I can never keep these straight. LOL Which is which when referring to on and off axis? I am about to build door pods for midbass in my doors, so I'm very interested in this ATM.
Nick

 

Basically on-axis is when the speaker is installed to fire right at your head, and not tilted away at all.

Depth, IMO, is very hard to acheive in the car. It all starts with the recording though as JohnVroom said (and congrats on the mod designation, John). If the recording has no depth to it, how and why would you expect your sound system to create depth? With processing? Wow, might as well haul out the 1992 DSP and put it on Hall or Cathedral setting! That leads me to my next item about depth. How do we perceive depth when in the stadium at the concert or the music hall where the symphony is playing? By reflections inside the venue. Concert halls are traditionally rectangular (shoebox) shaped so you get musically-pleasing reflections off the sides, roof, floor and rear walls. Your ear perceives all of these reflections in regards to amplitude and time arrival as depth. Time alignment is very prevalent now in the industry so that should help but I haven't yet heard a car with some true depth to it.

I don't know if the rumor is true or not about Mark E's 4Runner and that he had put mids behind his headlights and constructed tunnel-like enclosures to funnel the sound up to the dash but that sounded to me like an ultimate way of trying to minimize PLD's plus also try get the sound 'out at the hood'.

Who here has heard cars with easily perceivable depth? And whose cars were they? I'm just curious.

 

I'd have to agree that cars that use horns are on-axis. They generally are up-angled to try and fire at your head. The midbass though in both of those cars were rear-mounted (Legend rear deck and GN side panels).

 

I'm trying to battle with depth and listening position in my current install. My last install had depth and it was noticable (though it did have a tonn of tunning time into it). You had no trouble telling if a drumer or what ever was behind the singer. I would say it extended about 3 feet past the windsheild. And I would agree with Defro in that left and right need to be identical. I would say depth from my experience is not related to a speaker axis, though that will effect it's frequency response. PL effect everything pretty much, so do the best you can in that regard.

 

ya i didnt include horns because of the tremendous amout of tuning required to use them and processing, also the midbass was as mentioned in the rear of the vehicles... and garys tweets and mids are aiming across in the kicks not up on axis. they are about 40 degrees off axis. now horns are a whole different animal and i didnt want to open a can of worms with this post as it has nothing to due with horns nor is he probalbly going to use them...

 

thanks again,i kinda thought that placment was key,but i am still playing with settings. if anyone would like to recommend some tracks that have depth,i would be grateful.

and, how's it going fozz?

 

I have my tweeters on-axis and my mids off toward the center of the window. After some tuning (ta, eq, xo), it sounds pretty deep.