Unhappy with the sound quality of my install. Where can I improve it? Wiring?

[Blake Vandercar]

get a pioneer gm 8704 its a solid 135 dollar buy that'll sh*t on most offerings out there, you can never have too much power, you can always back off the gains. When you have an amp working at 100% capacity, your distortion levels will be a lot higher, your amp efficiency tanks and runs hotter.  You want to have a lot of headroom so you can get the clean output you want with a squeaky clean signal and have all your equipment lasting a lot longer being FAR from any kind of clipping while getting the output you need.  There is no overpowering because you directly control the power your amp puts out via gain settings however you have headroom for dynamic peaks that draw more power which usually puts your underpowered amp into clipping territory which screws up the sound as well. 

Yup was considering getting a 75W amp for all those reasons. Ended up trying out the 100W Pioneer one you recommended. Sounds good so far, but I still definitely need EQing to boost the lows and/or reduce the highs— turning up the volume gives me the lows I want, so I know they’re *there*, which is good.. but the tweeters at that volume are unbearable.

Also, bridging the inputs results in no tweeter hiss! So you were right. So I now know that the hiss is coming from somewhere before the amp in the signal chain— hopefully from the audiocontrol LOC and not the HU.. we’ll see if the Dayton DAP fixes that!

Theres still a super high “dog whistle” frequency noise near 20k though. Barely noticeable, but could lead to like, subconscious headaches. At some point I’ll probably put a value-calculated capacitor across the tweeter to filter this out.

 

[Blake Vandercar]

get a pioneer gm 8704 its a solid 135 dollar buy that'll sh*t on most offerings out there, you can never have too much power, you can always back off the gains. When you have an amp working at 100% capacity, your distortion levels will be a lot higher, your amp efficiency tanks and runs hotter.  You want to have a lot of headroom so you can get the clean output you want with a squeaky clean signal and have all your equipment lasting a lot longer being FAR from any kind of clipping while getting the output you need.  There is no overpowering because you directly control the power your amp puts out via gain settings however you have headroom for dynamic peaks that draw more power which usually puts your underpowered amp into clipping territory which screws up the sound as well. 

The dayton is actually waaaay superior to the rockford I've used both. Rockford one is trash by comparison works like 50% of the times, all the units have bluetooth connection problems to the app.  

I'd recommend just getting the bluetooth dongle anyways because you can do all your tuning on your smartphone rather than plugging a laptop every time you need to tune.  Also you can just see the difference yourself between wired connection and the bluetooth connection and see the major difference yourself.  Again you'll still run into the same issues if you do wired straight to the stock head unit, nothing will change other than you getting some tuning options. Your overall resolution is still low with the stock head unit meaning no matter how much you tune, its still never going to amount to anywhere close to a high resolution signal from the dongle. You'll just need to experience it yourself.

Most problems have been fixed! Dayton DSP is great.

• I found out the noise was in fact from my head unit-- So the solution was to keep the gains low on both the DSP and amp, meaning I usually have my head unit volume fluctuating around 3/4ths max at normal listening level-- which has resulted in better SQ as well of course. And if I ever do need it louder than the gains allow (tailgates or something) I can bring the DSP gain up thru the app!
  
• I found out that the rear speaker signal from the HU had much more lower-mids for the door woofers (probably because the stock tweeters were wired in parallel with the woofers in the front)-- so I've gained MUCH more lower mids by using the DSP to just use the R/L rear channel inputs.
  
• Tuning the EQ on the DSP has allowed me to greatly reduce the volume of the tweeters. I basically have it -6dB to -9dB from 1000 Hz up.
  

However, there are still some notes here and there in songs that really sting my ears from the tweeters! Way too shrill sometimes! Annoying. So I have a question for you:

I haven't mounted my tweeters yet. What if I mount my tweeters a few inches from the door woofers, aimed slightly up and in, as many people online recommend-- but later on, get a 2 CH amp and 2 additional high-quality tweeters mounted higher for imaging purposes? Instead of using the tweeters I have as the imaging ones. These would be on their own channels of the DSP, so I could control their crossover/EQ/time delay totally independently. Are there any downsides to this solution/ would you recommend it? Or would the 4 tweeters cause interference with eachother, ie should I just skip the hassle and mount the component tweeters I already have higher and continue to fine-tune the EQ output...

