Hello from Tennessee

[Nerdy1980s]

Hello everybody. I'm new obviously.

I'm a bit of an audiophile, but not in car audio. I was more of an audiophile about 10 years ago when I was building my own home theater set up. So I'm rusty at best.

Anyway, I always thought my car, a 2013 Chevy Impala, had decent speakers. (I think they're Bose, but not sure). And compared to my last vehicle, from 1998, it was a step up.
When I say decent, I mean the speakers don't start sounding really bad at the highest volume on the car, like the car I had from 1998. -I can't remember the make/model of it, since it was given to me a few months earlier after my even older car died, and I only drove it long enough to find a newer (used) car at a price I could afford at the time.

Of course, occasionally, a pickup truck would pass by my house, and rumble the neighborhood, but outside of that, I never thought about car audio. (And even then I was thinking it had to be a teenager.)

As you can tell by my username, I'm no spring chicken.

Getting to the point: I was riding with a friend who had a just bought a used luxury car, built in 2004. (For $6000, less than 55k miles), It had all sorts of nice features I didn't know even existed in 2004. Bottom line: I was floored about how good the speakers sounded. I immediately realized the speakers on my car were total junk.

NOTE: I've always thought Bose was terrible anyway. In home theater audio, Bose is the stain on the bottom of the shoes of other, better brands.

So here I am, trying to educate myself about car audio, so I can be more savvy when I talk to a car audio shop. BTW: I had a cousin that tried to install his own car audio, about 20 years ago, and didn't do it right and burned his car to a smouldering hulk.

Not sure of my budget, but I'd expect, with labor, between $500 and $700 just to replace the stock speakers with some really good speakers. I can't afford to have everthing changed at once. Plus I'm undecided about a sub-woofer, and I don't have a reason to change the stereo yet. I would get a new stereo if I got a sub-woofer installed. Actually, I might bump that budget up some, I'll need to have an amplifier installed also. I'll have to ask the car audio guy about that.

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[Buck 5,000+ posts]

I'm basically from the Nashville area, originally.

I can't stand BOSE's home audio. All proprietary doodoo, if you ask me. No, tiny little speakers don't produce amazing full range sound. No, your equipment isn't remotely good enough to not just use speaker wires instead of only-BOSE RCA like connections. Reminds me of Apple or Ford's 5.4L spark plug idea lol.

Welcome!

 

[Nerdy1980s]

I'm basically from the Nashville area, originally.

I can't stand BOSE's home audio. All proprietary doodoo, if you ask me. No, tiny little speakers don't produce amazing full range sound. No, your equipment isn't remotely good enough to not just use speaker wires instead of only-BOSE RCA like connections. Reminds me of Apple or Ford's 5.4L spark plug idea lol.

Welcome!

Ya, Bose is complete junk. When I was cobbling together a home theater, mostly using Ebay, (Paradigm MilleniaOne speakers, UltraCube 10", and an Anthem reciever), it quickly came to my attention how crappy BOSE was. They're more than happy to have someone spend over $1,000 for what amounts to 2.5" speakers with paper cones, and a crap subwoofer.

 

[Buck 5,000+ posts]

Ya, Bose is complete junk. When I was cobbling together a home theater, mostly using Ebay, (Paradigm MilleniaOne speakers, UltraCube 10", and an Anthem reciever), it quickly came to my attention how crappy BOSE was. They're more than happy to have someone spend over $1,000 for what amounts to 2.5" speakers with paper cones, and a crap subwoofer.

I will say, BOSE does have some good sub setups that I've heard personally. They have a parallel 6th order they use with two small subs, like 6.5's or 5.25's, and it's actually very good. I've heard more than one of these type sub systems, but that was the only part that was very good, lol. I'm sure it's costs wayyyy more than it needs to.

I'd rather buy Kicker 6x9's and put them in a pre-fab 6x9 sealed box than use Bose's crappy tiny speakers.

Here's my Onkyo towers man, if you're interested. I'm gonna work soon on my 8" sub I have here in a sealed box, but these towers are how you actually make beautiful sound. They resonate very well all the way down to 40-45 hz. Those 3x 5.25's have fiberglass cones, are really light moving mass it seems, very punchy, and the towers are ported very well. These towers are just so well balanced for what I do with them. I have no crossovers on this towers, besides what they come with inside. I don't even have any EQ running, no a single bit of tuning on these, because they just don't need it.

I wanna make my own tower design sometime, to see if I can even get close to these babies. They have about 100w per tower available from my inexpensive 2 channel Sony Receiver, I think they are 150 watt rated:

 

[Nerdy1980s]

The MilliaOne speakers are pretty small, but well built, and they fit above the door, where the front door swings into. They sound great though.

On Bose: The fact they make a 6.5" sub-woofer pretty much say's it all. But Bose isn't just about the sound, which they sound pretty good if your not an audiophile. But the problem is they're making good sounding speakers using junk build quality, and selling them for nearly the same price of other brands that actually do use good quality parts to build audio equipment. It's only after someone listens to a really good system, and compares the cost of a quality system to their BOSE system, do they realize they got jacked.

I think the fact they resort to having BOSE stores in malls (or used to, anyway), shows that they're making such a profit margin, they can open stores in malls (high rent), in order to offload their junk speakers to consumers that don't know better.'



EDIT: It's impossible to really hear the difference unless your listening to the clip on a high end audio system. But even if it was being compared to the MilleniaOne speakers (those are also reference level), you'd hear the difference. But just looking at the BOSE speakers, you can see how tiny and insignificant they are.

