A Nice, Clean, Crisp, Heart-Pounding System Setup :)

Below is a nasty drawing on "how to get the most from your Sound Stage or System Setup in you car.

Basic all need to is position the subs upward towards the glass. Next have 2 pair of tweeters. So you add two in the front and two and rear. Make sure you have the 2 tweeters on the driver side pointing towards the passenger side and vice versa. And mount them on pillars(front and rear) *You may need to drill some holes, so you choice or not. Ands that it.

[SIZE=1]*Some sound quality may vary depending on what speakers, amp, head unit, tweeters, subs and how you wired everything in your car.[/SIZE]

System Layout.JPG

I disagree. First of all, I highly suggest not running two sets of tweeters up front as their phasing differences will greatly effect your frequency response which effects your imaging and soundstage. Second, I don’t recomend seperating your tweeters and mids like that. You want to keep them within a wavelength of the crossover frequency to minimize lobing issues. And finally, I don’t recomend running rear speakers if you are looking for the best sound stage. This is because the rear speakers can pull the soundstage to the rear which is not good. Instead, save your money from the extra speakers and put them into a better set of front speakers, or other equipment that will actually give you noticable improvements.

Steven Kephart
Adire Audio

I’ve be corrected Disregard the first post. BTW Steve fix the photo to correct PLEASE!!!

Q for you Steven:

What is your opinion on time correction and using a rear stage?

Reason why I ask is because I am running a HU with time correction for each one of my speakers (LF, LR, RF, RR, and Sub), and am just wondering what my staging will sound like when the time corrections are setup properly.

I agree, that said I do think a good set of rear midrange/midbass drivers in mono can help the sound stage, but I do agree no tweeters in the rear, [ unless you are running surroundsound 5.1 or 6.1 :ok: 94

I’m not sure if there is an easy way to answer that question. Mainly because “setup properly” is extremely hard to do without measurement equipment and a great deal of experience. It also assumes a properly setup install. Because of the way our ears are set on our heads, soundstage cues are preceived by timing differences specifically in frequencies from 500 Hz and down. For frequencies 1000 Hz and above soundstage cues are preceived strictly from differences in amplidude (differences in the output level of the signal between the speakers). From 500 Hz to 1000 Hz both timing and amplitude difference effect the soundstage preception.

So what does all that mean? Well your time alignment will only effect frequencies from 1000 Hz and down. Above that you will have to use the fader to set it correctly. This means that tweeter placement will effect this as well.

Unless you are running SACD or DVDA in your car, the music you listen to is recorded in stereo. There is information in the recording to produce the ambiance around you in a properly setup stereo system. Rear speakers IMO do more harm than good. I believe the money could be better spent on something else that makes a much bigger difference. The only way I can see running rear speakers is if you have people in the back all the time. But to be honest, I’m greedy. I say screw the passengers. I don’t want to give up great sound just so they can hear the music better too. That will teach them to be quicker on the “shotgun” calling next time. :wink:

As for how it sounds when setup properly, my boss has a great demo of this phenomenon. He has a track on the album Dark Side of the Moon that has some crazy ambiant sounds in odd locations not positioned directly between the front speakers. He will play this track on our big home theater system and ask you where some of the sounds are coming from. You will point to different places in the room, and then he will tell you that you are listening to a stereo recording. The surrounds and center channel aren’t even on, and yet the sound is definitely surrounding you. So to answer your last question, that’s what you will hear. Anyone is welcome to stop on by our shop if they want to hear this for themselves.

Steven Kephart
Adire Audio

I understand that you want sound coming from the front, but I find it extremely annoying when I’m only hearing sound from in front of me. It seems like there’s a big whole from the back of the car.

Are you saying put in better speakers in front, and leave the back?

hey steve…would be SPL be good to use to setup my system…like should i have the front and rears being the same SPL…and then match it to the sub???..would that work?..if not it cant hurt ill proably give that a try

Well you guys can definitely set it up the way you prefer. I was just explaining the best way to set up your system to provide the best sound quality possible. When was the last time you went to a concert and they had speakers behind the audience? Do you go to the concert and face the back to get that “sound from the back”? The music isn’t supposed to come from behind you, so why do you want it to? My recomendation is to go to a good high end stereo shop and actually listen to some stereo music. I think you will be blown away by the sound you hear. Sam, I noticed you are in Washington. If you are anywhere near Seattle, you are more than welcome to come by Adire and hear it for yourself. You can find directions at www.adireaudio.com.

Steven Kephart
Adire Audio

man, steven, i wish you could give my friend this explanantion, hes head on about delays, that his deck does automatically with a microphone to make up for the soundstage with rear speakers and thinks that rear speakers are wat makes a system sounds good. I know sound is personal taste, but he doesnt believe the sound imaging idea. I say, even if the deck somehow compensates to match up the frequency timing perfectly, it is still bad because now there will be a stronger sound coming from the back as there is the waves from the front travelling back there and bouncing forward and the waves given from the rear speakers.

My last set up was ok, i had eclipse speakers in the front and a fosgate sub in the back it was mostly free, so yea, but it sounded sweet, and if you were in the rear seats, u would never know i didnt have rear speakers.

As for the spl, the more speakers the louder, usually.

