Ok, As of now in my car there is 2 stock nokia 8 ohms up front, and 2 3-way sony explodes in the back. I do not need to be told to get that $hit out of there as I know I need to do it. I got the sonys for $10 from a chick who worked at best buy...Better than stock (i guess) Anyhow, now piecing my system together, i need to know about speakers. I understand components are the best way to go because they have dedicated drivers. Question is, to get a superb system (probably just want a good front, and no rear speakers) do you buy a packaged set of components like Infinity Kappa 50.5CS or do you buy mids/tweeters/crossover seperately? I would think it would be best to pick out the speakers seperately, but I have ZERO experience with doing this. Help a car audio talk ninja out. h34r:
I personally reccomend buying a set. Piecing them together never sounds as nice as a well designed set. The voice of the set is in the crossover, and the crossover is designed around specific drivers, with their behaviors, nuances, and little peckadillos all ironed out in those few components in the crossover... you simply cannot achieve that with a PE crossover. There is a guy on e-bay selling some 6.5 Cadence Neos for $90 (hopefully someone here will link you as I don't have it). They are the best deal on the market right now.. They are worth their $300 MSRP, and to pass up a deal like that, if you are in the need for some good comps, is foolish.
I agree, buy a packaged set is my vote. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=5718300471 Is that the link Seth? BTW, did you get the fuse James?
Yeah a set is definately the way to go unless you want to take the time (and money) to bi-amp them and get an active crossover to run before the amp for the best sq... but that gets costly... lots of wires too
I got the fuse, thank you. Too bad my car has 5.25 openings and not 6 or I would probably get in on those.
I dunno. If i get something they must be 5.25 because I will definately be moving them to my new vehicle and will replace them with the stocks i still have. new vehicle takes 5.25 as well...however there is one in the kicks and 2 on the door.. beats the hell outta me what it is.
Eh dont cut. Just make an adapter plate out of some mdf. Start out by transfering the mounting holes of the stock location to a piece of mdf and then mark the cutout for the 6.5 andcut it out. Then attach the adapter to the car and the new 6.5 to the adapter. Ta-da!
Think about this - your car accepts 5.25" speakers in the doors, so you have an opening that is about that big, give or take a little. So in order to fit 6.5" speakers in your door you have 2 options - cut the hole bigger or make a baffle (just an MDF ring) and raise the surface that your speaker mounts into. The baffle will raise the surface that your speaker mounts into and in effect SHOULD allow you to fit in bigger speakers. As a crude analogy, think of your speaker as an ice cream cone. The opening in the cone is where the speaker cone is and as you move down the cone to the tip, the diameter of the cone, or the speaker body, decreases. So if you raise the surface where the speaker mounts in the door, hypothetically you should be able to fit larger speakers in your doors without cutting the metal.
I actually thought about his post and it smacked me right in the face as I was falling asleep last nite, however, the site was down last nite so I couldnt post. This just extends the speaker out more correct? What happens to the factory grills? I know on my car now there is no room at all to even fit my rear 5.25 because they push up against the factory grill which is one big piece of plastic. Just use the new speaker grills?
You got it, the baffle just brings the speaker out away from the factory mounting surface. Getting everything to fit where it looks good is where it gets tricky. In my car, there is lots of room between the factory grilles and the speaker surround, even with the 3/4" baffle I used. So you might have to do a little custom work to make it all come together.
Is midbass and midrange speakers the same thing? Im trying to figure out what the 3rd speaker (2 on door, 1 in kick) is on the vehicle Im looking at.
On a stock vehicle - it could be anything. Chances are VERY good that one or more of the drivers aren't really productive, at any rate... and chances are better that even if they are, their locations aren't very productive. :detective: Stock audio systems aren't designed by audiophiles or even audio technicians, but rather their layouts and locations determined by interior designers (who want the speaker locations to make their door panels look good), and marketing executives (who believe people will be more impressed by the look of how saying 'more speakers!' on paper looks, and therefore will sell more cars, than a more acoustically accurate audio system). Sad but true. But as basic terminology goes: Tweeter is the high frequency driver. Small cone, covering the highest octave. Midrange is the next smallest driver, covering the frequencies from where the tweeter leaves off, down as low as it is capable of... whether that is to hand off to a midbass or to a subwoofer. Midbass covers the frequencies from where the midrange leaves off, down to the subwoofer if there is one, or else covers the bass frequencies itself. Subwoofer covers the very bottom octaves. Of course, all this is meaningful ONLY if the speakers have a crossover employed that actually SENDS only the correct frequencies to the appropriate driver - which generally stock vehicles do NOT have (I can't think of one). Otherwise, it's a chaotic mess, having multiple speakers... as one speaker will reach its limits before another... the entire system being limited by that weakest link in the chain. The worst of all, rather than the best. (this is also why it is not advisable to mix any make/model of subwoofers in a single install, which you'll occasionally see people inquire about ) And so it goes, in "premium system" land. :bag: Best bet is to find a component set that suits your listening expectations, desires, and budget... ...and don't be afraid to ditch any of the speakers or speaker locations... you'll simply want to apply a couple layers of damping material over any vacated holes, so they don't prevent the door from working as a proper baffle. ...and while on that train of thought - that's something you should do on your inner door skin anyway - the sound of any comp set you get will be limited fundamentally by how well your door is working like a baffle for the speaker - primarily limiting how much bass the speaker can produce. You could have subwoofers mounted in the door, and if the door wasn't behaving as a baffle properly, it wouldn't make any more bass than a flea market 4" driver in the same location. OK, well maybe a little more. But seriously - at that point, cancellation is the issue, from the sound coming off the rear of the driver... the speaker cancelling with itself. The install is the most important part of your component set. B)
