New install

[Beddo88]

Thats good to hear stu!! I'm now plannign on sound insulating the doors too, although i have now resigned myself to er.. ignoring a budget par se. When you say you prefer shorter speaker cables, does it make a difference? or is it purely a personal prefence?

I'm used to routing cables as a job, so shouldn't be a problem lol although i guess running it all from the boot could be interesting as there aren't too many holes to route the cables through? Are the crossovers loacted between the speaker wire and the speakers?

Sorry for the newbie questions, never properly installed audio stuff before and dont wanna get it wrong!

[Junglist]

So you don't have any tweeters? Where do you get your treble?

[Beddo88]

I currently have a pair of jbl 6x4s coaxials, so they do everything. I have them sat at the rear cos they provide much better bass with the boot as a form of enclosure, they sound rubbish in the door!!

As you can see, its not an ideal setup. Hence the need for something a little better spec!

[Junglist]

That tweeter question was aimed at stu.

You put the crossover before the speaker so it only reciever the signal you want it to produce. Not sure where you plucad it if you're amping the speakers independently, whether it's before or after the amp. Probably still after.

[fonzooorooo]

Assuming a speaker level crossover with wound components inside, place it after the amp, and to minimise cable runs, as close to the speakers as you can. If it's an electronic crossover, before the amp, and it'll send seperate signals out to the amp for LF and HF drivers. Of course, there's WAY more wiring that way, and more channels of amplification are required. (more low level, before the amp, and 2 sets of speaker cables per channel.)

As for my query to JBL, you'll not be too surprised to hear I've had no reply!

I've been reading stuff on the ICE forums, and there're people on there stating that an oval speaker is more prone to breaking up than a round cone... Having read the words, and considered them, I can see the logic at high dB levels, as the loading on the outer suspension is uneven. To get over that, the suspension would have to change in section around the "sides" and "ends" of the oval cone. There's no way the manufacturers are going to start doing that on a £40 pair of speakers!

Upshot is I now see WHY a round speaker (component or coaxil) will sound better than an oval one. As for why a component sounds better than a coaxil, it'll all come down to the crossover - on a (2 way) coaxil, the tweeter normally has a capacitor in line, which acts as a high pass filter. The woofer is fed full range, so thre'll be issues around this trequency range. With a component setup, you are more likely to run into time alignment issues. The coaxil speaker is one of the ultimate solutions to this...

Has anyone tried running seperate crossovers on round coaxil speakers? Should be easy enough with a few minutes and a soldering iron... Given similar quality of drivers, the sound should be similar, or perhaps even better than components - and without the need to site seperate tweeters.

[stu.gtx]

When you're routing the cables - best to take the front seats out. Run power cables down one side of the 'transmission tunnel' and RCA/speaker cables down the other. Some people say speaker and power down the same side but up to you.

I'm not sure how you'd get away with short speaker cables if your amping the front door speakers, unless you keep your amps somewhere in the front of the car??

My tweeters are on the dash - one in each corner. My cross-overs are behind the dash.

[Junglist]

Ah, didn't realise you had any tweeters fitted! Yes, I do have an amp in the front, in the passenger footwell under the mat. That powers the fronts (treble) and the other powers the sub which it's attached to. The rears (mid) run off the head unit.

[stu.gtx]

Components consist of tweeters, mid drivers and crossovers.

I'm not too sure I understand your set-up. Do you have only high end frequencies playing through your front speakers, mid-range through the rears and then a sub in the boot? What speaker set-up do you have?

[Junglist]

Yes that's right. Treble front, mid rear, bass boot. Volumes and delays adjusted so they all sound like they're in the centre of the car.

I thought components were the ones that weren't combined speakers but single driver speakers and that coaxials and 3-ways were the ones that were combined. Have I got that wrong?

Anyway, I've got 6x4s front and rear, what I thought were called coaxials. Just normal speakers like the standards but better. The crossover in the head unit is splitting the frequency signal. My fronts and sub are amped, my rears are running directly from the head unit. I personally thought the amp would be better powering the rears but I was advised the tweeters need the power to retain maximum clarity whereas the mids are just "filler" sounds so not so important to amp. My head unit's got 26 watts RMS per channel anyway so not short of power (60w x 4 peak).

[stu.gtx]

Components have seperate mids, tweeters and crossovers where co-ax are 'all in one'. It sounds like you do have co-ax speakers if they're 5x4 and have a built-in tweeter.

That sounds like a mad set up - will have to have a listen next year at some of the shows.

[Junglist]

Yeah, it sounds ace. Took advice from talk audio forums and no-one piped up disagreeing with the advice. Seems to have worked. I guess if you get the levels right and set the time delays so that all the speakers are "virtually" the same distance from you, it shouldn't matter where they're positioned so long as the left and right's correct.

[Dutch GT]

First time I heard of a set up like that, but I wasn't convinced that everything in the bottom corner of the door would sound better than having tweeters in the dash or mirror corners... but it does, the dash is like the stage!

Time correction is great too, it's like the band all shuffling about until they are right in front of you, I guess that is key for your set up like you say. Strange thing sound, especially in a glass and metal box.

The only problem I have with mine is that I feel like a teenager every time I open the boot and everyone sees my sub! I must get around to making it stealth.

[Junglist]

Me too. Don't have the time/skills. Too many other things I need to do first too!

[Beddo88]

Ok.. so what we're syaing here is that i could just use the tweeters at the front, the midrange in the rear and the sub in the boot? Theoretically with just the 6x4s?

Or have i misunderstood?

[Mr Funk]

The only problem I have with mine is that I feel like a teenager every time I open the boot and everyone sees my sub! I must get around to making it stealth.

Stick it in the footwell like Ive done (hardly the most practical option I'll grant you) or build it into the rear panel behind the rear wheel arch. Some fibre glass and acoustic carpet and bob is theorectical uncle