Aftermarket Speakers???

Ryan from Ohio wrote:

www.knukonceptz.com

Im not a fan of the Polk speakers.

You could get a better set for less money...
http://massiveaudio.com/store/product.php?productid=16176&cat=274&page=1

http://www.caraudiocentral.net/forums/showthread.php?t=11341

They seem to be very stout and smooth setup. I havent got any complaints or negatives on them yet.

The worst thing you can do is move to quickly without planning.

That EQ is expensive, hope you are getting a super steal on it. Not worth 1/2 of what they MSRP it at.

I don't think I've ever heard of Massive audio and for that one reason, I'd feel uncomfortable buying that. It looks nice and the specs of it look right but who has used that system? Anyone else have opinions on this? I could be just living under a rock to not know MA.

Overall I am concerned about getting a very full midrange and a powerful tweeter. I want to be able to turn them up loud and hear everything in powerful yet balanced state. I want my car to sound like headphones. I know that won't happen but that's my problem with my speaker system right now. I cannot seem to tune out the wack and find balance. I feel like I'm missing things in the mid range. I blame this largely on the incompetence of my front speakers that leave me needing to add aux tweeters and crank up the backs to get the amount of volume I want.

A lot of it is speaker placement. Keep your tweeters and mids very close together for each channel, and as far away from your ears as possible (usually, this means low in the doors, or kick panels). For this reason, coaxials often sound better than components. Don't split up the tweeter and mid, or phase alignment will be shot. Dash or pillar mounting for tweeters is one of the worst things you can do.

AA wrote:

A lot of it is speaker placement. Keep your tweeters and mids very close together for each channel, and as far away from your ears as possible (usually, this means low in the doors, or kick panels). For this reason, coaxials often sound better than components. Don't split up the tweeter and mid, or phase alignment will be shot. Dash or pillar mounting for tweeters is one of the worst things you can do.

This is a big bite to hear. How do they get away with pillar mounted tweeters in all the OEM sound systems? Just engineered and tuned right?

I have a problem with the front speakers being where they are. The position of my left leg can block that whole area. When my leg wanders a little to far left, I loose a lot of sound. If the main tweeter were there, I'm sure that would be even worse. The other thing is I thought that imaging was a really big deal in phase alignment, which is already way wrong in the front door speakers to start with. I could be way off base but I thought that the higher the frequency, the more important it is to have the driver facing you?

Funny thing how headphones consist of two speaker drivers, only one for each ear. Yet lots of people you talk to are so sure that it takes a dozen speakers to make a car sound good.

OEM systems have always sacrificed sound quality for improved user comfort or "perceived" quality. Although, they have gotten better over the years. Head units, for example, are pretty decent. Power levels have increased. There are even factory subwoofers now.

But it's still not primarily about sound quality for the car maker. Consider what a potential new buyer thinks when he/she opens the door and sees a tweeter on the dash or upper part of a door. They may think: separate tweeters = clearer highs, or separate components, or more speakers. They might see an aftermarket audio badge and assume good quality. But actually, if you took those same tweeters and threw them out, installed a good pair of coaxials low in the doors, rigged to a small amp, you'd have better sound. Same thing if you mount a separate tweeter on a bridge across the midwoofer. All the sound comes from the same point source, and the result is near perfect time alignment. But the car makers know if people don't actually see that tweeter there, they really don't care how good the system sounds.

Putting a tweeter in the pillar, closer to your ear will ensure that sounds from that speaker are louder, and reach your ear before sounds from the mid in the door. The result is overly bright treble, and sound that just doesn't sound as real. You can attenuate the treble, but that only takes care of part of it (surely, manufacturers do this). You cannot fix the phase alignment problem unless you use some kind of sound processor to match the alignments of the tweeter and mid. It can be done, but usually requires bi-amping the speakers, and knowing how to calculate the delay. There are also some types of passive crossover that power the tweeter 180º out of phase, so in practice, you can place the tweeter closer with no ill effects. No doubt some OEM cars could be set-up this way, but it takes some real know-how and testing to make it work.

Experiment with tweeter placement, and you'll hear a difference. The really good sound guys probably tape the tweeters in various locations and do listening tests. Usually the tweeter sounds best near the mid, but sometimes you can get lucky.

Furthermore, turning up the rears further complicates issues by introducing more reflected sound into the cabin. Turn your rears down, and things sound dramatically better (providing your front stage is strong). A delay processor can be used to make the rear channels beneficial, but they still should play at a lower level than the fronts.

