Rear speakrs sounding muffled

[Panda45]

Hello Everyone

My question is: I'm having a sound issue now. It may just be my speakers, but I wanted to make sure. My system is Polk Audio component speakers in my front stage and 3-way in the rear (2 6x9 ) (and front 6.5). All run by Kicker CC360.4 AMP. It's a wonderful amp, but my thing is, my front stage is loud and crystal clear. But when I sit in the back, it's loud, but the vocals are not coming through much. It sounds muffled and it's not a pleasant sound. But if I stick my head to the front, it sounds amazing. Is it possible for a 4-way speaker that's old for the tweeters to go out but the speaker still be functional? Forgot to mention, I do have a JVC head unit, not the factory
Sorry I need to add this it's a honda acoord and the front 2 speakers are Polk 6.5 components and the rear has old pair of Pioneer TS-A6981R 4 way speakers
Thank you

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[Doxquzme Premium Member]

What type of speakers are in the rear? Polk 3-way 6x9 triaxles? where are they mounted in the back?

 

[Panda45]

What type of speakers are in the rear? Polk 3-way 6x9 triaxles? where are they mounted in the back?

They are mounted in the back of my honda accord and the speakers that I have in the rear are Pioneer ts-A6981R coax 4 way in the post I say 3 I was mistaken the the compont 6.5 are in the front it's just two 6.5 and tweeters

 

[SbassLaser]

A lot of people ditch the rear stage altogether. Unless there's a specific reason you want sound coming from the rear of the vehicle, you usually get the best sound with just a front stage.
I've got the fade on my headunit set so all my sound goes to the front so the rear speakers dont even play any music. Try doing that and see how you like the sound.
If the rear speakers are old it could just be the tweets. You could always try moving one onto the front channel to see if the sound changes, that would tell you if the problem is the amp or the speakers.

 

[Doxquzme Premium Member]

Like SbassLaser said, personal preference. I'm able to save settings so that when others are in the car, they have sound too. When it's just me, sometimes I toggle to a setting set up with only me the driver in mind. Most of the time, I have both front and rear on, it's a preference. One thing I always stress when people are considering using a component set up in front and filling in the rear, I always use the same manufacturer of speakers, and usually the 2-way coaxial version of the fronts, minimizes the staging impact, to a degree, as there is little if any difference in the actual sound (specifically the timbre) between the two - then it is truly filling and not a different sound coming from a different source.

That said, the CX360.4 amplifier is fairly versatile but it uses push-buttons on the filters while in small amps is probably necessary, it can be a pain if you bump one and change it from a HPF to a LPF. That Pioneer - 6" x 9" 4-way Coaxial is more of 2.5 way in that it uses a high crossed mid and 2 tweeters to take care of the higher frequencies and I would never categorize any of the pioneer quad-ax speakers as dull, on the contrary. Check the settings by disengaging the filters on that channel and see if it corrects the issue. It is possible that the crossover has checked out and is stuck in LPF mode too. Before you run out and get another amp or speakers, check all the filters to see that they are set correctly.

If you do end up replacing the speakers and the amp, here is what I would look at getting to improve while replacing those items.

This is a great buy on a powerful 4-channel amp. It's 125w watts x 4 as opposed to the 60 x 4 with the kicker, more is always better and they are running out of stock at this price ($69)

400 WATT RMS CLASS D 4-CHANNEL AMPLIFIER FULL RANGE

The best way to improve the sound of your system is to power your speakers with our 4 channel amplifier. Your head unit shouldn't power your subwoofer and it shouldn't power your speakers either. Full range digital multi-channel 400 watt RMS class D amplifier stable at 2 OHM stereo or 4 OHM...

blackbrickaudio.com

Not sure which Polk comps you have so something like these or whichever the 6x9 version of the Polks you have are, the same tweeter type being the most important part of that decision.

Polk Audio DB 692

DB+ Series 6"x9" 3-way car speakers

www.crutchfield.com

I mean, for $200 plus tax, that would be a really nice upgrade!

 

[Panda45]

Like SbassLaser said, personal preference. I'm able to save settings so that when others are in the car, they have sound too. When it's just me, sometimes I toggle to a setting set up with only me the driver in mind. Most of the time, I have both front and rear on, it's a preference. One thing I always stress when people are considering using a component set up in front and filling in the rear, I always use the same manufacturer of speakers, and usually the 2-way coaxial version of the fronts, minimizes the staging impact, to a degree, as there is little if any difference in the actual sound (specifically the timbre) between the two - then it is truly filling and not a different sound coming from a different source.

That said, the CX360.4 amplifier is fairly versatile but it uses push-buttons on the filters while in small amps is probably necessary, it can be a pain if you bump one and change it from a HPF to a LPF. That Pioneer - 6" x 9" 4-way Coaxial is more of 2.5 way in that it uses a high crossed mid and 2 tweeters to take care of the higher frequencies and I would never categorize any of the pioneer quad-ax speakers as dull, on the contrary. Check the settings by disengaging the filters on that channel and see if it corrects the issue. It is possible that the crossover has checked out and is stuck in LPF mode too. Before you run out and get another amp or speakers, check all the filters to see that they are set correctly.

If you do end up replacing the speakers and the amp, here is what I would look at getting to improve while replacing those items.

