe blank slot. All 4 profiles (0-3) are in use. Rather than overwrite any of yours, I’ll write the rebuilt tuning into a new 5th profile, or check if the format/firmware actually only supports 4. Let me check the software’s limit before deciding.


Your file has exactly 4 profiles (0-3), matching “Preset 1-4” in the software UI, and all four already have content (you’ve clearly been iterating across presets). Since I can’t safely confirm the amp supports a 5th profile without risking a malformed file, the cleanest approach is to rebuild directly into Preset 2 (profile id=1) — your current active one — since that’s the one we just fully diagnosed, and you can always reload your original file if you want to A/B back to the old version. I’ll keep your original upload untouched so you have that as the rollback copy regardless.


Let me build the revised values now.


Wait — I need to flag something important before going further. I made a structural assumption (front woofer low-pass to 200 Hz, midrange high-pass to 200 Hz) that closes the overlap gap, but I should double check this doesn’t conflict with the fact that the “FrontLeftMidrange”/“FrontRightMidrange” channels appear to actually be feeding a combined midrange+tweeter passive network (since there’s no separate tweeter channel), meaning my 3500 Hz low-pass guess on that channel might be wrong — it could be getting filtered again by Hertz’s onboard passive crossover regardless of what the DSP sends it. Let me verify the file is valid XML and reasonable before I hand this back, then explain clearly what I changed and why, plus flag this uncertainty.


Validates clean and matches what I intended. One important fix needed: also correct the Front Left Midrange time-alignment of 0.0 cm issue we caught earlier — wait, looking back, that’s actually already showing 4.43 ms here, meaning the distance-to-delay calculation in the file is fine; the 0.0 cm we saw in the screenshot was likely a display/input-field glitch in the software at that moment, not what’s actually stored. Good — no fix needed there.


This rewrites your active profile (Preset 2) only — Presets 1, 3, and 4 are untouched, so you can A/B against them or fall back instantly. Your original file is also still intact if you want to reload it entirely.


What changed and why:


Master EQ — replaced the stacked 8-point curve (which had +5.44 dB @ 20 Hz, +5.17 dB @ 142 Hz, plus several narrow cuts, plus +3 dB master gain) with two broad, gentle moves: +2 dB around 60 Hz for general low-end weight, and -1.5 dB around 6 kHz for overall treble smoothing. Removed the +3 dB master gain since it was adding headroom pressure on top of everything else.


Sub channel — removed the -5.16 dB notch at 51 Hz that was fighting a +4.54 dB boost at 80 Hz right at your crossover edge. Replaced with one clean +3 dB broad boost centered at 55 Hz (Q=0.8, so it’s a gentle hump, not a spike) — this should feel more like weight and punch in the chest rather than a boxy resonance right at the crossover point. Pulled channel gain from 5.7 dB down to 2 dB since the master EQ no longer double-stacks bass boost on top.


Front woofers (L/R) — removed both channels’ narrow Q=3 notches around 120-164 Hz that were fighting each other (boost then cut within 40 Hz of each other). Lowered the low-pass from 250 Hz to 200 Hz to open a gap before the midrange channels take over, instead of both channels overlapping right at 250 Hz.


Front midrange (L/R) — this is the channel I’m least certain about, flagging clearly: the original had Lo-P set to 150 Hz, which is lower than its own Hi-P of 250 Hz — backwards for what should be a tweeter handoff point. I changed Lo-P to 3500 Hz, assuming this channel needs to pass through up to where your Hertz tweeter takes over, and raised Hi-P to 200 Hz to meet the woofer’s new low-pass cleanly. Replaced the scattered 5-8 point EQ on each with one gentle -2 dB cut at 4 kHz to tame brightness. The uncertainty: if this channel is actually feeding the woofer+tweeter together through Hertz’s onboard passive crossover (rather than DSP controlling the tweeter split directly), the 3500 Hz low-pass I set might be redundant or could conflict with the passive network’s own crossover point — worth confirming against your Mille Pro’s passive crossover spec before trusting this blindly.


Rear woofers and center — left essentially untouched; they were already clean.


Load it in, A/B against your current Preset 2 backup, and listen specifically for whether the sub feels punchier without being boomier, and whether the front stage sounds less harsh on cymbals/vocals. If the midrange channel’s tweeter handoff sounds off (too bright or a hole in the upper mids), that’s the piece to revisit first since it’s the one built on an assumption rather than your hardware’s actual passive crossover specs.

 

[ChippiMusic]

Haha, okay- there’s a good bit to unpack here, but since I’m currently typing on my phone, it’d be prohibitively cumbersome to elegantly format this as succinctly as possible how I’d prefer - essentially commenting on each step of the dialogue’s progression - I’m just going to touch on the bits that made me (a system engineer with many years experience modeling, deploying, and tuning arena and festival PAs for major world tour concerts in addition to many permanent installs throughout the US) laugh the most.

1. “That -5.16 dB notch at 51 Hz on the sub channel is directly fighting the +5.17 dB master boost at 142 Hz region and the +5.44 dB at 20 Hz — you’re cutting right in the meat of where “weight” and “punch” actually live (50 Hz)”

Is a perfect example of the overconfident nonsensical hallucinations that regularly plague the current ai landscape. Not one bit of that is true. A boost of one part of the frequency range has absolutely zero effect on any other portion of the audible spectrum other than the bit it targets- obviously.
Next up- 50hz is not really the frequency range most would point to for “weight” and even less so for “punch” (granted, both are subjective terms) but punch is most commonly associated with the chesty impact sensation we perceive from program material in the 150hz-ish region.

Remember sound from 2 sources can only result in colinniar destruction (cancelation) when waves interact in space at equal SPL 180° out of phase. In the case of bass frequencies in a vehicle, this is not even worth contemplating considering the length of a single 50 cycle wave (6.6meters) far exceeds the length of the vehicle.

 

[EOD98]

I used AI to help tune my Musway DSP. Very helpful for install advice as well.

 

[23BDBigSean]

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