Need help conceptualizing door speaker placement

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Gunk

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I have an 8 and a 6.5 that I want to put in each of my doors. I like to make this an SQ build as much as possible. I'm under the impression that I will get better mid bass from these drivers if I can seal off my doors and have the speakers firing directly into the door cavity. I'm also under the impression that the best placement for the 8 and 6.5 is right next to each other.

So, my problem is the location of the current holes in my door. The factory speaker location is fine for the 8, after customizing the door panel, but the other hole is further back on the door and will essentially be firing right into the seat. I could possibly custom mount the 6.5 to be angling up so that the majority of the soundwave is going over the seat... but that would just be helpful on passenger side when noone is sitting there. On drivers side, the speaker would still be firing directly into my hip. So is this a big deal? If I were to move the 6.5 next to the 8 then it will not be lined up with the door cavity and I'd be losing out on that performance benefit.

I've been racking my brain like crazy on this and watching a ton of other people's builds. It seems most people just mount their speakers on top of the existing door panel and then glass over it all. But these setups aren't firing into the door cavity... so they're missing out on some performance right?

Any insight is much appreciated. It's my first build. I'm up for the challenge of rebuilding/fiberglassing my doors, I just can't conceptualize where the speaker placement should be. It doesn't help that I have a stupid window crank in there as well...lol.

Here's a couple pics..
 

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If they are both in the door you need to seal off the mid from the midbass completely or else the rear waves will destroy every bit of sound quality. Its better if you just do 6.5s in the kick panel firing up on axis to you. You can use that free space in the door for more midbass if you wish.
 
If they are both in the door you need to seal off the mid from the midbass completely or else the rear waves will destroy every bit of sound quality. Its better if you just do 6.5s in the kick panel firing up on axis to you. You can use that free space in the door for more midbass if you wish.

Thanks for this. I hadn't thought about the sound waves being problematic to each other if they are both firing into the door cavity. I think it will be a much simpler install to just custom mount the 8 in the factory location and fab the kick panel to house the 6.

Cheers mate!
 

I've seen people say that the tweeter should be as close to the main midrange as possible. I currently have a 3.5 bullet tweeter installed in factory location in dash. This is at least 2 ft away from where the 8 would be installed in the door.

Do you think this spacing will make a big difference for SQ purposes? Would it make a difference to custom mount the tweeter next to the 8 in the door? I think my end goal will be to go 3 way active with a DSP.
 
I've seen people say that the tweeter should be as close to the main midrange as possible. I currently have a 3.5 bullet tweeter installed in factory location in dash. This is at least 2 ft away from where the 8 would be installed in the door.

Do you think this spacing will make a big difference for SQ purposes? Would it make a difference to custom mount the tweeter next to the 8 in the door? I think my end goal will be to go 3 way active with a DSP.
not gonna matter at all if you have time alignment.
 
If everyone followed their logic we'd all be running coaxials in the A pillar. No one does that competitively.

if you want to keep the mid and tweeter close together you can just put the super tweets a bit off axis in the kick panels. Should tame them a little bit. Its going to be hard to have actual pure SQ if you are using bullet tweeters though. They are inherently way too peaky for real SQ, even high end beymas and morel bullet tweeters have their caveats.
 
If everyone followed their logic we'd all be running coaxials in the A pillar. No one does that competitively.

if you want to keep the mid and tweeter close together you can just put the super tweets a bit off axis in the kick panels. Should tame them a little bit. Its going to be hard to have actual pure SQ if you are using bullet tweeters though. They are inherently way too peaky for real SQ, even high end beymas and morel bullet tweeters have their caveats.

hmm, you're the 3rd person I've heard say that bullet tweeters aren't good in a car. I'm kicking myself now. It's the first speakers I bought...lol.

Well, I feel much better about my install since I've decided to just put the 8's in the corner of the doors.
Thing is concerning the 6's, my kick panels are very small, its a Dodge Neon afterall.
So, since it sounds like your saying location isn't such a big deal if you do time alignment, could it be fine to just cut off the end of the center console and fab a little box to house the 6's in the center under the dash?

