JBL ProCoustics MS-2 – Car Audio Optimiser

Product Details
Manufacturer: JBL
Distributor: Car Audio & Security
Website: link
Typical Selling price: £149.95
What It Is
A digital signal processor in a small box with a really simple user interface. Designed to ‘Get better sound from your portable music player’ as it is added to your car’s OEM system, it takes the signal via 3.5mm headphone-out socket from your phone, iPod, whatever, to feed in turn to the JBL MS2 before sending it onwards to the car’s auxiliary stereo input. The device makes two tone bursts through your system and ‘˜listens’ on its own built-in microphone before setting up a DSP algorithm for your listening space and your position within it.

Full Specifications
Maximum input voltage:1.3V
Power requirement:6V DC, 1A
Dimensions (L x W x H):132mm x 72mm x 20mm
Weight:0.2lb (96g)
FEATURES:
Automatic system optimisation
Automatic on-board digital equalisation and the built-in microphone eliminate the need for time-consuming and costly manual system tuning
Simple plug-and-play operation
Works with all music players and all car and home audio systems that include 1/8in (3.5mm) auxiliary-input jacks
One-button set-up
Calibrates and adjusts all system settings in seconds with the push of a single button
Automatic DSP equalisation
Improves tonal accuracy by compensating for the sonic characteristics of the speakers, the electronics and the interior of the vehicle or listening room
Automatic DSP time correction
Ensures that the sounds from all speakers arrive at your ears simultaneously
Separate Bass, Treble, Impact and Image controls
Lets you override automatic equalisation to suit the sounds you’re playing or your personal taste
Small and lightweight
Take it with you everywhere, and use it in multiple vehicles or even at home (requires third-party 6-volt DC power supply, not included)
Includes input/output cables and 6-volt DC power supply (to plug into a car’s cigarette lighter)
Works right out of the box

Editor Review : Fusion CS-AW1120 Active Subwoofer
How Is It Made?

A small shiny plastic box with a few buttons on the front, about the same size, if more curvy than an iPhone. The input and output and power sockets are well marked and easy to identify, with a small aperture at one end that is for the microphone to listen to your world through. It has a nice clear layout and the green LEDs are easy to see in bright sunlight. The buttons have decent breakout feel so you know when they have been switched. The defeat button in the middle is the biggest, so you can see how well it has worked with a quick comparison.

How Well Does It Work?
What a clever little piece of kit! OK, it is about adding a music player to an OEM system, so is outside the interest zone of the enthusiast but anyone with an Aux input jack plug socket in their car can use it and that’s LOTS of people. When you press ‘˜go’ it makes two wicked tone bursts through your speakers, first left, then right channel from deep to high in a ‘Dooooweeeeeepp!’ that stretches your speakers. Then it allows the music back through and now, you have an IMAGE in front of you!
The algorithms that are used are one of the things the North Americans have always been good at, for this is proper DSP. Not just a ‘˜Stereo Wide’ phase flapper as used to be found on some boom boxes but a whole extra clever adjunct to your sound system that once fitted and applied, will give it an amazing improvement. The vocals appear in front of you, sound-off style but with nil expertise needed to set a competition system. The sound is richer and more satisfying but I also found that you could mess with it, to make it closer to your own personal taste by use of the front controls, which allow a three-notch adjustment for most of the functions.
All you need do is perhaps to let the JBL MS2 know that your car has a subwoofer in the system (if you do, by longer press of one button) and it’ll take that into account as well. This is such a clever and elegant idea and will give a massive improvement to OEM set ups but would have added an easy £500 to the car as an option had the DSP system been somehow integrated into the car. But it couldn’t, as this needs a microphone to be applied to the cabin to ‘˜listen’ to it and we are years from anything like that appearing in OEM.
Lovely and clean, there is no generation-loss ‘˜veil’ to the sound once it is running. It simply takes all the energy and polishes it up before re-presenting it to you in prettier, time-aligned to your head position, flavour.
Brilliant gadget and one that will be in a LOT of stockings this 2011 Christmas! It scores massively well on all fronts and also is the definitive FIRST of a whole new art of in-car portable DSP and as such, it truly is the State Of The Art, a rare and worthy winner of our most prized Talk Audio Accolade!
And here, a run through of how it does what it does and how fast it works, with Mark Hockey of Harman Consumer Electronics, who are the parent company.

Overall 9.6
Sound Quality 9
HMI/Ease of Use 10
Flexibility 10
DSP Power 9
Value For Money 10

In A Nutshell
A hundred and fifty quid’s worth of pocket-sized Digital Signal Processor that you place in-line with your Aux input in your car’s OEM sound system, and then does time alignment and auto EQ brilliantly.