Tweeters
04-03-2004, 06:01 PM
#101
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Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 1,649
Adam, my tweets in my beemer were almost in the same place.........but they were higher and angled more forward to parallel the curvature of the front window. The bottoms of my tweets were about 1" higher then the tops of yours. I T&A'ed then first time around and the second time around I palayed with the gains to varry the intensity. Both methods allowed me to nail good imaging. IF I did it over, I'd probably put them about an 1" high in my beemer and sink them into the a-pillar panel. My curtain bags come out in a different place then yours............. they fall down the back edge of the a-pillar and not out the side like yours do.
04-03-2004, 08:52 PM
#102
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SilverGS, I'm using a Focal Utopia 165W3 kit. Incredible midbass and midrange drivers, but the tweeter needs to be carefully installed to get the best out of it.
I have no clue about the CDT tweeters.
Tom, with the Focal tweeter, (inverted dome)intensity falls off pretty fast off axis. With a conventional dome tweeter, the intensity falls off a bit more linear allowing tweeters to be put at more extreme angles from the listener's ears. I had to angle the tweeters back towards the listening position to balance out the the left and right sides from both seats. I used a lot of duct tape to arrive at this setting. [img]smile.gif[/img]
I also played with different tweeter distances. What I found was that the farther I pushed the tweeters out to the corners, the better the sound stage. I'd like to add that this is probably unique to my car, everyone should experiment to find their own "best tweeter position".
Freaking heck...post #101!!!!!!
Adam
I have no clue about the CDT tweeters.
Tom, with the Focal tweeter, (inverted dome)intensity falls off pretty fast off axis. With a conventional dome tweeter, the intensity falls off a bit more linear allowing tweeters to be put at more extreme angles from the listener's ears. I had to angle the tweeters back towards the listening position to balance out the the left and right sides from both seats. I used a lot of duct tape to arrive at this setting. [img]smile.gif[/img]
I also played with different tweeter distances. What I found was that the farther I pushed the tweeters out to the corners, the better the sound stage. I'd like to add that this is probably unique to my car, everyone should experiment to find their own "best tweeter position".
Freaking heck...post #101!!!!!!
Adam
04-04-2004, 06:04 AM
#103
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Join Date: Sep 2003
Posts: 128
Originally posted by PEI330Ci:
SilverGS, I'm using a Focal Utopia 165W3 kit. Incredible midbass and midrange drivers, but the tweeter needs to be carefully installed to get the best out of it.
SilverGS, I'm using a Focal Utopia 165W3 kit. Incredible midbass and midrange drivers, but the tweeter needs to be carefully installed to get the best out of it.
I am assuming that the 165W 2-way component set is not the same as yours as yours appear to be a 3-way component set. Please confirm.
What exactly is the reason why SQ competitors prefer 2-way component sets rather than 3-way component sets? I know that a certain famous SQ competitor and judge - Jamie Edmundson prefers 2-way component sets. There has to be a good reason for that, but it is still a mystery to me.
Thanks!
[ April 04, 2004, 07:07 AM: Message edited by: SilverGS ]
04-04-2004, 06:34 AM
#104
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Posts: 1,783
^^^^The 165K3 kit uses a Kevlar cone material, versus a fiberglass and foam sandwich for the Utopias. Sound wise, the Kevlars are warmer sounding, some would say a bit richer. The Utopias are a bit more neutral in sound, but they are a bit anemic in the 200hz to 400hz region. This gives the impression of a more detailed sound stage.
Dynamically, they are a bit more different. If you want to play loud, the Utopias will effortlessly play anything. They have an incredible ability to play at 10/10ths volume and not sound strained. The Kevlars I've found to sound strained at just over 8/10ths volume.
2 ways are a lot easier to install than 3 ways. I won't get into too much theory on it, but there have been times where I've wished I bought the 2 way Utopia kit.
Adam
Dynamically, they are a bit more different. If you want to play loud, the Utopias will effortlessly play anything. They have an incredible ability to play at 10/10ths volume and not sound strained. The Kevlars I've found to sound strained at just over 8/10ths volume.
2 ways are a lot easier to install than 3 ways. I won't get into too much theory on it, but there have been times where I've wished I bought the 2 way Utopia kit.
Adam
04-04-2004, 07:54 AM
#106
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Ok you've got me spooled up here...
First off, I'm not using the passive X.O. supplied with the kit, but a 3 way active X.O.
