kane-o

Hey All,
I am getting my set-up finished beginning of April and I had a few questions. Here is the set-up:

Pioneer Premier 780MP
Focal K2Ps up front
No rear fill
Audison LRX5.1K amp (160RMSX2 up front, 850RMSX1 to sub both at 4OHMs)
JL12W7 in high output box
Dynamat in front doors and rear hatch

This is installed in a 2006 Kia Sorento SUV

My question mainly revolves around set-up with the deck.
1) What cut-off frequency would be ideal for the sub (80hz, 100hz, etc)?
2) What is slope exactly (-12db, -6db, etc)
3) Would I simply set the frquency for my components above the cut-off for the sub?
4) What is normal/reverse phase?
5) Finally, does anyone with this deck or something similar find benefit in adjusting time delays with the speakers/subs and loudness at various frequencies (low/mid/high) or keep the response flat?

I know this is a lot to ask, but answers to these questions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Kane

zzzzzzz

iTrader: (5)

This is installed in a 2006 Kia Sorento SUV

My question mainly revolves around set-up with the deck.
1) What cut-off frequency would be ideal for the sub (80hz, 100hz, etc)?
i would try 100 if you can hear where it is dorp it down to 80

2) What is slope exactly (-12db, -6db, etc)
time to play with what you like to hear

3) Would I simply set the frquency for my components above the cut-off for the sub?
NO

4) What is normal/reverse phase?
if i have a tweeter with + going to - and - going to + is reverse phase (or out of phase

5) Finally, does anyone with this deck or something similar find benefit in adjusting time delays with the speakers/subs and loudness at various frequencies (low/mid/high) or keep the response flat?

Eli47

The best way is to trust YOUR own ears, using music you know very well.
Although advice from here may give you some direction, nothing will do better than your own ears.
The steeper the slope, the more accentuation you will have in a particular range of frequencies. So if you use a 6Db/Oct slope at say 80Hz, it means that sound pressure will drop by 6 dB every Octave (half or double of a given frequency). That means it's will be down 6dB at 40Hz or Up 6db at 160 Hz.
Try crossing over the sub, where the Focals start to fall off.
In phase means that the + and - are properly connected. In case of acoustic Phase it means the sound waves are being generated at the same polarity +/- .
The time delay is to allow for proper STAGING because the speakers are staggered all over the car, and you are sitting off to one side. Adjust it so it sounds like the stage is in front of you, just beyond the dash.

It may pay you to have your system tuned at a shop, once you're done, no doubt your deck can store a few user settings in memory.

kane-o

Thanks for the help gentleman, I will spend some time playing with it to get it the way I want it.

sleepr

As eli said you'll have to spend lots of time finding what you like best, but here's some personal opinions: If a sub is crossed over higer than 85hz the bass starts getting a bit drony, lower than 70hz and kick drums start losing snappiness. The sweet spot varies for each sub in each car, but I usually find it between 70-85hz with a 24db slope. 12db slopes generally work well for crossing over mids as the gradual roll-off sounds more natural. If your focals are 6.5's then they can handle a fair bit of bass, I like to get as much low end out of my front speakers as they can cleanly handle so that the system doesn't sound like all of the bass is coming from the back. Few 6.5's have much output below 60hz so I wouldn't go lower than that. Keep in mind that focal's take awhile to break-in so the bottom end will sound a bit thin for the first couple of weeks. Focal tweeters can sound pretty harsh at higher volumes without eq, I have mine in my sail panels set to -7db on the cross-over and with -2db cut at 5khz on my deck eq. They're reasonably smooth this way but you might prefer a brighter sound. Phase reversal (I'm assuming you're talking about this option on your deck's sub output) can be usefull to make a sub blend in with the mids better, I never thought it did much until I learned what to listen for. In my car reversing the sub's phase moved the kick drum right up front, dead centre, with much better mid-bass. This won't always be the case for every system, but listen to a song with a well-recorded kick drum (not just loud) and switch the phase back and forth while listening to the kick drum. The goal is to make the bass and mid-bass sound more natural , not louder. Time delay is great for two things; It helps even out the imaging up front (a person's vocals should usually sit dead-centre with various instruments left to right), and I found it tightened up the bass as the subs can often sound a bit late after the mids hit. Time delay basically tries to make all your speakers sound like they're the same distance from your ears, which in a car they're totally not.
Remember to just tweak one thing at a time so that you know exactly what works for you and what doesn't.

kane-o

Thanks again for more insight on the topic. Also, should I leave the amp settings alone from what the installer leaves it at and just play with the deck settings?

M-A3

I documented the entire configuration of my system when my local shop finished installing my Focals and tweaking the system to their preference. I didn't actually ask for them to tune it, but they just felt they needed to give me a quick baseline for further tuning. By documenting what they did, I could always go back to that configuration.

I then proceeded to tune to my preference mostly with my amp settings, because my head unit didn't have as much control over things like crossover frequencies and phase.

You may determine that you want steeper crossover slopes and decide to use a combination of deck crossover and amp crossover.

The easiest, of course, is to do it from the deck first if you can, as adjustment is up front, from your listening position.

Thoughts,
M-A3
Focal K2P 165 UVs
JL 10w6v2
JL 300/4 and 500/1