Quote :

The other thing is I thought that imaging was a really big deal in phase alignment, which is already way wrong in the front door speakers to start with. I could be way off base but I thought that the higher the frequency, the more important it is to have the driver facing you?

As for having tweeters face your ears directly, it's not always necessary. The better automotive drivers have very decent off-axis response, so you can listen at 30º, even 60º off axis. This is the secret to a speaker sounding good in a car, because what are the chances that both listeners are going to have the tweeters facing directly at their ears? You can aim the tweeters slightly, but you may find they become overly bright, as they aren't intended to be listened to perfectly on axis. This explains why some crossovers have a +3/0//-3 dB switch for the tweeter output.

Yes, legs can get in the way, but that is mainly a volume level issue. It can be tuned with an EQ. I tuned mine to sound the best with just me in the car. I notice a difference with a passenger, but it doesn't bother me too much. But the thing you can't tune out easily with an EQ are phase anomalies caused by having too many speakers, placed in the wrong locations.

The most important thing regarding imaging is to have the L&R speakers as close to equal lengths from your ears as possible. It is thought that having speakers high on the dash will put your sound stage up high. This is true if you have a very deep dash and mount the L&R channels far away from you, but in most cars this isn't the case. The doors are actually better, and kick panels are usually the best. Equal path lengths can put the sound up high on the dash, even if the speakers aren't. The brain is very good at detecting sounds from left and right, not so good with up and down.

I'm going to rethink this some more.
I know I was very happy with the addition of the A-pillar mounted aux tweeters but if I can just get a lot more out of my front door speakers in general, that would be good.

Aaron, I know you mounted your tweeter components right in front of the midwoofer in the door. Why didn't you put the tweeter where the factory one is or use a nice set of coaxial speakers instead? At this point, I'm thinking about using the factory tweeter mount and modifying it to hold the component tweeter with an angle mount cup. That should generally satisfy most of the rules, yes?

I started with a nice set of JL Audio XR coaxials. They were great speakers.

But I went with the Euphonic separates because I'd read a great review about them in Auto Sound & Security magazine the mid '90s, and found a set new in the box on ebay. They are pretty old speakers, but good ones, imo. I heard a pair at an IASCA competition and was amazed, so I knew I wanted these components. Also, separates typically have higher power handling numbers than coaxials, so they can play louder, and the midbass performance of separates is usually better.

The factory tweeter location was close to being ideal, but mounting it on a bridge gave a little upward angle (these silk domes are not very bright or harsh). Also, I like to drive with my seat pretty far forward, so it actually blocks the factory tweeter location entirely - not good.

My stereo is far from perfect, but it gave me what I wanted for the budget I had ($1000). I would not try to compete with my system, but I don't think I would do so badly for keeping the stock head. It does not sound like it still has a stock head.

Well if you want to get some crazy good sounding components tweeters are a sticking point, you need good ones!

I like the CAL 25 NG from Rainbow. By far the best tweeter Ive used, and the price is reasonable also!

For midranges there is plenty of possibilities. Parts Express has a wide selection of decent low cost drivers as well as madi sound. Creative Sounds has some nice drivers as well

http://www.creativesound.ca
www.madisound.com
www.partsexpress.com

The Massive set is decent at its price level.

turtleman wrote:

Ryan from Ohio wrote:

www.knukonceptz.com

Im not a fan of the Polk speakers.

You could get a better set for less money...
http://massiveaudio.com/store/product.php?productid=16176&cat=274&page=1

http://www.caraudiocentral.net/forums/showthread.php?t=11341

They seem to be very stout and smooth setup. I havent got any complaints or negatives on them yet.

The worst thing you can do is move to quickly without planning.

That EQ is expensive, hope you are getting a super steal on it. Not worth 1/2 of what they MSRP it at.

I don't think I've ever heard of Massive audio and for that one reason, I'd feel uncomfortable buying that. It looks nice and the specs of it look right but who has used that system? Anyone else have opinions on this? I could be just living under a rock to not know MA.

Overall I am concerned about getting a very full midrange and a powerful tweeter. I want to be able to turn them up loud and hear everything in powerful yet balanced state. I want my car to sound like headphones. I know that won't happen but that's my problem with my speaker system right now. I cannot seem to tune out the wack and find balance. I feel like I'm missing things in the mid range. I blame this largely on the incompetence of my front speakers that leave me needing to add aux tweeters and crank up the backs to get the amount of volume I want.

