Where does everyone have their comps mounted, doors or kick panels?

[grampi 10+ year member]

I hear nothing but good things about kick panel mountings, and nothing but bad about door mountings, but I can see why so many people mount their speakers in the doors. IT'S MUCH EASIER!

However, being the audiophile I am, I've never been happy with the sound quality of door mounted speakers. The mids never produce the amount of mid bass punch they should be providing, and the imaging sucks. But in order to mount them in kick panel enclosures, you either have to be lucky enough to own one of the few vehicles aftermarket kick panels are made for, or you have to know how to work with fiberglass. I fit into neither catagory. I know someone is going to say make them yourself, but I simply don't have the time to fabricate such items, and really don't want to be forking over hunderds of dollars to have someone make them for me.

What do you guys do? Just say screw it, mount them in the doors and live with the poor SQ? I really don't want to have to go this route as I know I'll just be disappointed once again.

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[xtremekustomz 10+ year member]

I built a dash to house my midrange and tweets, built kick panels for my 8" midbass, and a center console for my 12". Kick panels really aren't that hard and the main part can be done in a few hours. The first thing you need to do is play with aiming the speakers. Kick panel mounting is the most common and usually gets your pathlengths the closest to each other.

 

[Sythlord79 10+ year member]

I built a dash to house my midrange and tweets, built kick panels for my 8" midbass, and a center console for my 12". Kick panels really aren't that hard and the main part can be done in a few hours. The first thing you need to do is play with aiming the speakers. Kick panel mounting is the most common and usually gets your pathlengths the closest to each other.

any pics???

 

[xtremekustomz 10+ year member]

Yep. I've got to get some where I am completely finished with everything. This is a pic of the dash. The kick panels aren't in on this picture.

 

[SQChevy 10+ year member]

My suggestion would be to paint the A-pillars to match the dash. What is the white stuff around the kick panels?

 

[jluv 10+ year member]

Mounting speakers in your doors does not always mean you sacrifice SQ. It all depends on the vehicle, the speakers used, the install, and deadening. In certain applications, I'm sure it can sound better to have them in the doors.

 

[xtremekustomz 10+ year member]

My suggestion would be to paint the A-pillars to match the dash. What is the white stuff around the kick panels?

The A-pillars are covered in grille cloth because there is a tweeter that isn't seen. The white stuff around the kick panel is the paint on the truck. It was originally white.

 

[MikeyB 5,000+ posts]

 

[ItalynStylion 10+ year member]

 

[Prowler573 5,000+ posts]

Mine are in my doors.....on an MDF spacer to bring them out from the door panel far enough to clear the window mechanism.

My car originally called for 4" speakers in the doors behind a factory grille. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/crap.gif.7f4dd41e3e9b23fbd170a1ee6f65cecc.gif

6.5" midwoofers didn't want to live in the stock location in any shape, fashion, or form so I had to space them away from the doors.

The tweets are mounted on the sail panels immediately behind my outside rearviews.

 

[benjames 10+ year member]

I'm pretty happy with the SQ of my current setup...and the splits are in the doors.

I've had them in various different locations at different stages, but I found the doors gave me the results I wanted. I think the axis of the speakers in relation to the listener has a big effect on the overall sound, so the stock location may not sound quite right initially, but with a couple of small changes in the angle of the speakers, I think you can work wonders //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

I'm very happy with the imaging, and the stage width spreads evenly across the whole dash.. The only (small) issues I've had is a very slight rainbow effect with the mid freqs, and the stage from the sides seems slighty closer than the centre image. There is a magificent sense of midbass, and I can't pick out any reflections, so I'm pleased with the overall result.

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

Mids are in the doors, tweets in the A-pillars.

 

[grampi 10+ year member]

Mounting speakers in your doors does not always mean you sacrifice SQ. It all depends on the vehicle, the speakers used, the install, and deadening. In certain applications, I'm sure it can sound better to have them in the doors.

I can't think of any installation application where door mounted speakers would sound better than kick mounted speakers.

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

I can think of plenty. Not always possible to get the right sized speaker or the right airspace in the kick. The pathlength difference might be less with the speakers in the kicks, path differences can be addressed with time alignment. To little airspace or too small a driver means no midbass response. No amount of processing is going to fix that. Could also lead to coloration of the sound and effed up tonality. Again almost impossible to fix with processing.

 

[jluv 10+ year member]

I can't think of any installation application where door mounted speakers would sound better than kick mounted speakers.

Well, then you are either being very closed-minded or you just haven't seen enough systems. There are SQ competitors running their comps in the stock locations. Kick panels are not always necessary or beneficial, or even possible.