It's a bad picture but you can get an idea how small the kick area is. On my drivers side, I was looking at it today, I would be kicking the crap out of some pods if I put em there. I don't think kick panels are an option for me.

What do you think?
 

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hmm, you're the 3rd person I've heard say that bullet tweeters aren't good in a car. I'm kicking myself now. It's the first speakers I bought...lol.

Well, I feel much better about my install since I've decided to just put the 8's in the corner of the doors.
Thing is concerning the 6's, my kick panels are very small, its a Dodge Neon afterall.
So, since it sounds like your saying location isn't such a big deal if you do time alignment, could it be fine to just cut off the end of the center console and fab a little box to house the 6's in the center under the dash?

It's a bad picture but you can get an idea how small the kick area is. On my drivers side, I was looking at it today, I would be kicking the crap out of some pods if I put em there. I don't think kick panels are an option for me.

What do you think?
I meant for the distance between the mid and tweet, they still need to be left and right for soundstage, and stereo seperation, you cant have them in the center like that. Your other option is to trade the 6.5 in for a 4 inch mid and fiberglass A pillars or do a sealed custom door pod for the 6.5s above the 8

bullet tweeters are not good in a car because there's lots of surfaces that reflect sound waves which causes harsh peaks and dips all over the frequency spectrum. Usually in a car you'll have a massive peak of 5khz to 8khz with super tweeters and you need a crossover gap between the mid and tweeter to tame it. For example i've tuned 5 setups and they all had the mid around 2.5khz to 4khz low passed and tweeters high passed at 8khz to 10khz. Even with a large gap, you still have full complete output in the gap with nothing missing however the harsh peaks before was tamed and the system is listenable SQ wise. Its the nature of PA drivers in cars.
 
I'm going to be doing some customizing/installing today... starting with the 8's.

I wanted to post the specs on these 8's and 6's just to make sure I'm not doing something stupid.
We've been talking about the sound wave getting screwed up if the 8's and 6's share the same air space so it made me wonder if I have the wrong speakers to pair with each other since the specs say they operate at the same frequencies.

Is this a null issue as the amp crossovers or the dsp would just be set to make each pair of speakers operate in the desired frequency range?

Link to Product Page
 

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its the same concept as running multiple sized subs in your car, its going to be a giant mess throwing it all in the door like that. side effects would be extreme lack of midbass, muddied midbass and midrange, horrible instrument seperation aka everything sounds like a gob of noise rather than music, harsh peaks and severe dips and valleys in the frequency response and the list goes on this is with crossovers seperating the frequencies so each are doing their own jobs already and you'll still run into all these issues.
 
its the same concept as running multiple sized subs in your car, its going to be a giant mess throwing it all in the door like that. side effects would be extreme lack of midbass, muddied midbass and midrange, horrible instrument seperation aka everything sounds like a gob of noise rather than music, harsh peaks and severe dips and valleys in the frequency response and the list goes on this is with crossovers seperating the frequencies so each are doing their own jobs already and you'll still run into all these issues.
We'll, I'm going to separate the 8 and 6. The 8 is firing into the sealed cavity of door. The six will have a sealed pod on the door card.

Edit...
Ive come to the conclusion that 6's can not fit in the front of this car in any practical manner if I'm putting 8s in the factory location. The window crank kills all options. I think I just may jettison this Pioneer plan and look for a different brand with 8s and 4s. I think I could custom mount 4s in the dash/A pillar.
 
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you might want to go with neo motored 8s if depth is an issue. Those drivers you chose arent really meant to sound quality, i actually have direct experience with them and lets just say yuck lol. They get loud and clean at best.
 
you might want to go with neo motored 8s if depth is an issue. Those drivers you chose arent really meant to sound quality, i actually have direct experience with them and lets just say yuck lol. They get loud and clean at best.

depth really isn't an issue, i don't mind glassing my panels. I've already cut them up...lol

I just got do some searching to see what people are saying are decent SQ mids that don't break the bank.
 
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