I've started some other threads describing some issues that I'd be working through with my 2016 F150 and I finally got them all sorted. I was fighting several independent installation problems, but time. persistence and no small amount of money sorted them out. But I digress....
At the end of the day, I swapped out my rear 6.5" Infinity Reference (basic) coaxials with Focal RCX 165s (again, entry level. Hey, it's the rear of a pick 'em up).
I had previously had some coaxial Infinity Kappa 6x9s in the front doors. These were 2 ohm speakers. I replaced them with Focal K2 Power 165KRs. These are 6.5", 4 ohm components with stand alone crossover.
While I was at it, I ditched the Infinity Reference amp that I was using and replaced it with a JL Audio RD400/4.
I also applied copious amounts of Dynamat to all doors and used Fastrings on the front speakers.
The Infinity's were always bright. I suspected they even injected overly crisp highs that wouldn't necessarily be mastered as such in the source recording. But I kinda like that and got used to it. I had read many, many reviews stating that the Focals were also bright sounding speakers.
However, I don't hear those same highs that I did before. At least not "artificially injected" ones. Instead, the Focals are clean, clean, clean. Now, I do get crisp highs, but only in source music that was recorded to bring it to the front. They otherwise sound pretty balanced.
Now to my questions...
1. Clean, balanced and distortion free - Is this what good car audio is supposed to sound like? Silly question, but I've never really installed or listened to car speakers at this price point.
2. Could it be that my settings are off? The Focal crossovers are set at 0db for the tweeter (-3 and -6 are the other options).
3. Along with
#2 , maybe I need to fiddle with the equalizer some more? New, 2017 Kenwood Excelon GPS head unit using the Jazz preset with increased bass level.
4. Perhaps the separation distance is too great between the mids and the tweeters? The mids are low in the door and the tweeters are waaaay forward in the dash almost at shoulder level, but near the bottom of a wide dashboard. Remember it's an F150. Because of the distance, the tweeters are just too far from my ear.
5. The tweeters aren't really affected a bit. Rather, it's the door dampening that brought out the mids. So, what would have otherwise been overpowering highs is now balanced because the mid frequencies aren't bouncing around inside the door.
6. The Infinity speakers really were unnaturally bright and this is the new normal.
7. Some combination of all of the above.
Thoughts?
