Freq. Spectrum Coverage and SQ- 5.25+6.5+Tweet+Tweet/Suptweet? Or 6.5x2 + Tweet+T/ST

[Oraclem19]

Looking into maximizing SQ in the front of my Accord, without running into the problem of having certain peaks in the spectrum that can cause irritating variations in how the songs sound. I'm not saying I like a completely flat sound, but certain peaks in the beginning uppers range can sound painful if not accentuated with loudness all over.

With that taken care of, looking at possibly adding kick panels to the car, and already have a slot in the door made for 6.5-6 3/4" speakers. As well as having a tweeter panel in the upper dash. These kick panels would add either a 5.25 or 6.5 slot as well as another slot for a Tweeter or a Supertweeter if neccessary.

Would it be a better idea to add in the 5.25s and have one of almost every speaker style in the car? (5.25, 6.5 Tweeter, possible supertweet, 6x9's in back in enclosure or low midbass tuned 6.5" subwoofers, 2-3 10s in back or 1-2 12s) or try to keep sets? (4 6.5s, 4 tweeters, 2-4 6.5 subwoofers in back for low midbass, 3 10"s and maybe one 12.)

I like my SPL, not competing with anything it just does add a quality factor to a system for me, however have made some SPL focused arrangements with the regret of not having enough quality.

To sum this up i'm not sure if it is neccessary to have a 5.25 as well as a 6.5 up front, as well as 2 amps or a 4 channel, or 4 6.5s and one amp. Amp space in my car is hard to come by so that is a consideration.

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[DARKHART 10+ year member]

It's not necessary to have that many speakers up front. All you need is a good quality component set that plays a wide band, I personally like the kick panel placements because of the equal path lengths which helps with imaging for a good soundstage. Your sub stage is gonna be completely up to you as far as how loud you want it for spl so it depends on the power you are gonna be running. Now I also like setting up rear fill in my vehicle for several reasons but it's not a must have and if you are gonna have a really loud sub stage you will want to make sure that your front stage can keep up so it may require a second set of speaker up front, maybe in the doors or something....

 

[Oraclem19]

let me revise that into a reccomendation then, im going to take a guess and say supertweeters are unneccessary in most vehicles.

I have a 1" tweet slot avaliable, and possibly adding a 2" slot as well. A set of 1" and 2" tweeters would likely cover the large majority of the upper range?

only dilema is adding a pod that will accommodate a pair of 5.25s or a pair of 6.5s, on top of the 6.5s in the door. Would 5.25s be outsounded by the nearby 6.5s? Never particularly found a purpose in 5.25s

 

[keep_hope_alive Premium Member]

i have a 2001 accord. i've added 6.5" and 4" locations in the kicks. i've also used 2" drivers in the dash and tweeters in dash and apillar (pods and spheres). a total of 10 speaker locations up front and i've experimented with everything from a 2-way to everything, with numerous processors/crossovers - all active vs. passive vs. combinations. i've spent hundreds of hours (no exaggeration) experimenting and using an assortment of measurement tools (various RTA's) as well as had several trained ears (i'm also an acoustics engineer). my build log shows most of the combinations.

i've tried dozens of speaker combinations.

i've gotten several configurations to sound very good. good enough to place in national competitions.

the global message I have for you is to K.I.S.S.

- you only want one speaker on each side to cover a given range. avoid overlap between drivers. overlap causes phase interference.

- crossover flexibility is more useful than an EQ.

- bare metal sounds terrible, use a combination of CLD and absorption.

- tweeter aiming is crucial and needs to be coordinated with off-axis response and reflections/diffraction.

i have a passive 2-way comp set in now (for the past two weeks). it's a German Maestro Status SV6509 set. It sounds amazing and is in the top 3 of every combination, and I don't have any external processing (just HU to amps). these are also the most expensive speakers i've used.

the 3-way sets i've ran used an assortment of expensive to budget drivers. a few of them were very good and relied on an 8 channel processor (H701).

one combination used 2" full range in the factory dash corners firing up, 3/4" ring radiator tweets in spheres in the apillar, and 6.5" midbass in the doors. this did very well but the budget speakers showed themselves when pushed.

dash corners firing up is a poor tweeter location. i don't use it for good reasons. a-pillars are good locations and spheres are king.

the car has a 125-150Hz resonance with kick speakers. if you run mids down there, run them from 315Hz and up. I have a future plan to re-build the kicks and attempting to increase damping.

 

[keep_hope_alive Premium Member]

let me revise that into a reccomendation then, im going to take a guess and say supertweeters are unneccessary in most vehicles.I have a 1" tweet slot avaliable, and possibly adding a 2" slot as well. A set of 1" and 2" tweeters would likely cover the large majority of the upper range?

only dilema is adding a pod that will accommodate a pair of 5.25s or a pair of 6.5s, on top of the 6.5s in the door. Would 5.25s be outsounded by the nearby 6.5s? Never particularly found a purpose in 5.25s

avoid pairs of drivers. they will just interfere and the resulting phase interference will give you poor sound.

5.25 is a fine midrange driver when paired with a dedicated midbass. but a 4" will do just as well, be easier to locate, beaming doesn't happen until higher frequencies, and it will play higher and usually flatter.

your overall goal is to use a 3-way so one driver (per side) is dedicated to the vocal range, and that driver is located to provide a nice soundstage.

how many speakers you can run effectively is determined by the number of amplifier channels, the active crossovers available, and the control available at the HU. time alignment is almost a requirement.

