Speaker Placement

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Hello!

I will be buying a 1996 Bronco soon and I am wondering what everyone recommends for speaker placement. The stock truck has the following:

- 2x 6.5" speaker in each front door.

- a 6x9" speaker on each side at the back seat (bench)

I am thinking of replacing these with the Rockford Fosgate Punch series speakers. Then, I intend to mount a subwoofer box in the back with the 12" Rockford Fosgate P3D4 or P3D2 Punch subwoofer.

I listen to mostly metal and country and so while I love great bass, I also like good mids/highs to clearly hear vocals, guitars and drums. And I'm afraid the 6.5 and 6x9 inch speakers are too small to give me the same "punch" the subwoofer will give at a certain volume. So I'm wondering if it would make sense to install two more 8" speakers with custom boxes in the back of the truck. The truck has a compartment hole on each side of the trunk that I can fit a box with speakers in.

Please let me know what you think! I will also be sound deadening most of the interior and my audio source will be a Raspberry pi with (probably) the ApplePi audio card that is capable of outputting audio at 24bit/192kHz.

Thank you!

Broncos

 
Hello!
I will be buying a 1996 Bronco soon and I am wondering what everyone recommends for speaker placement. The stock truck has the following:

- 2x 6.5" speaker in each front door.

- a 6x9" speaker on each side at the back seat (bench)

I am thinking of replacing these with the Rockford Fosgate Punch series speakers. Then, I intend to mount a subwoofer box in the back with the 12" Rockford Fosgate P3D4 or P3D2 Punch subwoofer.

I listen to mostly metal and country and so while I love great bass, I also like good mids/highs to clearly hear vocals, guitars and drums. And I'm afraid the 6.5 and 6x9 inch speakers are too small to give me the same "punch" the subwoofer will give at a certain volume. So I'm wondering if it would make sense to install two more 8" speakers with custom boxes in the back of the truck. The truck has a compartment hole on each side of the trunk that I can fit a box with speakers in.

Please let me know what you think! I will also be sound deadening most of the interior and my audio source will be a Raspberry pi with (probably) the ApplePi audio card that is capable of outputting audio at 24bit/192kHz.

Thank you!

Broncos
horrible idea. What you need is a quality midbass driver and proper installation, sound deadening, acoustical treatments to turn your car door into an ideal enclosure preventing rear waves from meeting front waves which in turn gets you that massive midbass thump in the chest you are looking for. Along with a lot of amplifier power as well.

Your rasberry pi is with that dac is useless because your head unit only puts out at best 24 bit/ 48khz sampling and especially if you plan on using an aux cord which is the worst kind of garbage sound quality source you can think of in car audio, 2nd only to FM/am radio. aptx or Bluetooth verson 4.0 or higher is actually a more proper means of getting a good strong digital signal to the head unit to process along with lossless files on USB. You want as little things in the signal line as possible that re-processes the signal over and over, its a recipe for system noise. That real guitar sound is from a good install and good tune with a good head unit. Head unit makes all the difference in sound as in right off the bat and final product after tuning, you'll feel a massive difference from a cheap to mid end head unit vs a higher end SQ oriented head unit. aka 24 bit dac, 13 band or higher EQ, time alignment, Network mode, 4 volt or higher pre-outs.

As a fellow metal listener, myself, I cant stress you enough how important soundstage is aka the feel of a live studio concert in your car where you can literally see where each instrument is on the dash board through hearing. If the singer walks left or right, you'll hear it. When you have those 8s in the back like that, you completely and utterly destroy any chance of having good soundstage.

 
Hello!
I will be buying a 1996 Bronco soon and I am wondering what everyone recommends for speaker placement. The stock truck has the following:

- 2x 6.5" speaker in each front door.

- a 6x9" speaker on each side at the back seat (bench)

I am thinking of replacing these with the Rockford Fosgate Punch series speakers. Then, I intend to mount a subwoofer box in the back with the 12" Rockford Fosgate P3D4 or P3D2 Punch subwoofer.

I listen to mostly metal and country and so while I love great bass, I also like good mids/highs to clearly hear vocals, guitars and drums. And I'm afraid the 6.5 and 6x9 inch speakers are too small to give me the same "punch" the subwoofer will give at a certain volume. So I'm wondering if it would make sense to install two more 8" speakers with custom boxes in the back of the truck. The truck has a compartment hole on each side of the trunk that I can fit a box with speakers in.

Please let me know what you think! I will also be sound deadening most of the interior and my audio source will be a Raspberry pi with (probably) the ApplePi audio card that is capable of outputting audio at 24bit/192kHz.

Thank you!

