plase help with focal k3p wiring

[bubsie007]

Hello,

I am new to this thread and do not know too much about sound systems. I purchased a set of Focal K3p Speakers brand new and had a shop do the install. For some reason i suspect part of the wiring was done wrong but i'm not too sure.

The setup is Focal k3p speakers with an alpine 4channel amplifier. I also have an Alpine type R sub with a Rockford 1500 Watt amplifier.

The reason i think something is wrong is because the mid bass driver on the focals is controlled by the "subwoofer" setup on my Pioneer Avic D3 head unit. That doesnt feel right to me because i know it's not a sub.

Anytime i turn the mid bass driver up it starts making a rattling noise. I know that the speakers aren't blown because they are new but i think they are improperly wired or are playing the wrong frequencies. The shop that did the install wired the midbass drivers to the sub and he said that he's amping the midbass drivers and the tweeters all through my 4 channel amplifier.

can someone please tell me what's the propor way to wire these speakers, i dont want to ruin these extremely expensive speakers.

thank you kindly!

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[BassMechkanic 10+ year member]

wrong!

are you using all channels of that amp (do you have back speakers?)

if you are using all 4 channel - front & rear- i would just get power/signal from the 4" and tweeter, if not then 2 channels to mid & tweets and 2 channels to mid bass, if they really wired it that way they ****! and dont know what they are doing.

 

[bubsie007]

Hi,

yes you are correct, they disconnected the rear speakers and wired up 2 of the channels to the midbass drivers and the other two channels to the tweeters and other 6.5" driver. The reason to why they did it this way is because i'm running only a 200watt amplifier and the shop insisted i run all 200 watts to the front or i could be damaging the speaker (which i kind of thought was bs because i wouldnt play it til the point it distorts.)

so whhat they did is disconnect the rear speakers and run 2 channels to the mid bass and the other 2 to the tweeters,

I seem to have fixed the problem of the mid bass distorting, it seems that the amplifier was incorrectly tuned. I took channel 3 and 4 (the ones running the mid bass drivers) and i adjusted the crossover point to 75 hz as instructed from the Focal representative and now no more distortion. These speakers sound AMAZING! only problem is a mild rattle from both door panels. I will have to dynamat both doors to fix this.

I do plan on running a bigger 4 channel amp and purchasing another k3p set for the rear of the car and then i'll be happy!

thank you for your help!

 

[BassMechkanic 10+ year member]

i dont think you need a k3p for a rear stage, a nice set of coaxials should work fine, you could cheat and power the rear spearks off the head unit, feed your amp with front rca outs - split for all four channels, so your fader will work and you could balance front tot rear.

 

[bubsie007]

thanks for the advice. I'm not sure if that's how the shop wired it or not. I'm having a big problem right now. It seems as though the shop wired the speakers correctly. Speaking with focal on the phone they said that the crossover point on the amplifier was way off. So he made me set it to 75 hz (for the midbass drivers) if i remember correctly. That took care of the midbass driver rattling and sounding like crap I think it was hitting frequencies it shouldnt of have been playing.

But does anyone have any advice on how to tune these speakers? I'm having 2 major issues with these speakers.

1) there is way too much treble, the highs are just killing my ears. I turned the tweeters all the way down from the crossover but it's still very harsh sounding. I don't know too well how to tune it with my head unit because it's very hard Pioneer Avic D3.

2) another problem is the midbass driver rattles my door panel. I did some research about it and some people recommend using the kick panel pods for the midbass. They said it's day and night difference and it fixes the rattles. Has anyone ever had experience with this? I'm considering doing it because the rattling comming out of the door panel is a very very big nuisance for me. I dont think dynamatting the door will totally fix the problem so i feel as though if i put the midbass speakers on the kick panel and dynamat that i'll have better results. any input?