Audison AP5.9 and Speaker Questions

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Zack1uk

CarAudio.com Newbie
So apologies if this turns into a wall of text, but I'm hoping that someone can advise me on a few issues.

I've just got my first car in about 20 years (previously had company cars and / or lease cars), a 2014 BMW X1 with CIC Business NAv but the base audio (4inch mids & tweets in doors, 6.5 inch woofers in underseat enclosures, and 4 inch mids in rear doors, no amp).

The BMW base stereo applies an EQ to compensate for teh crappy speakers so I knew I needed something to DE-EQ that, so was looking at a cleansweep or Bit10. Then comes along a cracking deal for a Audison AP5.9 on ebay that I bought.

I'm planning on replacing the underseat woofers with some standard HiFi level (a chap on Bimmerpost has done lots of measurements and reckons they are the best bang for buck, particularly 2nd hand) running them in mono (would be about 1.7ohm in parallel) from the 1x270 sub feed from the amp.

However, the door speakers are where I'm wavering, particularly as the AP 5.1 is 2x20w and 2x50W.

I have the following options for hardware:

Reuse my old Infinity kappa CS1b 4 inch mids - will require a new foam surround, and Emit tweeter mounted on dashboard)
Reuse my old Infinity Kappa CS1b 4 inch mids and a DLS T20 tweeter in the door pods
Buy a set of custom fit components - Audison Prima currently favorite but also considering Eton, Gladon and Focal....or others?
If I'm going active then I guess I could also go the full DIY mid (eg Dayton Audio RS100P + DLS T20???)

Options for wiring:

1) Tweets (2x20W) and Mids (2x50W) run actively
In my old car audio days running active was the domain of the pros and required no end of fiddling (as well as a lot of sound equipment). With the Ap 5.9 processor is that still the same or is it much easier now?
+ probably the best sound when setup
+ all speakers suitably powered
- Will require an extra wire through the door connector if I use the door tweeter pods for either new or reuse the DLS tweets
- Could be a nightmare to tune

2) Tweets and Mids run passive of the 2x50W
+ simple install
+ potentially less faffing around tuning (and re-tuning)
+ could potentially use the spare 2x20w for the rear speakers (pointless really, but while I've pulled the interior out wouldn't hurt)
- possibly worse quality
- Not most efficient use of amp

I'm not too interested in going loud (old git now who mostly drives with partner and babies), more into SQ.....although I do have a an absolute gem of a Focal Utopia 27WX sub and a Focal solid 1 mono amp tucked away that I'm toying with the idea of doing a removable 'all in one' boot install.

I'd really appreciate any advice anyone can give me regarding any of the above and whether going active with the AP5.1 is the same minefield that tuning an old active crossover used to be.

Thanks
 
Hi Zack1uk,

I'm wondering how this all worked out for you? I'm currently upgrading an e92 with audison gear including a 4.9bit, underseat subs and door speakers.

did you have any trouble in the end? what about tuning - how did you go about it?

thanks

 
Hi Eas

Had a bit of a change of plan. I've ended up with the following:

  • Audison Prima 5.9 powering the tweeters and the Mids, this also uses the spare 4 channels of processing to output to the second amp
  • Massive Audio PA25.4 powering the underseat woofers and a sub woofer in the boot
  • Vifa/Peerless OT19 Ring radiators Tweeters in the doors
  • OEM Logic 7 mids in the doors
  • OEM HiFi woofers in the underseat enclosures
  • Focal WX27 Utopia sub in a fibreglass enclosure in the side of the boot.

The Audison takes high level inputs from the speaker outputs. I tapped these from the connection to the underseat woofers (used a pair of modified £10 extensions from ebay). It De-Eqs and does all the processing.
Lots of people on DIYMA rate the vifa tweeters. Although the xt25 would fit in the 44mm housing in the door sail panels, its important that ring radiators are kept on-axis. So I opted for the smaller ones and with a combination of door insulation rubber draft proofing strips and hot glue mounted them on axis with the drivers seat.
There is a sound engineer on Bimmerpost who has tested the OEM HiFi underseat woofers to derive their specifications, and then compared them to many aftermarket ones, and he reckons they are very good, if not better than most. My own pink noise testing shows a big difference between left and right (sourced second hand, so one may have an issue).

I bought a Dayton audio calibration mic and used REW (Room Equalisation Wizard) and the Audison software to tune the system. I loosely followed the tuning guide on Audiofrog website and the series of 14 (or so) videos on youtube (don't remember who the poster was, but a quick search should find the series). My workflow summarised as follows:

Set balance and fader and all tone controls to neutral
Find clipping point on HU using mini oscilloscope (the BMW HU doesn't have a volume bar), but I counted 47 clicks from muted up to clipping (max volume was about 54). I used both 150Hz, and 1KHz -10db sine wave
Run through Audison set up as per manual. Make sure you write this to the device AND finalise it (or it won't stick).
Turn off crossovers in Audison, and disconnect speakers. Connect second amp, but not speakers and increase gains until clipping occurs (used 40Hz -10dB for sub channel, and 1KhZ -10db for woofers) using an a mini oscilloscope.

All the gain setting can be done by ear or with a voltmeter (plenty of youtube vids)

Then I connected all the speakers, set the crossovers (Sub 80Hz, Underseats 80Hz to 150Hz, Mids 150Hz to 3Khz, Tweeters 3Kz, all Linkwitz Riley 24db slopes), measured speaker distance for the time alignment, wrote this to device, finalised and saved as a file on the laptop.
Then used a correlated pink noise tone and REW to measure and equalise each speaker one by one. Started with left tweeter, then mid, then woofer, and then tweaked them all together. Then did the same for the right channel. I used a target house curve from Jazzi on DIYMA forums. I also tried the audiofrog target curve, but found the sound lacking sparkle. l tried not to boost anything, and only reduce.

I'm generally very happy with the results, however:
  • I still have some tweaking to do as the transition between the sub and the underseat woofers is not as smooth as I would like. This might be because the box isn't big enough for the sub or because of a problem woofer. regardless the bass doesn't sound quite as smooth or well controlled as I would like.
  • I'd also like to try to bring the bass further forward (reduceing the TA distance and a pahse swap of 180 degree helped, but not enough)
  • And also try to push the soundstage further forward on the bonnet (it currently seems to come from right between my ears)

I would also say to anyone reading this, if you really want to match your equalisation to a target curve...do not buy one of these combined audison processor amps, as the software only lets you adjust a limited number of points in the frequency range (you are effectively dragging a continuous curve up or down), whereas something like the Bit One or Bit 10 or Helix processors let you adjust each frequency (and actually customise your own).
 
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