I've found that in my car, frequencies between about 100hz up to 4 or 5khz are very dependant on path lengths to image well. Above 4 or 5khz seems to be more deppendant on intensity.(volume)
The 4" midrange in the Utopia 3 way kit doesn't have the excursion or cone area to realistically reproduce frequencies below 200hz at typical listening levels. So that is where I have it crossed over with the midbass drivers. But...the midbass drivers are mounted in the doors, so I lose some imaging quality from about 200hz down.
The solution is to either increase excursion on the 4" or increase cone area by going to a larger driver. The common solution is to go with a 6" midbass mounted in the kicks to solve this problem. This creates another problem though. In general, the smaller the driver, the higher up it can play uniformly ON and OFF axis. If you look at the response curve of most drivers, you will see on axis and 30 degrees off axis plotted. The "knee" point where the 2 response curves separate towards higher frequency is generally where you want to put your cross over. You can play that driver higher, but the frequency response from different positions in the car will vary greatly. This makes the driver extremely directional or "beemy". Looking at the "knee point" of various 6" drivers, you will see this point to be about 3khz. The leaves the top part of the path lenght dependent frequency spectrum poorly covered. You could remedy this by running the tweeters crossed over at this "knee" point and mount them next to the mids. This creates another real world problem that is hard to work around.(although there are some really good sounding cars that have found ways to do this well) The problem is image height. When you are parked with the seats all the way back it isn't that bad, but I've found this setup to be a problem in my car driving. The high frequencies are muffled from my legs and it images horribly.
An all around compromise is to run a well setup 3 way with the tweeters on the A-pillars. I did say compromise...because it doesn't give the perfect phase characteristics of mounting the tweeter next to the mid. But it sounds pretty good in my car when I'm parked and when I'm driving. Using the smaller midrange driver in the 3 way allows you to play your mids higher in the kicks and still get good bass response from the door mounted midbass drivers. Through in some well set up digital time alignment, and everything snaps into focus.
I know I haven't explained all aspects of the differences between a 2 way and 3 way, but I hope I've given some food for thought. If you are just getting into car audio as a hobby (as I am) I'd tackle a high end 2 way set like the Utopia 165W kit before trying a 3 way. You'll learn a lot of good lessons. YThat way you won't totally screw up a 3 way install if you decide to take that route in the future. (as I did)
Adam
First off, I'm not using the passive X.O. supplied with the kit, but a 3 way active X.O.
I've found that in my car, frequencies between about 100hz up to 4 or 5khz are very dependant on path lengths to image well. Above 4 or 5khz seems to be more deppendant on intensity.(volume)
The 4" midrange in the Utopia 3 way kit doesn't have the excursion or cone area to realistically reproduce frequencies below 200hz at typical listening levels. So that is where I have it crossed over with the midbass drivers. But...the midbass drivers are mounted in the doors, so I lose some imaging quality from about 200hz down.
The solution is to either increase excursion on the 4" or increase cone area by going to a larger driver. The common solution is to go with a 6" midbass mounted in the kicks to solve this problem. This creates another problem though. In general, the smaller the driver, the higher up it can play uniformly ON and OFF axis. If you look at the response curve of most drivers, you will see on axis and 30 degrees off axis plotted. The "knee" point where the 2 response curves separate towards higher frequency is generally where you want to put your cross over. You can play that driver higher, but the frequency response from different positions in the car will vary greatly. This makes the driver extremely directional or "beemy". Looking at the "knee point" of various 6" drivers, you will see this point to be about 3khz. The leaves the top part of the path lenght dependent frequency spectrum poorly covered. You could remedy this by running the tweeters crossed over at this "knee" point and mount them next to the mids. This creates another real world problem that is hard to work around.(although there are some really good sounding cars that have found ways to do this well) The problem is image height. When you are parked with the seats all the way back it isn't that bad, but I've found this setup to be a problem in my car driving. The high frequencies are muffled from my legs and it images horribly.
An all around compromise is to run a well setup 3 way with the tweeters on the A-pillars. I did say compromise...because it doesn't give the perfect phase characteristics of mounting the tweeter next to the mid. But it sounds pretty good in my car when I'm parked and when I'm driving. Using the smaller midrange driver in the 3 way allows you to play your mids higher in the kicks and still get good bass response from the door mounted midbass drivers. Through in some well set up digital time alignment, and everything snaps into focus.
I know I haven't explained all aspects of the differences between a 2 way and 3 way, but I hope I've given some food for thought. If you are just getting into car audio as a hobby (as I am) I'd tackle a high end 2 way set like the Utopia 165W kit before trying a 3 way. You'll learn a lot of good lessons. YThat way you won't totally screw up a 3 way install if you decide to take that route in the future. (as I did)
Adam
04-04-2004, 09:46 AM
#108
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