Broncos
I have an early 80s bull nose Bronco ..Mine has the carbureted straight 6 with 4spd manual ....That I’m working on currently myself ..It has the same speaker setup as yours so I can help you with some ideas on how to get yours right ...welcome to the forum

LnpjoG9.jpg


 
horrible idea. What you need is a quality midbass driver and proper installation, sound deadening, acoustical treatments to turn your car door into an ideal enclosure preventing rear waves from meeting front waves which in turn gets you that massive midbass thump in the chest you are looking for. Along with a lot of amplifier power as well.
Your rasberry pi is with that dac is useless because your head unit only puts out at best 24 bit/ 48khz sampling and especially if you plan on using an aux cord which is the worst kind of garbage sound quality source you can think of in car audio, 2nd only to FM/am radio. aptx or Bluetooth verson 4.0 or higher is actually a more proper means of getting a good strong digital signal to the head unit to process along with lossless files on USB. You want as little things in the signal line as possible that re-processes the signal over and over, its a recipe for system noise. That real guitar sound is from a good install and good tune with a good head unit. Head unit makes all the difference in sound as in right off the bat and final product after tuning, you'll feel a massive difference from a cheap to mid end head unit vs a higher end SQ oriented head unit. aka 24 bit dac, 13 band or higher EQ, time alignment, Network mode, 4 volt or higher pre-outs.

As a fellow metal listener, myself, I cant stress you enough how important soundstage is aka the feel of a live studio concert in your car where you can literally see where each instrument is on the dash board through hearing. If the singer walks left or right, you'll hear it. When you have those 8s in the back like that, you completely and utterly destroy any chance of having good soundstage.
Thanks for taking the time to reply! I won't go with the 8" speakers in the back then. But do you think I'll get a good mix of audible frequencies and the 12" 600W sub won't overpower it all? So should I just stick to replacing the 6.5" and 6x0" speakers? It may sound ridiculous to imply that the subwoofer would overpower everything, and I apologize but this is my first audio build, so I don't know.

Also, as far as AUX cables I agree and I'd even say Bluetooth is garbage in terms of quality. I strictly listen to 320kbs and FLAC music only. But my setup with the raspberry pi wouldn't involve the car head unit. In fact, I will be completely removing the head unit, transferring radio capabilities to the pi, have all my music on either a 128gb USB flash drive connected to the Pi or maybe an external SSD. That way, the sound only has to go through a single conversion (the aftermarket ApplePi DAC). And the ApplePi card is an amazing DAC. Specification wise it uses amazing components and the reviews seem to prove it. I will be going directly from it to the speakers. So nothing else in the chain to add noise or distort the sound. If you still think this is a bad idea, do let me know, but seeing as this would be more fun to build and cheaper than a head unit capable of 24bits and 192kHz (I know that's a bit overkill) playback, I think it's a great idea. But do let me know if you think otherwise.

 
Thanks for the welcome, I appreciate it! Always a pleasure meeting a new community!

Yes, please let me know. I realize Broncos share similar storage compartments and what not, so if you could post a picture or maybe tell me how you hooked up your speakers, I'd greatly appreciate it!

 
Thanks for taking the time to reply! I won't go with the 8" speakers in the back then. But do you think I'll get a good mix of audible frequencies and the 12" 600W sub won't overpower it all? So should I just stick to replacing the 6.5" and 6x0" speakers? It may sound ridiculous to imply that the subwoofer would overpower everything, and I apologize but this is my first audio build, so I don't know.
Also, as far as AUX cables I agree and I'd even say Bluetooth is garbage in terms of quality. I strictly listen to 320kbs and FLAC music only. But my setup with the raspberry pi wouldn't involve the car head unit. In fact, I will be completely removing the head unit, transferring radio capabilities to the pi, have all my music on either a 128gb USB flash drive connected to the Pi or maybe an external SSD. That way, the sound only has to go through a single conversion (the aftermarket ApplePi DAC). And the ApplePi card is an amazing DAC. Specification wise it uses amazing components and the reviews seem to prove it. I will be going directly from it to the speakers. So nothing else in the chain to add noise or distort the sound. If you still think this is a bad idea, do let me know, but seeing as this would be more fun to build and cheaper than a head unit capable of 24bits and 192kHz (I know that's a bit overkill) playback, I think it's a great idea. But do let me know if you think otherwise.
First off, with a proper head unit, bluetooth is no where near garbage especially with aptx which is literally lossless form of transcoding which flac files are easily transferrable with zero loss.

You can have the best source in the world but its not gonna help with anything that actually helps in the car audio world. This is not home audio, in the car audio environment, its a small confined space with lots of hard surfaces that sound reflects on and fabric that sound gets absorbed in. This is relevant because even with Flac files, if the rest of the tune and system is sh*t, it'll sound like sh*t and you'll easily be beaten by someone playing 128kbps youtube streams on a properly tuned setup.

Whats a proper tuned setup? first off, You need to have a blend between sub, midrange/midbass and tweeter through active crossovers that can be changed (from the head unit) in order to match the vehicle's acoustics.

In car audio you notice the speakers are not equal distance away from each other? This literally screws up any proper center image and soundstage you normally get from a home audio setup where speakers are even distance from you. You'll hear the left side louder and the sound waves reach your ears faster than the right. In car audio, the head unit has time alignment which makes every mid, tweeter and sub's soundwaves hit your ears at the same time creating a virtual soundstage that gives the live concert feel in your car.

