Trying to get as much low end as possible from 6.5 speakers...

RickySchade

CarAudio.com Newbie
Are Kicker 46CSS654 probably going to give me the best bass from 6.5 inch speakers that fit in the rear doors of my 2019 Forte?

I know specs can be fudged but "frequency response: 35-21,000 Hz" paired with "sensitivity: 90 dB" sounds powerful on paper.

Also don't want to spend more than $150 and these are $128 right now.
 
Are Kicker 46CSS654 probably going to give me the best bass from 6.5 inch speakers that fit in the rear doors of my 2019 Forte?

I know specs can be fudged but "frequency response: 35-21,000 Hz" paired with "sensitivity: 90 dB" sounds powerful on paper.

Also don't want to spend more than $150 and these are $128 right now.
The primary determining factor in bass response is the door itself. More specifically whether it can avoid resonance and seal well enough. I think you're on the right track with this set since there's not really a reason to have 3-ways in the rear doors. It's not the best set, but for that price range it's not a terrible choice. I've never been the biggest fan of Kicker personally. I'm partial to Hertz, and Focal if you can afford them and JL if you can't. Edit: If JLs are out of your budget I've heard good things about Polk Audio's DB series.

The way the pros get low bass from doors is often by building enclosures into the fiberglass, short of doing this you're never going to get anything close to even a cheap low power subwoofer from the doors and it would still require substantial noise dampening to deal with the vibration. I'd say without going this far you could get as low as ~65hz but beneath that you're going to miss out not having a proper subwoofer even with good speakers and decent deadening. Untreated, 65hz will make that car's door sound like a tin can if played loudly.

Keep in mind those are 2 ohms, not 4. Are you going to be using an amp or a head unit to power them? Many head units specify 4 ohms minimum.
 
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Ok I disagree slightly with the other posts, I think it really depends on your taste for bass. I just installed morel maximo 6's in my car and I was really impressed how low they could go without even connecting the subs. They actually would go down to 40 hertz, and it sounded really full. Keep in mind though I did put a lot of sound dampening in my door. I almost taught I could go without subwoofers until I got on the road and realized the road noise drowned out a lot of the bass. So unless your car is fairly quiet, I would still think you need a sub. Also don't expect 35 hz. I don't have much experience with car audio but from my limited experience those specifications don't really mean anything, other than the sensitivity.
 
excursion is limited on a cheap 6.5, unless you enjoy distorted bass (or dont know any better) you will likely damage the driver over time "trying" to play that low....goodluck
 
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Keep in mind though I did put a lot of sound dampening in my door. I almost taught I could go without subwoofers until I got on the road and realized the road noise drowned out a lot of the bass.
Sound dampening allows you to hear the note at all over the rattle that would be there otherwise, in terms of driving around that's always a downside of the bass range. It's also part of why people often pair 1000W ported subwoofers with stock drivers. You lose mids as well, but bass takes the largest hit at speed. My stock speakers can do 60hz no problem at idle in an undeadened door, but turning them up to road listening levels is a whole other story, as JR said, it requires excursion. The only way to get around this is a ported enclosure to get more bass from a small driver without great excursion. Doors can be tuned, but you're not going to get ported performance on accident.
 
yup....lower volume levels you can play down to 30hz easily, its when you turn up the volume to compensate for road noise you run into mechanical limits of the driver
 
Also don't expect 35 hz. I don't have much experience with car audio but from my limited experience those specifications don't really mean anything, other than the sensitivity.
To this other point, here's an example of the frequency response of a Hertz 165.3.
MPX165.3_graphic.png

Hertz lists this as 45-21.5k frequency response. Kicker doesn't offer a frequency response graph, but each manufacturer does it differently.
Capture.PNG


Here's a JL audio 6.5 speaker which lists the range as 50-5k. It's not an exact comparison, but we're only interested in the low end. You can see that even the standards of what db qualifies as a response between brands are different and these two brands are some of the best performers throughout these ranges. I take this to mean that Kicker is likely overrating their range, but it doesn't matter because each brand does it differently. It's more of a rule of thumb to compare speakers of the same manufacturer in my opinion.
 
you aint gonna get jack **** most of the times. Unless you got a lucky lotto draw on the door acoustics. Some doors wont produce bass even with completely sealed and sound treated doors purely from the design of the door which means you need dedicated built in fiberglass enclosures in the doors which is a complete hassle if you are doing it yourself or a massive money sink if you have someone else do it and there's no going back to the stock look after that. If you do get lucky, you can even get a lot of bass even with zero sound treatment. That being said, some speakers do play bass better than others but the acoustical environment is just as big of a factor as the speaker capability which can negate any kind of bass performance that speaker has completely. Vice versa, you can have really good door but if the speaker cant play low notes for crap, than its all a waste of time as well. get ready to fall into an expensive rabbit hole chasing that door bass because absolutely no one here can predict your results unless they have your exact car make and model and has experimented with different speaker setups in the same car.
 
Holy moly, fellas! I know what to expect from 6.5 inch drivers. I was just wondering which set might produce the best bass response while fitting in my doors for under $150.
 
Holy moly, fellas! I know what to expect from 6.5 inch drivers. I was just wondering which set might produce the best bass response while fitting in my doors for under $150.
I would recommend the Polk Audio DB. I trust their quality more than a Kicker product. I like Kicker as a company, they provide good resources, I just don't think their products live up unless they're in their top lineups.

Ebay has them as low as 159.00 brand new and 10.00 is hardly worth settling for lesser speakers. That being said, don't cheap out and buy them used. Ebay's not too great for used car audio stuff unless you're good at fixing stuff.

The next cheapest that I would recommend for rear door "bass" is quite a bit more.
 
Holy moly, fellas! I know what to expect from 6.5 inch drivers. I was just wondering which set might produce the best bass response while fitting in my doors for under $150.
Just pull the trigger. I recently removed my system to service my truck and put in a temporary amp to have something to jam with. As I was working around the truck, I noticed how good the 6.5s sounded sans subwoofer. The bass is definitely there and quite low. Now I admit that inside I can not hear it as low or extended for reasons uknown. So get them, install them, and if need be, add to it. That is the fun part of car audio, adding a bit at a time until you are content with your set up.
 
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