I did find a clip here, that compares the BOSE to MilleniaOne speakers.

 

[Buck 5,000+ posts]

The MilliaOne speakers are pretty small, but well built, and they fit above the door, where the front door swings into. They sound great though.

On Bose: The fact they make a 6.5" sub-woofer pretty much say's it all. But Bose isn't just about the sound, which they sound pretty good if your not an audiophile. But the problem is they're making good sounding speakers using junk build quality, and selling them for nearly the same price of other brands that actually do use good quality parts to build audio equipment. It's only after someone listens to a really good system, and compares the cost of a quality system to their BOSE system, do they realize they got jacked.

I think the fact they resort to having BOSE stores in malls (or used to, anyway), shows that they're making such a profit margin, they can open stores in malls (high rent), in order to offload their junk speakers to consumers that don't know better.'



EDIT: It's impossible to really hear the difference unless your listening to the clip on a high end audio system. But even if it was being compared to the MilleniaOne speakers (those are also reference level), you'd hear the difference. But just looking at the BOSE speakers, you can see how tiny and insignificant they are.

I did find a clip here, that compares the BOSE to MilleniaOne speakers.

It takes space to make sound. It's silly when people think small speakers will sound good, to me. You literally have to energize air to make sound, and small speakers make tiny sounds haha.

Good info

 

[Buck 5,000+ posts]

I seriously plan to start developing my own horns soon, more for home audio. We're gonna use some 6.5 subs and just do it until we get what we want, and I'll document the math for myself so I can keep track of the changes between designs and what it all means. Horns aren't necessarily too hard, not bass horns, but I just want to make sure I know exactly how they're going to play, as I manipulate the designs. It'll be fun, hopefully I know what I'm doing

 

[Nerdy1980s]

It takes space to make sound. It's silly when people think small speakers will sound good, to me. You literally have to energize air to make sound, and small speakers make tiny sounds haha.

Good info

Actually, what smaller speakers do is drop some of the lower frequencies, but the sub-woofer can easily compensate for it.
That's not saying larger speakers, that can properly do all the midrange frequencies, won't sound better overall. But since I was bounded by speaker placement, the MilleniaOne speakers sound pretty good. They are reference speakers, which is to say they conform to some arbitrary quality and sound for the size of the speaker. I did get the UltraCube 10, which handily overcompensates for the missing mid ranges. There some overlap between midranges, even on a small speaker, and the subwoofer, so it's hard to tell unless comparing directly to a better sound system, side by side. But cost/quality, it's a damn fine system.

 

[Buck 5,000+ posts]

Actually, what smaller speakers do is drop some of the lower frequencies, but the sub-woofer can easily compensate for it.
That's not saying larger speakers, that can properly do all the midrange frequencies, won't sound better overall. But since I was bounded by speaker placement, the MilleniaOne speakers sound pretty good. They are reference speakers, which is to say they conform to some arbitrary quality and sound for the size of the speaker. I did get the UltraCube 10, which handily overcompensates for the missing mid ranges. There some overlap between midranges, even on a small speaker, and the subwoofer, so it's hard to tell unless comparing directly to a better sound system, side by side. But cost/quality, it's a damn fine system.

I truly like 4 way systems with a dedicated midbass. Often times, with systems that play low bass, there's quite a difference between the subs and where the components meet. You wind up with a big gap sometimes between 60-80 hz to maybe 120-150 hz or so. I'd rather have a sub that plays 20 hz to 50 or 60 hz, and then have dedicated midbasses with some power to do a smooth db level transition between louder bass up through the midbass to the slightly quieter midrange. Using the midbasses as a volume blender, basically, if that makes sense. Good midbass is the hardest thing to achieve in most systems, from my experience.

 

[Nerdy1980s]

In an ideal world, I'd have won the lottery the day after I graduated high school. But in the real world, people have to work with what they have. I certainly wasn't going to raze my house and build a new house just so the front door wasn't an inconvenience to ideal speaker size and placement.

 

[1aespinoza Premium Member]

Good midbass is the hardest thing to achieve in most systems, from my experience.

I have experienced that using class A/B amps on subs noticeably closes this gap on 3 way setups. Some claim that class D amps play as good as class A/B, but my ears say otherwise. I do have full range class Ds which sound quite good, but on sub duty it is different.

 

[Buck 5,000+ posts]

I have experienced that using class A/B amps on subs noticeably closes this gap on 3 way setups. Some claim that class D amps play as good as class A/B, but my ears say otherwise. I do have full range class Ds which sound quite good, but on sub duty it is different.

I never thought of that. Maybe AB amps have a further bandwidth or something?

 

[1aespinoza Premium Member]

I never thought of that. Maybe AB amps have a further bandwidth or something?

I think it has more to do with dampening control. I have read that it is an unquantifiable term akin to RMS, sensetivity, et cetera. But it makes sense when you think of amplifier strapping, where one becomes the positive the other negative. The better the amps, the more control they will have over the sub. And IMO midrange is all about precision control of the voice coil.

 

[GaryClark]

In an ideal world, I'd have won the lottery the day after I graduated high school. But in the real world, people have to work with what they have. I certainly wasn't going to raze my house and build a new house just so the front door wasn't an inconvenience to ideal speaker size and placement.

Really you have won a lotter? If yes, how much?

 

[Nerdy1980s]

Really you have won a lotter? If yes, how much?

Please reread my post.

I live in the real world, not the lottery winning world. Unless you count $25 bucks as a major win.