horrible midbass! help!!!

[GSteg 10+ year member]

is there a cheap alternative to dynamat/other ripoff sound deadening? I've heard some things about using roofing tar shingles or something?

There raammat, fatmat, second skin, etc. if all you need is just the door deadened, then get the second skin with 36sq ft or something. Otherwise raammat is 62.5 and fatmat is 100sq ft. I had raammat and used 5 layers per front door, and I still have a lot left. You'll probably only use 15sq ft each door at most if you do single layer.

and whats the best way to seal the door? there's no way i can use MDF with my funky door shapes.

To seal the holes in the door, get 1/4th MDF or so and cover as much as you can then. Then use your sound deadener and apply it all around the leaky part. Midbass response increased a lot in my car. My midrange aren't known for having a lot of midbass output, but once I got everything done, they almost sound like dedicated midbass drivers //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

 

[Curel 10+ year member]

You never mentioned what the crossover is set at. Either way sound deadning is a must, especially with those midbass monsters.

 

[johnson 10+ year member]

Instead of 1/4" MDF (ive never seen .25 MDF) you can use plexiglass.

 

[thisisausername 10+ year member]

You never mentioned what the crossover is set at.

60hz low and 3k high

I don't really wanna pay for sound deadening(no money left)...has anyone used one of these materials I found on the net?

Polymeric Mastic

lawl ripoff sheets

Carpet padding

tar paper

"Peel and Seal" Look for it in the roofing section.

 

[alphakenny1 10+ year member]

is there a cheap alternative to dynamat/other ripoff sound deadening? I've heard some things about using roofing tar shingles or something?

raammat is excellent. probably the best bang for the buck. others are hushmat, fatmat, umm thats all i could think of.

and whats the best way to seal the door? there's no way i can use MDF with my funky door shapes.

http://forums.caraudio.com/vb/showthread.php?t=95925.

 

[slain93gsr 10+ year member]

Raammat works well.. not pricey and most importantly doesnt stink like tar

 

[johnson 10+ year member]

60hz low and 3k high
I don't really wanna pay for sound deadening(no money left)...has anyone used one of these materials I found on the net?

Polymeric Mastic

lawl ripoff sheets

Carpet padding

tar paper

"Peel and Seal" Look for it in the roofing section.

Cement works well.

You could sell your speakers to get deadening.

 

[slain93gsr 10+ year member]

lol i dont think he is gonna want to sell his speakers.

peel and seal has okish - mediocre results. it isnt as thick so you have to double up.

 

[El Ropo 10+ year member]

the only thing bad I noticed is that the stock speakers were sealed to the door, and my new ones are raised up on spacers for clearance issues. They are far from sealed(1.5 cm air gap all the way around). Is this whats killing my midbass?

You will never get decent midbass response until you seal that 1.5 cm gap around the midbasses. Hehe, that reminds me of the dorks who have 6 x 9 speakers just sitting on top of their back decks without an enclosure, and wonder why they sound so bad.

Right now, your backwave is cancelling out the front wave. It will continue to do so until you plug up the gap.

Deadening your doors with good comps is a must also, start saving money for it if you are serious about wanting the best possible sound out of your setup.

 

[thisisausername 10+ year member]

After sealing the baffles my bass output has doubled at least, perhaps tripled or quadrupled! We did it in one door first to hear the difference and it was huge! now my only fear is my black car melting the clay come summer...

On a side note, the bass output doubled or tripled again when I switched my output from the non-fader plugs to the front speaker plugs. I'm not sure why this is, the original reason for doing it was so my EQ would work, but somehow it has done a lot for the bass even when the EQ is off??? The sound also got louder, now 3/4 way on the volume control is equiv to what used to be all the way up. I'm puzzled, but happy.

now my bass is quite amazing if I must say so myself! Its not like a subwoofer though, its very punchy. When a drum hits it's sorta like you ears are getting a slap in the face, very sharp and sudden. My friends RE XXX 15" is very loud, but softer kinda like a silk tweeter vs an aluminum one. Maybe its cuz a real subwoofer is muffled by the trunk, but whateve.

I'm thinking of getting another set of tweets/mids and putting them in back for some rear fill, could I just run them in parallell with the existing speakers? The speakers I have now are 8 ohms and my amp can handle down to 2. I have an active crossover so I can't think of a reason why I couldn't run 2 speakers per channel.

I'm very happy with the sq as well, the CA18's and seas tweets sound beautiful. If I could do one thing it would be to try out a silk dome tweeter. On some of my poor quality mp3's the treble is harsh and actually painful to your ears when the music is loud.

if you bothered to read down this far please answer my questions about the multiple speakers per channel and why the non-fader output would have less bass/is quieter.

 

[GSteg 10+ year member]

After sealing the baffles my bass output has doubled at least, perhaps tripled or quadrupled! We did it in one door first to hear the difference and it was huge! now my only fear is my black car melting the clay come summer...

See we told you so. It makes a big difference. If you get unhardening clay, it wont melt, even in a black car. My car in the summer was very hot, yet it didn't melt.

On a side note, the bass output doubled or tripled again when I switched my output from the non-fader plugs to the front speaker plugs. I'm not sure why this is, the original reason for doing it was so my EQ would work, but somehow it has done a lot for the bass even when the EQ is off??? The sound also got louder, now 3/4 way on the volume control is equiv to what used to be all the way up. I'm puzzled, but happy.

not sure what you mean by fader plugs.

Yes the volume gets loud before you distort because the car is quieter, there are less leaks (cancellation will reduce output to the ears), and because your doors are resonating less, midbass region is improved and midrange should clear up a bit more.

I'm thinking of getting another set of tweets/mids and putting them in back for some rear fill, could I just run them in parallell with the existing speakers? The speakers I have now are 8 ohms and my amp can handle down to 2. I have an active crossover so I can't think of a reason why I couldn't run 2 speakers per channel.

You can run them in parallel. Treat your current component set as if it was a subwoofer. Just as long as the amp can handle the impedence, you're fine.

 

[thisisausername 10+ year member]

this is my system:

1 set of rca's coming from my headunit to back of car into a coustic XM6 crossover. From the crossover comes 2 sets of rca's, one high passed the other bandpassed. These go into my hifonics tx8805 amplifier rated at 220x4 @ 2 ohms. The outputs from the amp go to the respective tweeters and midrange drivers.

my headunit(eclipse CD5444) has 4 sets of output jacks. One is labeled "front/high", another "rear/low", a third "fixed", and the one I was using "non-fader". The non fader output was not affected by EQ settings for some reason, so I hooked up my rca cable to the front/high jack instead. Now, for some strange reason, the output is much louder and bass is a lot stronger. Does anyone have an explanation for this?