 

[Jeffdachef 5,000+ posts]

Most problems have been fixed! Dayton DSP is great.

• I found out the noise was in fact from my head unit-- So the solution was to keep the gains low on both the DSP and amp, meaning I usually have my head unit volume fluctuating around 3/4ths max at normal listening level-- which has resulted in better SQ as well of course. And if I ever do need it louder than the gains allow (tailgates or something) I can bring the DSP gain up thru the app!
  
• I found out that the rear speaker signal from the HU had much more lower-mids for the door woofers (probably because the stock tweeters were wired in parallel with the woofers in the front)-- so I've gained MUCH more lower mids by using the DSP to just use the R/L rear channel inputs.
  
• Tuning the EQ on the DSP has allowed me to greatly reduce the volume of the tweeters. I basically have it -6dB to -9dB from 1000 Hz up.
  

However, there are still some notes here and there in songs that really sting my ears from the tweeters! Way too shrill sometimes! Annoying. So I have a question for you:

I haven't mounted my tweeters yet. What if I mount my tweeters a few inches from the door woofers, aimed slightly up and in, as many people online recommend-- but later on, get a 2 CH amp and 2 additional high-quality tweeters mounted higher for imaging purposes? Instead of using the tweeters I have as the imaging ones. These would be on their own channels of the DSP, so I could control their crossover/EQ/time delay totally independently. Are there any downsides to this solution/ would you recommend it? Or would the 4 tweeters cause interference with eachother, ie should I just skip the hassle and mount the component tweeters I already have higher and continue to fine-tune the EQ output...

so the way its setup defeats the purpose of using a DSP, you need to have tweeters and mids on their own channels, you cannot wire anything parallel to anything it'll sound like garbage with no blend between mid and tweets, The main thing you use to fix shrill tweeters is crossovers not EQ. EQ is like the cherry on top. 

 

[Blake Vandercar]

so the way its setup defeats the purpose of using a DSP, you need to have tweeters and mids on their own channels, you cannot wire anything parallel to anything it'll sound like garbage with no blend between mid and tweets, The main thing you use to fix shrill tweeters is crossovers not EQ. EQ is like the cherry on top. 

No it’s a component package system that includes an external passive crossover for the woofers and tweeters. No idea what the crossover freq is. Sadly there’s no -6dB switch on the crossovers like there is for some.

 

[Jeffdachef 5,000+ posts]

No it’s a component package system that includes an external passive crossover for the woofers and tweeters. No idea what the crossover freq is. Sadly there’s no -6dB switch on the crossovers like there is for some.

Yeah get rid of the passive crossover its useless you get zero blend between mid and tweeter with component packages like that. Absolute useless garbage.  Run everything active network crossovers

 

[Blake Vandercar]

Yeah get rid of the passive crossover its useless you get zero blend between mid and tweeter with component packages like that. Absolute useless garbage. Run everything active network crossovers

I got that bluetooth dongle for the DSP just so I could compare SQ with that of the head unit as an audio source. Not a HUGE difference *between the two*, which is great news.

But I’ve been still trying to tweak the sound while using the BT audio source. Since I’ve isolated the problem down quite a bit, I’ve decided to make a new thread: https://www.caraudio.com/threads/ba...on’t-even-filter-freqs-is-this-common.602284/

If you check it out you’ll see that I’m starting to think you’re absolutely right. I just really, REALLY don’t understand why passive crossovers are so popular and recommended (by people, by Crutchfield, etc)— clearly they must sound good to some people? Man, it’s like I got a bad box of speakers from the bottom of the bin, or a knockoff from China or something...

 

[2RZ-FE 10+ year member]

Passive is way more popular that's why they still do it. Not everyone has active capabilities.

A passive takes your high pass signal from the amp and filters it to where the tweeter won't play below a certain frequency it is designed for. Any tweeter adjustments if they have them is only a volume level control. Not sure passives do much for mids since you're already sending in a 80hz high pass signal in from your amp.

Something not right with your setup otherwise everyone else with them would be having the same issues.

Go active if you have the means.