 

[Oraclem19]

so then even considering using the stock tweeter slots is not a good idea.

Possibility of using a 100-250(?) hz midbass 6.5 in door combined with a quality 5.25 to cover the rest of midrange up to possibly 5-600 hz and a tweeter for (?) range in the kick panel, combined with the bass and lowbass taken care of in trunk combined with a low midbass fill driver in rear(I do like some fill, despite possibly losing quality) for 70-150hz?

I know this arrangement isnt perfect, but it seems outrageous to use on 6.5 and expect it to be able to replicate 100 hz all the way up to where tweeters take over at a reasonable loudness without losing quality.

I see it as taking a highspeed turn. You can't use the throttle very much in a turn or brakes and expect the tires to retain sideways traction, they can do liner and lateral traction just as well as each other, but does not mean they can do both at the same time.

 

[keep_hope_alive Premium Member]

it is not unreasonable to expect a single 6.5 to handle from 80Hz - 4kHz... if it's properly made.

the trick is finding a good underhung driver.

The Hertz Mille ML165 woofer (MLK165 set) can do just that. It can play stupid clean, stupid loud, and cover a very large range.

here is an example of this: http://www.caraudio.com/forums/car-audio-build-logs-cars-trucks-suvs/516096-2005-scion-tc-sq-hertz-audison-pioneer-build-log.html

home audio speakers cover a wide range as well. the secret to good midbass isn't the woofer size or quantity but the enclosure.

with less expensive (non-underhung) speakers, you'll find that at high output and high excursion the cone loses some control of higher frequencies since most of the coil is outside the magnetic gap.

if you run a midrange, it should play from 300Hz - 4kHz. You want tweeters to take over above 4khz and to be located closer to ear level as they will set the sound stage and above 3kHz we localize based on intensity not pathlength.

 

[keep_hope_alive Premium Member]

so then even considering using the stock tweeter slots is not a good idea.Possibility of using a 100-250(?) hz midbass 6.5 in door combined with a quality 5.25 to cover the rest of midrange up to possibly 5-600 hz and a tweeter for (?) range in the kick panel, combined with the bass and lowbass taken care of in trunk combined with a low midbass fill driver in rear(I do like some fill, despite possibly losing quality) for 70-150hz?

I know this arrangement isnt perfect, but it seems outrageous to use on 6.5 and expect it to be able to replicate 100 hz all the way up to where tweeters take over at a reasonable loudness without losing quality.

I see it as taking a highspeed turn. You can't use the throttle very much in a turn or brakes and expect the tires to retain sideways traction, they can do liner and lateral traction just as well as each other, but does not mean they can do both at the same time.

you want to avoid multiple midbass drivers unless you have time alignment. midbass is very sensitive to phase interference due to the wavelengths of those frequencies. when at different distances they will cancel.

i'm running a simple 2-way now and it sounds fantastic. but it is also a nice component set.

the way i see it, you can have an expensive 2-way comp set or an inexpensive 3-way set and get similar results (provided you have time separate alignment for mids and midbass).

rear fill can help when time alignment is added. it can help focus the soundstage... but time alignment is needed, the range should be limited to 400-4000Hz, and it's great if it's an L-R or R-L mix to remove center channel information.

 

[Oraclem19]

I feel like I need to know more about this time alignment.

 

[calebkhill 10+ year member]

loses some control of higher frequencies since most of the coil is outside the magnetic gap.

Ive had this explained but I still dont get it. Help me out. I have no idea what the magnetic gap IS, , what happens when the coil is outside of it, and why it causes problems in sound reproduction.

I have a future plan to re-build the kicks and attempting to increase damping.

Explain? Kick panels are in my near future...

O, and my suggestion for the OP. Tweets, midranges, dedicated midbasses. No reason to have all those speakers.

And depending on the SPL, that bass can cause you to loose quality in your front stage.

 

[keep_hope_alive Premium Member]

Ive had this explained but I still dont get it. Help me out. I have no idea what the magnetic gap IS, , what happens when the coil is outside of it, and why it causes problems in sound reproduction.

Explain? Kick panels are in my near future...

O, and my suggestion for the OP. Tweets, midranges, dedicated midbasses. No reason to have all those speakers.

And depending on the SPL, that bass can cause you to loose quality in your front stage.

Good for keeping linear BL, generally a very light coil so efficiency is usually good. Downside is it's a tiny *** coil so power handling is very limited and if you really needed big excursion you'd need an impractical top plate so generally they're not high excursion drivers.

 

[Jroo 10+ year member]

I agree with Keep Hope Alive when he said keep it simple. One on the best sounding cars I ever had was basically a very good 2 way coax in the doors, a sub, and no rear fill. I had a very nice SQ deck, very good speakers, and some big clean amps. I still remember people getting into that car and asking about the speakers and they would look at me funny when I told them that I was running only 3 speakers. This was also back in the day when I didnt know what I was doing. Everytime I think about redoing a car I have to remind myself that the best sounding car I had didnt have all the crap. A good 2 way componet will sound way better than a mismatched 3 way. Trust me, I have learned the hard way that a bunch of speakers dont help you.