Going Active, replacing mids......suggestions?

[slikrider20 10+ year member]

Well, I ended up getting the STX-4SQ today and spent all day installing and tuning. Finally got everything back together and drove around for a solid 2 hours tweaking the settings on the PRS.

Still need to properly set the gain but my first impressions are wow, active is THE ****! I'm a guy who loves tweaking, customizing, and fiddling with stuff all the time so this definitely suits me.

Previously, I made my own MDF baffles to fit my 6.5 evils as the car came stock with 5.25's, but I stumbled upon these (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007ZQGZWO/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) on Amazon and decided to give them a shot. They worked perfectly, pushed the speaker out from the door window enough to clear that yet I was still able to get the door panel on. I also went to home depot and bought some air conditioner foam (Frost King E/O 1-1/4 in. x 1-1/4 in. x 42 in. Foam Air Conditioner Weatherstrip-AC42H - The Home Depot) to act as a fast rings replacement, as my packaged got delayed and I didn't want to wait. I just used some 3M 90 spray adhesive and it actually worked quite well. I was able to get foam around the entire speaker and between the speaker and the door panel pretty easily actually.

I was always under the assumption that when going active on this deck - highs replaced fronts, mids replaced rears, and sub stayed the same. I found that was not the case and quickly swapped my fronts and rear RCA's and problem solved.

Don't have my exact crossovers memorized but I think it's something like this:

lpf -80hz 12db

mid hpf - 80hz 24db

mid lpf - 4khz 12db

high hpf - 3khz 24db

A lot of people say the Auto EQ/TA is junk on the PRS but I tend to like it. It's worthless for the sub but I don't really care about that. It gave me a wack reading on the front left tweeter of 160inches 2 times in a row, I'm not sure what's up with that. But everything else was pretty close so I fine tuned it slightly. Left all the levels to where the PRS calculated minus sub of course. Flat EQ.

I'm sure ill be constantly tinkering with this for awhile, but all in all, I'm really happy I went this route. The quality of this amp for less than $200 impressed me as well. The 65watts per channel seems to be plenty even with the power hungry evils - but I think my next step will be upgrading to those Stereo Integrity Mids and possibly their tweets as well.

 

[slikrider20 10+ year member]

yaaf

 

[Jeffdachef 5,000+ posts]

Well, I ended up getting the STX-4SQ today and spent all day installing and tuning. Finally got everything back together and drove around for a solid 2 hours tweaking the settings on the PRS.
Still need to properly set the gain but my first impressions are wow, active is THE ****! I'm a guy who loves tweaking, customizing, and fiddling with stuff all the time so this definitely suits me.

Previously, I made my own MDF baffles to fit my 6.5 evils as the car came stock with 5.25's, but I stumbled upon these (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007ZQGZWO/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) on Amazon and decided to give them a shot. They worked perfectly, pushed the speaker out from the door window enough to clear that yet I was still able to get the door panel on. I also went to home depot and bought some air conditioner foam (Frost King E/O 1-1/4 in. x 1-1/4 in. x 42 in. Foam Air Conditioner Weatherstrip-AC42H - The Home Depot) to act as a fast rings replacement, as my packaged got delayed and I didn't want to wait. I just used some 3M 90 spray adhesive and it actually worked quite well. I was able to get foam around the entire speaker and between the speaker and the door panel pretty easily actually.

I was always under the assumption that when going active on this deck - highs replaced fronts, mids replaced rears, and sub stayed the same. I found that was not the case and quickly swapped my fronts and rear RCA's and problem solved.

Don't have my exact crossovers memorized but I think it's something like this:

lpf -80hz 12db

mid hpf - 80hz 24db

mid lpf - 4khz 12db

high hpf - 3khz 24db

A lot of people say the Auto EQ/TA is junk on the PRS but I tend to like it. It's worthless for the sub but I don't really care about that. It gave me a wack reading on the front left tweeter of 160inches 2 times in a row, I'm not sure what's up with that. But everything else was pretty close so I fine tuned it slightly. Left all the levels to where the PRS calculated minus sub of course. Flat EQ.

