advice on coaxial 5x7/ 6x8

[sam_b03 10+ year member]

My little brother is going to buy a 2012 mustang with the shaker 500 stereo option. He is wanting a little better mids without cutting up his car. No amps no wires, no subs. The front doors have stock 6x8's but it looks like most higher quality companies don't make a 6x8 but it a appears that 5x7 interchange in the holes. I found a set of Image Dynamics CTX 57 and some Polk MM571's that are both in his price range. Going on the tendancy that he gravitates toward warmer basy heavy headphones and eq's everything in that direction, I recommended that ID's going off that the reviews I have heard from the rest of their line. Was I correct in doing so? Are there any other low wattage coaxial speakers in these sizes that I am missing that can be had for sub $150. I think the stock HU pushes a whopping 12 rms.

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[Bettr n' Revrse 5,000+ posts]

Honestly I wouldnt bother...

 

[zako 10+ year member]

My little brother is going to buy a 2012 mustang with the shaker 500 stereo option. He is wanting a little better mids without cutting up his car. No amps no wires, no subs.

The way I see it, either buy a car with the minimal audio system, and then use the saved money for an all out upgrade (the the tune of at least 2-3 thousands if you want to match and beat their premium system, with good amplifiers, good DSP, front components, good subwoofer, etc) or buy a car with a premium stereo system and leave it as is. The thing is that the time when buying a $100 stereo and a $100 set of speakers was considered an 'upgrade' is long gone. Car companies are waking up to car audio and putting up some competent packages. While a lot of their audio equipment is cheaply made, a lot of thought is put into making it sound very good with the least amount of dollars spent. Ford's mids do put out a lot of bass for what they are. I don't think you can match them with aftermarket speakers without an amplifier. Most aftermarket speakers are quite power hungry.

By the way, a coaxial speaker is not a 'mid'. It's a full range speaker that already has its own tweeter, etc. You will make sound worse in some respects if you put it in place of a simple woofer (without its own tweeter).

Having said that, there exist tons of 5x7 coaxial speakers. Most of them need a good amplifier to work well. It's the 2-way 5x7/6x8 _components_ that are hard to find. There exist only so many options. Entry level: Infinity Kappa, Infinity Reference, JBL GTO. Mid-grade: Image Dynamics xs-57, JL Audio C5-570. Of course, you can also use a round speaker with an adapter.

 

[sam_b03 10+ year member]

he is getting it used. 6K miles for 21,500. The ID is rated for 5 to75 watts which is lower than most of the other speakers I have seen. the Polks are 2.7 ohm and rated for 15-90. I figured that lower resistance would still get it in the ball park. Yes a small amp wouldn't hurt but he isn't interested in running wires and tearing his pretty much new car apart. He graduates college in May and knows that he will be moving somewhere in the not too distant future. He has been searching around on the mustang forums and has heard people talking about what an upgrade it is to replace the stockers with pioneers. I told him if you are going to do it atleast get a high quality brand and showed him a couple. There are 8in sub's in the doors already that suit his needs on the low end. He also said that it sounds like Ford wired in a cross over so the rear deck speakers on see low frequencies. He was thinking about replace those too, but it sounds like it would be a waste of time.

 

[zako 10+ year member]

Shouldn't the 8 inch 'subwoofer' take care of midbass as well? Or is it being prevented by crossovers to do so? If you could fit a good aftermarket 8 inch midbass driver, I'd take that route. One really good one is Peerless SLS, but it's 8ohm.

To me this sounds like a sweet car to do an all out upgrade, but I don't know what good is replacing just one mid. A car with 3-way fronts and 8 inch midbass is a treasure trove for someone interested in building a high end DIY system. I could see myself going with a good 8 inch midbass, 4-inch or 5-inch mid, and a tweeter, running fully active with a processor like JBL MS-8 or bit one.

I have heard my parents older 2006 Ford Five Hundred car with stock stereo. It's muddy and imaging and staging are completely off, but I thought that it would be hard to find a driver that would match the bass output without an amplifier. It seems like the OEM drivers are completely different from what's available on the market.

 

[keep_hope_alive Premium Member]

if it were me, i would take Zako's advice above

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instead of buying normal component/coaxial systems - i would replace drivers one pair at a time - starting with the front mids. i'd experiment with several raw drivers from online sellers like Parts Express and Madisound. You can get a large selection of very efficient, low power speakers that are OEM to several companies. Then i'd tweak crossover points passively if an MS-8 was out of the budget.

the key to improving on the stock system is to have driver installation/seals that are better than stock as well. this requires some fabrication - usually in the form of baffles/mounts. you can run some 6" mids or 5.25" mids in place of a 6x8. i would take a 5.25" driver and use the larger opening to improve on location/aiming - then make new seals using closed cell foam weatherstripping and resin treated MDF.

the first thing i'd do is access/remove the stock drivers to see what is available for front/rear mounting depth, measure the speaker parameters, and try to find a near match that has a better overall design. even teh "premium" systems use generally cheap materials/speakers. but they make up for it in engineering a speaker that is designed for the environment/amp.