Again back to vehicle acoustics, with soundwaves from the tweeters and mids bouncing off the dash, windshield etc... you get nasty peaks in the frequency response. The only way to fix this is with an EQ where you tone down offending frequencies. On a more advanced head unit or digital sound processor, you can EQ both the left and right mid/tweeter independantly from eachother.

Literally your applepi sounds good in theory but if used by itself, it ends up utterly useless purely due to the chaotic listening environment that is a car. However you can add a digital sound processor to actually do the tuning aspect and then yes the setup will be relevant then. The pre-out voltage of that apple pi is weak as hell too at 2.5volts. Usually prefer 4 + volts in any car system. Yeah man this isnt home audio or headfi audio where you can just focus on a good source and have good sound, this is WAAAAY more advanced and a lot more physics are involved.

some things a dsp can do.

x975PRODSP-o_other.jpg


 
First off, with a proper head unit, bluetooth is no where near garbage especially with aptx which is literally lossless form of transcoding which flac files are easily transferrable with zero loss.
You can have the best source in the world but its not gonna help with anything that actually helps in the car audio world. This is not home audio, in the car audio environment, its a small confined space with lots of hard surfaces that sound reflects on and fabric that sound gets absorbed in. This is relevant because even with Flac files, if the rest of the tune and system is sh*t, it'll sound like sh*t and you'll easily be beaten by someone playing 128kbps youtube streams on a properly tuned setup.

Whats a proper tuned setup? first off, You need to have a blend between sub, midrange/midbass and tweeter through active crossovers that can be changed (from the head unit) in order to match the vehicle's acoustics.

In car audio you notice the speakers are not equal distance away from each other? This literally screws up any proper center image and soundstage you normally get from a home audio setup where speakers are even distance from you. You'll hear the left side louder and the sound waves reach your ears faster than the right. In car audio, the head unit has time alignment which makes every mid, tweeter and sub's soundwaves hit your ears at the same time creating a virtual soundstage that gives the live concert feel in your car.

Again back to vehicle acoustics, with soundwaves from the tweeters and mids bouncing off the dash, windshield etc... you get nasty peaks in the frequency response. The only way to fix this is with an EQ where you tone down offending frequencies. On a more advanced head unit or digital sound processor, you can EQ both the left and right mid/tweeter independantly from eachother.

Literally your applepi sounds good in theory but if used by itself, it ends up utterly useless purely due to the chaotic listening environment that is a car. However you can add a digital sound processor to actually do the tuning aspect and then yes the setup will be relevant then. The pre-out voltage of that apple pi is weak as hell too at 2.5volts. Usually prefer 4 + volts in any car system. Yeah man this isnt home audio or headfi audio where you can just focus on a good source and have good sound, this is WAAAAY more advanced and a lot more physics are involved.

some things a dsp can do.

x975PRODSP-o_other.jpg
Excellent, detailed response, thank you! I appreciate it! Is there a specific DSP you recommend? The problem I have is that a nice dsp with a screen may not fit in the Bronco. It only has slots for the smaller single stack head units. But any recommendations surely help.

I'll take a deeper look into good audio digital sound processor, but I may just go with a dsp, I don't know yet; research is key.

Thanks for the help!

As far as speaker choice goes, are there any speakers better than the Rockford Fosgate Punch series for that money?

 
Excellent, detailed response, thank you! I appreciate it! Is there a specific DSP you recommend? The problem I have is that a nice dsp with a screen may not fit in the Bronco. It only has slots for the smaller single stack head units. But any recommendations surely help.
I'll take a deeper look into good audio digital sound processor, but I may just go with a dsp, I don't know yet; research is key.

Thanks for the help!

As far as speaker choice goes, are there any speakers better than the Rockford Fosgate Punch series for that money?
if you can wait till mid july there's a pretty good looking dsp for 150. https://www.parts-express.com/dayton-audio-dsp-408-4x8-dsp-digital-signal-processor-for-home-and-car-audio--230-500

A dsp has no screen, you connect it to a laptop and tune, after you are done, you just save it and unhook the laptop and not have to worry about it again, the unit does have a bluetooth dongle you can buy so you can adjust it on your smartphone instead. It'll just be a small black box hidden away somewhere in your car by the end of the install.

the punch series at 70 dollars there's not much else you can do speaker wise. At least go for component speakers.

 
if you can wait till mid july there's a pretty good looking dsp for 150. https://www.parts-express.com/dayton-audio-dsp-408-4x8-dsp-digital-signal-processor-for-home-and-car-audio--230-500
A dsp has no screen, you connect it to a laptop and tune, after you are done, you just save it and unhook the laptop and not have to worry about it again, the unit does have a bluetooth dongle you can buy so you can adjust it on your smartphone instead. It'll just be a small black box hidden away somewhere in your car by the end of the install.

the punch series at 70 dollars there's not much else you can do speaker wise. At least go for component speakers.
Thanks!

I can, and gladly will, wait till July for that DSP or atleast do more research about them in the meantime. I'd like to know though. Apart from upgrading speakers, the audio source, adding a dsp, sound deadening the car and so on, what else can I do to get that tight sound? Any recommendations welcome. Thanks!

 
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