I'm sure ill be constantly tinkering with this for awhile, but all in all, I'm really happy I went this route. The quality of this amp for less than $200 impressed me as well. The 65watts per channel seems to be plenty even with the power hungry evils - but I think my next step will be upgrading to those Stereo Integrity Mids and possibly their tweets as well.

several things you can improve on. Definitely TURN OFF THAT AUTO EQ and do your own manual EQ/TA. Unless you want to blow subs and mids in the long run. It doesnt just play with your sub level, it plays with the bass EQ too basically using bass boost without your permission.

Get a tape measure, measure the distance from each tweeter and mid to your ear, enter it in inches or cm. AFTER wards you choose a centered vocal track for ex: ed sheeran shape of you. Put it on repeat then turn off your sub and mid. Then add/subtract time alignment values for the tweeter until you hear it centered on your car right under the center of the car mirror. You can literally hear it change left to right when you add/subtract the inch/cm values. Afterwards disable your tweeter, turn back on your mid and do the same thing.

Then have both back on and start working on the EQ. EQ should not be flat if you want any kind of proper result. Its never meant to be flat, its meant to adjust the sound according to the vehicle's acoustics to tame peaks and fill in valleys. Just remember if you do use boost, your overall volume level needs to go down a notch to match. Try not to go higher than 4db...

 

[trumpet 5,000+ posts]

Well, I ended up getting the STX-4SQ today and spent all day installing and tuning. Finally got everything back together and drove around for a solid 2 hours tweaking the settings on the PRS.I'm sure ill be constantly tinkering with this for awhile, but all in all, I'm really happy I went this route. The quality of this amp for less than $200 impressed me as well. The 65watts per channel seems to be plenty even with the power hungry evils - but I think my next step will be upgrading to those Stereo Integrity Mids and possibly their tweets as well.

Congratulations on the wise decision, Brandon. Your remarks on the quality of the ST-4X SQ amp are exactly what everyone says. It's really nice.

 

[slikrider20 10+ year member]

Some good ideas in there Jeff, I will try them. Like I said, this is my first time going active so it's all new to me. But I'm going to enjoy it because there's so many things you can constantly tinker with.

 

[slikrider20 10+ year member]

Congratulations on the wise decision, Brandon. Your remarks on the quality of the ST-4X SQ amp are exactly what everyone says. It's really nice.

Thanks. It is a quality amp I can tell. It's much smaller than I expected but it provides plenty of power for an active setup. I just need more efficient mids now.

 

[My63bug]

several things you can improve on. Definitely TURN OFF THAT AUTO EQ and do your own manual EQ/TA. Unless you want to blow subs and mids in the long run. It doesnt just play with your sub level, it plays with the bass EQ too basically using bass boost without your permission.
Get a tape measure, measure the distance from each tweeter and mid to your ear, enter it in inches or cm. AFTER wards you choose a centered vocal track for ex: ed sheeran shape of you. Put it on repeat then turn off your sub and mid. Then add/subtract time alignment values for the tweeter until you hear it centered on your car right under the center of the car mirror. You can literally hear it change left to right when you add/subtract the inch/cm values. Afterwards disable your tweeter, turn back on your mid and do the same thing.

Then have both back on and start working on the EQ. EQ should not be flat if you want any kind of proper result. Its never meant to be flat, its meant to adjust the sound according to the vehicle's acoustics to tame peaks and fill in valleys. Just remember if you do use boost, your overall volume level needs to go down a notch to match. Try not to go higher than 4db...

I Screenshot this info... ty

 

[slikrider20 10+ year member]

Well, i've taken a lot of advice in this thread.

I turned Auto EQ off and measured up everything for time alignment, and spent a good amount of time playing with the EQ. Pretty substantial improvement now that it isn't trying to boost or cut in places that I'm not aware of.

I also spent quite of a bit of reading, and ended up going with the NVX XSP 65 version of the SB Acoustics SB17MFC35-4 midbass woofer. I went with the NVX version simply because I had store credit on SSA's website and the idea of having the spring loaded terminals.

I also bought some of the Seas Neo soft dome tweeters as I've heard nothing but good things about them.

I'll let everyone know what I think when I get them installed! I can't wait. I'm also doing some more door treatment as well as I learn about it.

PS: If anyone wants some EVIL mids or Morel Crossovers let me know. I'll probably keep the Morel Tweets for now because I'm pretty **** happy with them but I need something to compare them to.