Today is the time to reveal the project I have been working on silently for some time. As you may remember, I researched the sound settings dataset for the MIB2 units and posted the coloring template. Here is the recap:

• https://mqb-blog.com/en/2022/02/21/sound-dataset/

Unfortunately, dealing with the 010 Editor and HEX appeared to be too complicated for many people. I received feedback from only 3 persons who tried to edit something for real for over a year since the last post. Some time ago, I collaborated with the team from the More Incredible Bash project to add the ability to enable subwoofer control for cars where it is not available from the factory or change its gain if the knob can’t be shown.

I also met online with João from Portugal, who is a sound engineer and did initial work to cover MIB3 datasets and was able to measure the actual responses from his car. So, now we have a basic understanding of how everything evolves and the parsing scheme for the latest VAG cars as well.

Back to the topic

I decided to create a simple GUI tool to edit the sound settings in a more user-friendly way. I am the Javascript guy, so building it as a web application using React was an obvious choice. The tool is available here:

It is still in the early beta, so please be patient and report any issues you may find. The list of features to add in the future is extensive, but for now, it can:

• Read the data from datasets of MIB1, MIB2 and MIB3 units
• Open XML (do not try ZDC containers, but only sets designed for specific cars), BIN, and HEX files. XML should contain the data for 0x003000 (in the case of MIB2), 1000 (MIB1), or 7201 (MIB3) addresses. In case you’ve extracted the data from your unit with some tools, the address should be specified as the suffix of the file name, like: something.0x003000.hex or something.7201.bin.
• Display the Global Equalizer settings, Loudness, GALA (Speed-dependent Volume Control) and GADK (Speed-dependent Dynamic Compression), and most important - the built-in EQ and Dynamic Range Compression for each channel, split into 2 or 3 (MIB3) profiles.

A detailed description of every parameter can be found in my previous post. Those familiar with DSP and sound editing will feel pretty comfortable with the interface, as I tried to mimic other production tools. The rest of you can play with datasets and explore the changes in the graphs.

Editing is disabled for now, but I’m planning to enable it in one to two weeks, tab by tab, after verifying all the coefficients and ranges.

This project took me a while to build and still requires a huge amount of time and effort. I kindly ask you to support my work and make donations. This will keep me motivated to continue the research and development for the community.

Please, feel free to ask any questions in the comments below.