Speaker placement dilemma.
11-21-2007, 10:10 AM
#1
0 Watt CAFz'r
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2005
Posts: 47
Speaker placement dilemma.
Hi Guys,
I have owned my car for 1.5 yrs and my intial install was putting the speakers in factory locations and tuning. I have found that i am quite dissapointed with the sound quality. So i have decided to go back into a custom setup on everything (front end and subs).
I'm running a focal 165K kit up front and and 2 IDQ10V2's in a sealed fiberglass enclosure in the trunk.
There are a number of problems i have experienced with my car (2004.5 Jetta GLI).
#1. Having my subs in the trunk is not condusive to uncompressed bass, so my move is to build a custom enclosure and have the 10's firing off the rear shelf directly into the cabin. Hopefully this will increase the dynamics and quality of the bass. Understanding of course that the distance may not be as condusive to SPL due to the short distance between the listening position and the speakers. I am not an SPL guy, so loudness can be easily traded off to better freq response and dynamics.
#2. Having the front end in the stock locations requires alot of time alignment and tuning to get to half decent, and still seems to sound very...'artificial' to me. I am not the biggest fan of TA but i do understand that in a car environment it is required as sitting on the center console is not exactly what i wanna be doing. So, i have decided that i am going to turn my 2-way into a 3 way by purchasing a 3" or 4" drivers (undecided) and placing them either in kid-pods or on the a-pillar. I have seen a few installs with a 3-4 and tweeter on the a-pillar, but have never heard them, i think its a interesting concept and enjoy the fabrication process. I have searched and read differing opinions about having them up there. I have had kick pods in the past, and do find that the sound staging seems to be lower. The path length difference is minimized with the use of kick-pods, but i drive a standard and found them to be a little bit of a pain at time wen i woud like to rest my foot on the kick plate (that would no longer exist). So in the end, i guess my trade off is Path length difference or staging...
Anyhow, in all, i just wanted to get your opinions on my ideas, before i decide to go cutting into the car and doing fiberglass work. As for competing, i'm really up in the air, i may do it once or twice, just to see how i fair, but really it would be for every day listening. I have a set of EQT's for tuning, and a minimal amount of time alignment...
Thanks in advance for your help guys.
I have owned my car for 1.5 yrs and my intial install was putting the speakers in factory locations and tuning. I have found that i am quite dissapointed with the sound quality. So i have decided to go back into a custom setup on everything (front end and subs).
I'm running a focal 165K kit up front and and 2 IDQ10V2's in a sealed fiberglass enclosure in the trunk.
There are a number of problems i have experienced with my car (2004.5 Jetta GLI).
#1. Having my subs in the trunk is not condusive to uncompressed bass, so my move is to build a custom enclosure and have the 10's firing off the rear shelf directly into the cabin. Hopefully this will increase the dynamics and quality of the bass. Understanding of course that the distance may not be as condusive to SPL due to the short distance between the listening position and the speakers. I am not an SPL guy, so loudness can be easily traded off to better freq response and dynamics.
#2. Having the front end in the stock locations requires alot of time alignment and tuning to get to half decent, and still seems to sound very...'artificial' to me. I am not the biggest fan of TA but i do understand that in a car environment it is required as sitting on the center console is not exactly what i wanna be doing. So, i have decided that i am going to turn my 2-way into a 3 way by purchasing a 3" or 4" drivers (undecided) and placing them either in kid-pods or on the a-pillar. I have seen a few installs with a 3-4 and tweeter on the a-pillar, but have never heard them, i think its a interesting concept and enjoy the fabrication process. I have searched and read differing opinions about having them up there. I have had kick pods in the past, and do find that the sound staging seems to be lower. The path length difference is minimized with the use of kick-pods, but i drive a standard and found them to be a little bit of a pain at time wen i woud like to rest my foot on the kick plate (that would no longer exist). So in the end, i guess my trade off is Path length difference or staging...
Anyhow, in all, i just wanted to get your opinions on my ideas, before i decide to go cutting into the car and doing fiberglass work. As for competing, i'm really up in the air, i may do it once or twice, just to see how i fair, but really it would be for every day listening. I have a set of EQT's for tuning, and a minimal amount of time alignment...
Thanks in advance for your help guys.
11-21-2007, 11:07 AM
#2
I was never a big fan of mids on the dash or A pillars until i heard Fozzz's car, and now I will doing it myself (im a copy cat) his sounds amazing and he got a couple of cheap plastic trophies for it so more than one person agrees with me, search him out, he's pretty easy to get along with and sometimes even answers his mail........there are lots of others on here with great advice, I say go for it! ..not much to lose, A pillars are cheap at the wreckers if you don't like the outcome, but you wont know until you try.
I had kicks and liked them for everything except the height issue which i was never able to overcome.
I had kicks and liked them for everything except the height issue which i was never able to overcome.
11-21-2007, 11:36 AM
#3
50 Watt CAFz'r
Join Date: Nov 2007
Posts: 52
Get some tweets that can play down as close to 1k as possible(the CDT 2" tweets come to mind), and mount those somewhere up high, usually about 3" from the highest point of the dash and start aiming them for the best image. Put some 4" speakers your kicks for the best pathlengths, I would let them play from 1k down to around 400, most 4" speakers have really good off axis response from 1k on down so aiming them isn't very critical, you can mount them firing straight across towards each other and this will keep your kick pod from intruding so much on your feet. Midbasses in the doors 400 down to 80.
Last edited by trebor; 11-21-2007 at 11:44 AM.
11-21-2007, 11:45 AM
#4
Those plastic trophies cost me a lot of money! And I had to drive down to GA to get them, LOL.
You can get a solid stage with kick panel mounting. It just a little harder to do. My mids are in the pillars (almost) and it works good for me.
I can't figure out how to post pics, otherwise I would post a pic of my front stage setup.
Maybe MuTT will do it for me?
You can get a solid stage with kick panel mounting. It just a little harder to do. My mids are in the pillars (almost) and it works good for me.
I can't figure out how to post pics, otherwise I would post a pic of my front stage setup.
Maybe MuTT will do it for me?
11-21-2007, 11:48 AM
#5
Well, I've got my 4" mids in kickpods... and my tweeters up in the A-Pillars, and, I don't find the image to be coming from the kicks at all.
My X-over has the tweets coming in at 4.2Khz, my mids from 1Khz to.... who knows ? (natural roll off of the speaker) and the midbass goes up to 1Khz...
My X-over has the tweets coming in at 4.2Khz, my mids from 1Khz to.... who knows ? (natural roll off of the speaker) and the midbass goes up to 1Khz...
11-21-2007, 01:26 PM
#7
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Posts: 47
Well, i think i am going to try putting my mids up on the a-pillars. I just have to find a pair of a-pillars from a scrap yard, and also a read deck cover that i can cut into...or do you guys suggest i make one out of mdf/fiberglass to add rigidity since my subs will be back there.
11-21-2007, 02:17 PM
#9
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Join Date: Dec 2005
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