Speaker Placement, whats the best?

[crfrider 10+ year member]

a yes is it better to put your tweeters up high like in the piller, or top of door, and keep the midbass woofer down low, in a componet set that is? im thinkin of puttin my first set of midbass in the factory location door mounts, and puttin one set of tweeters in the top of the door panel, then building a custom center consle with the two other midbass woofers and either putting the 2 other tweeters in it, or puttin them up high in the front pillers, what would be best? thanks

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[JimJ 5,000+ posts]

There is no best, only what works in your situation //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

However, going with two sets of tweeters in different locations is not what you want to do if you want to keep a decent center image...

 

[DEdwards 10+ year member]

Unless the 2nd set of tweets (in the a pillar) is crossed over at a higher frequency.....such as if the 1st set is crossed over at 4kHz and the second set at 10kHz....

 

[pjhabit 10+ year member]

Ideally you'd want your mids & tweets close to each other w/ a good line of sight to the drivers, while getting them as close to on-axis as possible.

Instead of multiple point sources playing the same frequencies, why not split the frequencies between the drivers & do a 4 way frontstage?

midbass in doors (~70-500hz)

midrange in kicks (~500-5khz)

tweets in the kicks (~5khz-10khz)

"super" tweets in the a pillar (~10khz & up)

 

[DEdwards 10+ year member]

There really isn't "ideal" in car with out rebuilding the dash/kick panel area.

fyi..There are midranges that can play over 10Khz very well //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

 

[pjhabit 10+ year member]

It was just a generalisation if you will. A good install goes along way. And I wouldn't bet a midrange could play that high very well off-axis.

 

[eharri3 10+ year member]

As someone else said, a good reference point to start from as the 'ideal setup' is to set your car speakers up exactly like you would in a home theater. Equidistant from the listener, at or slightly above ear level, and on axis to you. Since there are often multiple listeners that people are concerned about and equidistant front speaker placement is pretty much impossible due to the layout of the vehicle unless you're talking about a center rear passenger, every other option is a less than ideal compromise that must be overcome with tuning and custom fab work. A significant part of this is critical listening with different speaker placements to decide what works for YOU.

We could do mids and tweets in the windshield pillar aimed on axis to the driver or the middle of the vehicle. However if you're the type who likes everyone in the car to be equally impressed BUT you don't want to create 6 or 6.5 inch pods in your windshield pillars (It's been done, and done welll) this may not work for you.

Then we have to think about where we could comfortably fit both the tweeter and the mid but keep them reasonably close to eachother. Most people will do the easy door install for the mids and then do the tweeters somewhere high in the windshield or sail panels where there's space and it's an easy install without interfering with anything else. It will sound pretty good but in certain situations if you aren't running active and tuning each driver individually the music will no longer sound coherent. (I only know because this is how I have it set up right now.) If your highs are coming right from ear level and the midrange/midbass reaching you later after being diffused because they are cross-firing towards eachother through your shins, this may negatively affect imaging and staging. Imagine playing vocals that transition from midrange to highs as the vocalist raises their voice in pitch and the placement of the voice changes because the two drivers are so far apart that you can audibly detect a transition from the mids to the tweeters. Or various other aspects of the music that will be more audible and clearer to you than others because the the speakers producing different sounds are so far apart. Part of being realistic is realizing that each sound should pretty much sound like it's originating from one place in front of you. And each sound is made up of frequencies that come from your mid ranges and from your tweeters. This gets harder the further apart you place the components if you don't know how to use proper tuning to fix it.

We could put both mids and tweets in kick panels for equal path lengths from each side of the car to our ears and a more coherent sound from the two component sets but... and many will take issue with this statement... do your ankles do the listening or do your ears. We could put the tweeters and mids right next to eachother low in the door panels near the stock openings but the results will vary depending on the shape of the vehicle and a speaker's on/off-axis response. Your perceived performance of the tweeter may be hurt by this approach since tweets play the most directional frequencies which will be harder for you to get a good sense of if they don't have the best possible path to your ears. I won't even go into dash mounted tweeters and mids. I believe it can be done effectively but most people do it pretty randomly to varying effects without realizing that for best results you need to have a real idea of how those soundwaves will travel and exactly how they'll be afflected by reflections before they reach you.

It will definitely vary depending on the vehicle. Next time around I might try the mids in stock openings then put the tweets in the highest part of the door where it starts to curve inward rather than going with the sail panel or windshield panel. Logically thinking about things it seems like this may be a better compromise for me but it may not be for you and for your car. Even better if I do 3 ways I can go with midbasses in the stock openings then put the smaller midranges and tweeters within 6 inches of eachother in a very high and relatively on-axis position.

Things you definitely don't want if you're going for SQ are speakers playing like frequencies separated from eachother by a great distance. Heard good things about 2 ways in kicks then super tweeters placed higher, but it may not be so good to do tweets in the doors then other tweets playing the same frequencies in a totally different different place. People will sometimes do multiple sets with the same frequency for more loudness but each set of like speakers will more than likely be placed right next to eachoter. There is no perfect speaker placement in a car. The design of the car makes 'perfect' impossible. What we're trying to figure out now is the most acceptable compromise between the confines of the vehicle shape, our sound quality expectations, and our willingness to mutilate our vehicle's interior.

 

[DEdwards 10+ year member]

As someone else said, a good reference point to start from as the 'ideal setup' is to set your car speakers up exactly like you would in a home theater. Equidistant from the listener, at or slightly above ear level, and on axis to you. Since there are often multiple listeners that people are concerned about and equidistant front speaker placement is pretty much impossible due to the layout of the vehicle, everything else is a compromise that must be overcome with tuning and custom fab work.
We could do mids and tweets in the windshield pillar aimed on axis to the driver but if you're the type who likes everyone in the car to be equally impressed BUT you don't want to create 6 or 6.5 inch pods in your windshield pillars (It's been done, and done welll) this may not work for you.

Then we have to think about where we could comfortably fit both the tweeter and the mid but keep them reasonably close to eachother. Most people will do the easy door install for the mids and then do the tweeters somewhere high in the windshield or sail panels where there's space and it's an easy install without interfering with anything else. It will sound pretty good but in certain situations if you aren't running active and tuning each driver individually the music will no longer sound coherent. (I only know because this is how I have it set up right now.) If your highs are coming right from ear level and the midrange and midbass reaching you later after being diffused because the mids are cross-firing towards eachother through your shins, this may negatively affect imaging and staging. Imagine playing vocals that transition from midrange to highs as the vocalist raises their voice in pitch and the placement of the voice changes because the two drivers are so far apart that you can audibly detect a transition from the mids to the tweeters. Or various other aspects of the music that will be more audible and clearer to you than others because of the the speakers producing different sounds are so far apart. Part of being realistic is realizing that each sound should pretty much sound like it's originating from one place in front of you. This gets harder the further apart you place the components if you don't know how to use proper tuning to fix it.

We could put both mids and tweets in kick panels for equal path lengths from each side of the car to our ears and a more coherent sound from the two speakers but... and many will take issue with this statement... do your ankles do the listening or do your ears. We could put the tweeters and mids right next to eachother low in the door panels near the stock openings but the results will vary depending on the shape of the vehicle and a speaker's on/off-axis response. Your perceived performance of the tweeter may be hurt by this approach.

It will definitely vary depending on the vehicle. Next time around I might try the mids in stock panels then put the tweets in the highest part of the door where it starts to curve inward rather than going with the sail panel or windshield panel.

Logically thinking about things it seems like this may be a better compromise for me but it may not be for you and for your car.

Someone typed somewhat useful info