What's the best sounding 6.5" mid I can purchase individually?

[grampi 10+ year member]

I have a set of JL XR-650 CSi comps and I'm not real pleased with the mid drivers. I love the tweets and would like to continue using them, but I'd like to replace the 6.5s with something better. Any suggestions for some mids I can buy individually (not as part of a component set)?

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[PremierAudio 10+ year member]

What kind of price range do you want to be in? What more do you want out of the mid that say the JLs lacked? How much power are you working with?

-Aaron

 

[Russkels55 10+ year member]

i have image dynamics mids. there 6.5 in and all by themselfs. great sq and bass. ill sell them if you want them. barely used looks new in condishion as well

 

[grampi 10+ year member]

What kind of price range do you want to be in? What more do you want out of the mid that say the JLs lacked? How much power are you working with?
-Aaron

I guess the price range I want to be in will be determined by what it's going to take to get a better mid. I guess the best way to describe how these mids sound to me is they sound like someone is holding a towel in front of them. The sound seems muffled, and they lack punch. I'm running them with 75 per channel.

 

[grampi 10+ year member]

i have image dynamics mids. there 6.5 in and all by themselfs. great sq and bass. ill sell them if you want them. barely used looks new in condishion as well

I might be interested, but how do I know they're any better, or even as good as the JL's? I've never heard, or even heard of Image Dynamics.

 

[jdawg 5,000+ posts]

what frequency is the lowpass on the crossover? That will narrow down your choices somewhat. Also you say they lack punch? You should deaden your doors and seal them up ie. covering all the little holes up so the door acts more as an enclosure and not just a baffle.

 

[Russkels55 10+ year member]

I might be interested, but how do I know they're any better, or even as good as the JL's? I've never heard, or even heard of Image Dynamics.

than you got some research to do.

 

[fearthisskyy 10+ year member]

yep, research and read around this forum and other forums... image dynamics has quality products!

 

[MiniVanMan 10+ year member]

There can be a ton of reasons why your JLs are behaving the way they are.

Understand something about car audio. Car audio is extremely install dependant, and if you have problems with a speaker, the first place to look is your install.

Just slapping a speaker into a door is a bad idea. Since it's what we're given from car manufacturers, it's what we have to work with. That's why deadening, aiming, baffling, and all sorts of other techniques are used to get good sound.

So, my first question is, how do you have your current speakers installed?

I can recommend speakers all day long, but it's not doing you any good if your install is not top notch.

 

[grampi 10+ year member]

My mids are pretty much just installed in the door's 6 1/2 cutout. I can understand that contributing to the speaker's lack of punch, but how does that contribute to its muffled sound. To me, that sounds purely like some sort of deficiency with the speaker itself.

 

[jmanpc 5,000+ posts]

Squeaksters.

/thread

 

[MiniVanMan 10+ year member]

My mids are pretty much just installed in the door's 6 1/2 cutout. I can understand that contributing to the speaker's lack of punch, but how does that contribute to its muffled sound. To me, that sounds purely like some sort of deficiency with the speaker itself.

Backwaves, lobing, baffle step, diffraction artifacts, off-axis alignment, phasing, etc, etc, etc.

I'm not trying to be a smart ***, but how many home audio speakers have you ever seen that are just mounted to a metal ring?? Car audio vendors haven't figured out how to defy physics yet, and are still constrained by the same factors that home audio vendors are subject to.

That being said, you're best bet is to treat your doors to a good healthy dose of deadening product. Then use an MDF baffle to help lower resonance even further. Seal up the mounting plane so the back of the speaker is isolated from the front, eliminating backwaves.

Figure out how off-axis your door speaker are. That's the degree to which they are facing away from you. This will affect upper midrange response greatly and needs to be highly considered when choosing component sets.

I'll stop there. You may actually not like the JLs even after all this, but there's not a speaker out there that will behave well mounted in a stock location, with no prior treatment.