This is a great buy on a powerful 4-channel amp. It's 125w watts x 4 as opposed to the 60 x 4 with the kicker, more is always better and they are running out of stock at this price ($69)

400 WATT RMS CLASS D 4-CHANNEL AMPLIFIER FULL RANGE

The best way to improve the sound of your system is to power your speakers with our 4 channel amplifier. Your head unit shouldn't power your subwoofer and it shouldn't power your speakers either. Full range digital multi-channel 400 watt RMS class D amplifier stable at 2 OHM stereo or 4 OHM...

blackbrickaudio.com

Not sure which Polk comps you have so something like these or whichever the 6x9 version of the Polks you have are, the same tweeter type being the most important part of that decision.

Polk Audio DB 692

DB+ Series 6"x9" 3-way car speakers

www.crutchfield.com

I mean, for $200 plus tax, that would be a really nice upgrade!

Woow this is amazing thank you so so much I never considered some of thies things to try I will do it and see also I don't have passengers much so I see how setting it to your liking is better thank you for all the advise you have no idea how much this has helped thank you. I think getting both the same speakers would help In the sound stage

 

[Panda45]

A lot of people ditch the rear stage altogether. Unless there's a specific reason you want sound coming from the rear of the vehicle, you usually get the best sound with just a front stage.
I've got the fade on my headunit set so all my sound goes to the front so the rear speakers dont even play any music. Try doing that and see how you like the sound.
If the rear speakers are old it could just be the tweets. You could always try moving one onto the front channel to see if the sound changes, that would tell you if the problem is the amp or the speakers.

Thank you so much for this I see how preference is key to this if im just listing I should do it just for me thank you for the advise

 

[Buck 5,000+ posts]

A lot of people ditch the rear stage altogether. Unless there's a specific reason you want sound coming from the rear of the vehicle, you usually get the best sound with just a front stage.
I've got the fade on my headunit set so all my sound goes to the front so the rear speakers dont even play any music. Try doing that and see how you like the sound.
If the rear speakers are old it could just be the tweets. You could always try moving one onto the front channel to see if the sound changes, that would tell you if the problem is the amp or the speakers.

Thank you so much for this I see how preference is key to this if im just listing I should do it just for me thank you for the advise

I prefer my mids and highs to produce sound from in front of me, like a musical stage. You can put a designed midbass woofer in the rear factory location, where it doesn’t play very high Hz, that way it’s not producing super loud vocals, but is more like a “filler” sound and can provide a ton of midbass (relatively). Having a lot of midbass in the speakers back there means if you ever have a sub or do now, then you can make the sub play lower by tuning it lower, and the midbasses close the gap between the bass and higher notes from the front door speakers.

Also, in my experience, any speakers that are coaxial from factory and have more than 1 tweeter are usually not the best speakers, not saying they don’t work and don’t sound good, just saying the best speakers I’ve ever heard have 1 woofer and 1 tweeter.

 

[Buck 5,000+ posts]

Hello Everyone

My question is: I'm having a sound issue now. It may just be my speakers, but I wanted to make sure. My system is Polk Audio component speakers in my front stage and 3-way in the rear (2 6x9 ) (and front 6.5). All run by Kicker CC360.4 AMP. It's a wonderful amp, but my thing is, my front stage is loud and crystal clear. But when I sit in the back, it's loud, but the vocals are not coming through much. It sounds muffled and it's not a pleasant sound. But if I stick my head to the front, it sounds amazing. Is it possible for a 4-way speaker that's old for the tweeters to go out but the speaker still be functional? Forgot to mention, I do have a JVC head unit, not the factory
Sorry I need to add this it's a honda acoord and the front 2 speakers are Polk 6.5 components and the rear has old pair of Pioneer TS-A6981R 4 way speakers
Thank you

Check your RCA’s going into the amp, make sure they work. You can switch the RCA’s around to ever see if a problem is related to a damaged RCA or some other signal-line problem, or if some of the amp’s channels are broken internally. You can also play some test tones only on the rear speakers, by either fading to rear or unplugging the front channel RCA’s at the amp.

Playing test tones at different frequencies can indicate if a speaker is blown, and with coaxials, it can tell you which exact speaker is blown. So, if your mid woofer is blown, it’ll sound like doo with upper bass frequencies (let’s say 50-150 hz), and if your tweeter(s) are blown, it’ll sound like doo from somewhere like 3,000-20,000 hz. That’s an easy way to usually tell which exact speaker the distortion is coming from.

If you have a digital multimeter, I would encourage you to read the coils’ ohms on the rear speakers, even if you only want to or can read them at the amp. If some part of the speaker coil is falling apart, you can usually see it in the ohms that the coils read, but sometimes not.

There’s free test tone or tone generator apps you can download onto a smartphone, if your radio works like that. You can also get a headphone jack to RCA connector and just run the amp signal completely off the phone, bypassing the radio and RCA’s, which is useful to see if there’s HU or RCA problems, as well. Test tones are stupid fun to play around with, sometimes, haha. Just don’t turn it up too loud, because the signal strength of a tone generator is usually more than just a musical song.

 

[1aespinoza 10+ year member]

Having a lot of midbass in the speakers back there means if you ever have a sub or do now, then you can make the sub play lower by tuning it lower, and the midbasses close the gap between the bass and higher notes from the front door speakers.

This is an awesome idea! I usually play my subs high in order to overlap heavily with the front stage; I love the way it sounds this way. But with your method, I could probably throw more power at the subs without losing that blending.

 

[nauc 10+ year member]

i dont like rears

 

[Doxquzme Premium Member]

i dont like rears

That's what she said!

 

[1aespinoza 10+ year member]

That's what she said!

It's all about presentation.