I wouldn't get raw drivers unless you are going to have an amp channel for each speaker and a good processor. Along with the know how to tune everything. Passive x-overs will make life much easier. More of a plug and play type of thing. If you know what you are doing, then by all means you can get incredible sound by getting the raw drivers and tuning everything for your car and taste.

I'm not going to do any speakerbuilding on this. I just want a solid component system for the front. I'm not in a big rush at the moment to finish it all but I do need to make a decision on what speakers to get for the front soon. That's probably going to be my Christmas present.

I liked the idea of the polks because they are in the right price range, they would match my rear speakers that I have already, and they have pretty good reviews and I trust Polk to be at least adequite product.

I don't get a lot of chances these days to test other stuff. I've heard Kicker components that were loud and crisp which I liked but theres something about the style of them that turns me off. Sorry, I'm weird.

http://www.crutchfield.com/p_1085030CS/Infinity-Reference-5030cs.html?tp=106
How bout those? Looking at the reviews, there seems to be a trend that they have a lot of treble to them which, honestly, I think I would like, especially If I'm going to be placing them away from my ears now.

Of those options in Crutchfield, those are the two I like in the price range. I'm going to look some more though.

Polk and infinity both make good products. If I had to choose, I would go with infinity, but you should be happy with eithr choice.

Bravox, if you can get them. Their company manufactures 52% of the worlds speakers. They are second to none period. check them out at
http://www.bravoxaudio.com/. From what I understand their U.S..A. based supplier went belly up, so they may be hard to get but they are sooo worth it.

well the verdict is infinity.
The digital EQ I have has time alignment correction and other capabilities so depending on how I feel about mounting the tweeters in the door with the mids, I may mount the tweeters back onto the pillars as far into the corner as possible to get some more distance - I could have gone much farther in the first place had I considered it more carefully.

It would go like this. Front channel signal of the head unit goes to the one and only input of the EQ and then the high and mid channels get seperate channels to the 4ch amp in the trunk. Then I gotta run speaker wire for all four channels to the front (left mid, left tweeter, right mid, right tweeter). The problem at that point is I don't think the crossovers that come with there component speakers allow seperate input channels for the tweeter and midwoofer so I wonder if I could find another pair of identical crossovers - unlikely

any ideas? Is it even worth it or should I just wire them up the usual way right to the amp or even the head unit and deal with a little sound imperfection?

I would just wire them the traditional way thats all I did, no hassle and works just fine. I skipped using the deck power all together as decks are grossly under powered and more often than not will damage your speakers. I ran my front Bravox components, and my rear Eclipse 6x9's of the 4.880 amp. Then ran my PWS912 off my 2000D. Sound quality is outstanding in comparison to my Rockford system, I think most of the credit goes to the component set. Clearest audio I have heard in 15 years of playing with car audio.

The whole package by inifinity was definitely not dissappointing. There are mounting parts in there that I don't even understand but in any case, It has a solution and I already made the custom mounting plates for the front tweeters so they go where the original tweeters were - to try out first as promised.

lookin good mr.T

They look fine.
Sound... I dunno

If your going to eliminate the Tweeter mounts (Plexiglas, I'll buy them from you.
I'd like to try the component speakers I have and the mounting plates you have might help.
Or I could always make my own, if it wasn't so cold out.

http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_3352_American+International+SPP-514CL.html
gonna see how those work and go from there

also grabbed a few more things for the install

http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_17145_JL+Audio+XB-PDBU-2.html
two of those

http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_18344_Monster+Cable+MPC+I204+4C-5M.html
4ch signal cables for cd player to trunk amp that will power all 4 speakers

Getting any wires through the door boots is a BITCH! Only after taking all that stuff apart to do that did I think to just put the crossover in the door. Originally, I was thinking about putting the tweeters up into the pillars so having the crossovers in the doors wouldn't have made sense in that setup. Now I'm pretty certain they are staying in the doors. (sorry Rick but they are pretty easy to make if you have a drill press and bandsaw)

Just so you know if you do have to run any wires through the factory door boot on the drivers side, you need to remove the fuse box assembly bracket, the parking brake pedal assembly, and in order to do that I found I had to unfasten the drivers side of the inner plastic dash molding that goes all the way across the car that most of the instruments, radio, etc bolt to. Obviously you need to remove the lower kick panels. Then you open the rectangular plastic harness and you can finally run wires through. Like I said, it's a bitch!


boy is that a big door... and I think if you pull both door panels off you can probably get another 2 tenths out of the car

In regards to the speakers themselves, I've changed the EQ settings and they are sounding right now. They are so shockingly different than the 2-way coaxial pioneers that were there, it was hard to figure out what I needed to do with them. I brought the highs down a little and the mids up just a hair on the EQ and they sound great. I was just used to being drowned in boomy if unnatural mids that came out of the pioneers.

