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Songs to Go

Enhance your music for playing in the car. By Charles Platt

Most factory-installed car stereos are mediocre, and mine is no exception. I was contemplating a major upgrade, but didn’t feel like spending all that money. Instead I decided to adjust the music to compensate for the limitations of the stereo. By boosting the low end and the high end while lowering the shrill frequencies around 2kHz, I could make it sound considerably better.

Since this required more precision than was allowed by the simple bass and treble controls built into the stereo, I thought about installing a graphic equalizer — but those available for cars are limited by space constraints. My ultimate answer was to preprocess the sound at home, then burn CDs optimized for the car listening experience.

stereo, which is the same format used on music CDs. Insert a disc, click the Rip CD button, and the software works in the background while you use your computer for other things such as checking email.

1. MAKE AUDIO FILES I made audio files from my CDs. Countless utilities will do this, but I like Express Rip ( nch.com. au/rip), a piece of Australian freeware that offers more options than Windows Media Player and claims to be faster. After you install it and launch it, choose .wav as your output format for this project, to avoid losing quality through compression. Click the Encoder Settings button and select 44100Hz, 16 bits

2. DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL AUDIO EDITOR

To edit your files you can use Wavosaur, a powerful but free virtual-studio program from wavosaur.com. It doesn’t include a graphic equalizer, because it expects you to use plugins from third-party vendors. You can install any that conform with the audio standard known as VST (Virtual Studio Technology), and there are thousands online.

In my very first search I found 32 free graphic equalizers! The one I liked best is Electri-Q by Aixcoustic, available free from aixcoustic.com. Download and run the installer, and it places an

Illustration by PARS/E design

110 Make: Volume 13