Quote turtleman: (sorry Rick but they are pretty easy to make if you have a drill press and bandsaw)
Yeh, I don't know what i was thinking when i said that.
I can make those easy enough here in the garage and I have some plexiglass in stock.

I got it all together finally today since I just received the 4ch RCA cable yesterday and everything I was hoping for is there. Now with a good amp powering the front, I can turn the front components up loud and it sounds terrific. The tweeters and mids are clear. Tweeters are definitely staying in the doors since they are plenty loud there. I was originally worried I just wouldn't be able to get the fronts loud and clear enough to keep the bias away from the rears but they Infinitys are doing it without a problem thanks in a large part to the amp. I tried this out with the head unit amp and it wasn't enough even at the higher 60w setting.

I figured out that the system noise I was having before was because of my capacitor. I disconnected the remote turn-on lead to the capacitor so the readout doesn't turn on and that nosie disappears. That voltage display is completely out of sight anyway so I don't have any need for it to be on. As far as I know, that turn-on lead is only for the display and not the capacitor circuit, right?

Thanks AA for helping me get to the right place on this. I think I initially would have gone straight to the a-pillars for the tweeters and probably wouldn't have considered really biasing the sound to the front speakers too much.

I was thinking about getting new speakers up front and was wondering if anyone had any experience with Alpine SPX13REF or SPX13PRO? These would replace the JL audio ones that I currently have. The tensil broke on one of the speakers a while back. I fixed it for a while, but it broke again and it is too short now to repair. By the time I got it repair professionaly I might as well get new speakers for just a little more. I heard the Alpines have some good bass for the size.

http://www.alpine-usa.com/product/view/spx-13ref/
http://www.alpine-usa.com/product/view/spx-13pro/

They look like they would be good speakers for the price. You can get the reference ones on ebay for around $170 and the pro for $265. I was leaning towards the reference because they were cheaper and I don't know if the pro speakers would be that much better for an extra $100. My amp is puts out 4 x 40 watt. I know that is a little on the low side for the components, but I don't want to get a new amp right now.

If you aren't attached to the Alpine brand, there are many other good choices in the $200 price range. Focal is one I'd check into. Also Diamond, Boston, Rainbow, CDT, ID, Morel, Dynaudio, and don't forget JL Audio still makes great stuff. Even Pioneer has an upper tier line.

Unfortunately, it's not like the good old days when you could go to a car audio shop and listen to installation to decide what product sounds best. Now you must really research various peoples' descriptions of the sound to make a good choice.

If you are thinking about component separates, you should be aware of the mounting options, and how they will sound. Personally, I prefer doors with coaxials or bridge mounted components, or kick panels on the floor for good sound. These options keep the high/low drivers in close proximity, avoiding phase problems.

AA wrote:

If you aren't attached to the Alpine brand, there are many other good choices in the $200 price range. Focal is one I'd check into. Also Diamond, Boston, Rainbow, CDT, ID, Morel, Dynaudio, and don't forget JL Audio still makes great stuff. Even Pioneer has an upper tier line.

Unfortunately, it's not like the good old days when you could go to a car audio shop and listen to installation to decide what product sounds best. Now you must really research various peoples' descriptions of the sound to make a good choice.

If you are thinking about component separates, you should be aware of the mounting options, and how they will sound. Personally, I prefer doors with coaxials or bridge mounted components, or kick panels on the floor for good sound. These options keep the high/low drivers in close proximity, avoiding phase problems.

Do you have any model numbers that I should check out from those brands? I would like to keep it around $200 if possible. I spent $300-$400 on the JL speakers in my car now. While they were nice, I don't really need something that expensive right now.

A few options at different price points:

http://www.amazon.com/Focal-Polyglass-5-25-Inch-Coaxial-Speaker/dp/B001Q9EL0Y/ref=sr_1_48?s=car&ie=UTF8&qid=1289878934&sr=1-48

Here's a lower cost option:

http://www.amazon.com/Cl-5ex-Audio-5-25-Coaxial-Speakers/dp/B001NXQNJU/ref=sr_1_85?s=car&ie=UTF8&qid=1289879529&sr=1-85

And for a small budget:

http://www.amazon.com/Infinity-Reference-5032cf-Performance-Loudspeaker/dp/B002BZE36E/ref=dp_cp_ob_e_title_2