Ditto all that, and let me say that its rare to hear a car audio “guru” say things like “set it up the way you prefer” as some will flame the snot out of you just for even thinking that you may want to install rear speakers in your car, but Steven is right about how you hear sound, and if you have met friends at the bar,and you were late ,and got the seat with the band behind you, you know this to be true :stuck_out_tongue: 94

i’ve always been big on the whole front speaker for clarity idea, hench- had a middle channel in our little open spot on the dash. but do you guys not think ti is possible to gain some clarity w/ back speakers if they are running a different freq than the fronts? I only have 2 spk components, i want the 3 spk components but ya, whatcha think?

Hey stephen I live semi close to seattle, I may come check out your shop if I get some extra time. How would you recomend putting the subs?

Basic all need to is position the subs upward towards the glass
is this the best way?

thanks
-Aaron

i have alpine 9833 deck with (2) 10 typR subs powered by mrd-1000, components in the front, shitty 6x9 in the rear. i planing on gettin rid of rear and puttin 2way 6 1/2 on stock rear holes… think it will help.

SUB Problem : i dont really feel that loud base on me while i drive, it seems like it’s all concentrated in the windsheild, strange !! they are oriented toward the trunk, i tried toward me but doesnt make much diff… does orienting toward sky would help?

Feel free to come on by. We just had one guy from this board here visit today and I think he was blown away by what he saw and heard (sorry, I’m really bad with names).

Well if you want the best results, I suggest putting the sub up front. :smiley: But then most people aren’t as crazy as me, so this probably won’t happen for most of you. So honestly I recomend trying a lot of different positions until you find the best spot. I suppose you get a little more boosting if you corner load it in the back along one of the sides. But the best thing to do is experiment. Good luck!

Steven,
Instead of spening $4k on turbo, i spend it on luxury, & stereo equipment.

current setup(audio only)
DXZ835MP
EPIC-160
FOUR.1
EQX
RF DSM Punch amps(all gains/treble completely down)
6.5" components in the doors, (passive crossover)
and one 4" component in the middle of dash(above vents) in hole
currenlt 1 4th bandpass order 10" jl sub pointed towards back of car.

Just today i added the 4" component speaker w/ tweeter in the center stage w/ a passive crossover, curious to know if 3 tweeters would throw off the sound stage? seems better, but i don’t really have a machine to test it, I should come up to ur shop hmm…

Well if it sounds better to you, then that’s all that matters. However I believe you will have better results spending the time and money on the front left and right speakers instead.

Feel free to come on by the shop. We have a lot of cool stuff to see, some pretty good people, and a couple demo rooms. We can show you how good the imaging can get with some awesome sounding stereo speakers. We even have a slushie machine to cool you off. Plus we can show you the sub with the longest linear excursion of any sub in the world. :slight_smile:

Steven Kephart
Adire Audio

alright, i really do need some true nice components, i got everything nice except for some really nice speakers to go w/ the nice hu , processors and amps, damn. those 3-sets are expensive, oh well.

now i just got an EQX and it has line in, 3 main preouts, full, high, low

i should probably not be pushing full to the front components yeah? they don’t seem to be overbassed /blowout status/ but just seems sketch,… gain/treble/bass all down on amps. what are ur thoughts if u have time, thanks, appreciate it because i know ur a busy guy.

do u anaylze systems w/ machines? say i brought mine down, i’d pay some too

what are ur recommendations on some high-end, im not a cheap bastard. component 6.5"s, and probably not 3-set components for they will be uncessaryly expensive for my taste

but inaway iam running 3-set, for i have(components) 2x6.5, 1x4", and 3xtweeters, so some very high end 2 set components,

The front speakers are the most critical part of a speaker system. They produce a majority of the sound you hear, and out of all the other equipment produce the most distortion, and have the worst frequency response. To find out the best way to go really depends on you. For THE best possible sound, it will take some money and a great deal of time. Most of that time will be spent learning. I’ll break it down into a good, better, and best scenario for you.

Good: This is with the equipment you have. Mount the tweeters near your mids, making sure they are within a wavelength of the crossover frequency. So keep them within a few inches, which will reduce lobing. Now spend multiple hours with your equalizer until you can get the best sound. If you have access to an RTA, this will help. What you will want to do then is use the equalizer to produce a flat response and note the settings. Now you can change it to taste. However you always have a reference point to go back to.

Better: Select a really good set of midranges and tweeters and have a professional design a passive crossover for them specifically for your vehicle. This will be expensive, but you will have much better results than the above if done right. You asked for recommendations for the speakers, so I will recommend our Extremis 6. It is an absolutely incredible midrange with 13mm of linear throw one way, a very flat BL curve, and very low inductance. All this means that it will have extremely low distortion and can play much lower than other mids of it’s size. Here’s a link to the speaker: http://www.adireaudio.com/Home/ExtremisMidwoofers.htm If you can make it up here, we can show you what those babies can do. The downfall is that these drivers are very deep at 3.5". They should fit on some 3/4" rings though, but I haven’t tried it yet. I do know that the 3/4" rings do fit behind the door pannels. Tweeter selection will depend on your listening tastes and install. If you are interested in going this route, then we can go over this with you to find the right tweeter. I would have to ask my boss if we will have time to do the crossover design for you. But he is REALLY good with them. I believe the charge is like $80 per way to do crossover design. So it would be about $160 for a 2-way set. That is just for the design work, and doesn’t include the crossover parts. But we can either order that stuff for you and assemble them, or point you toward places to purchase the items yourself. What you will end up with is a speaker designed specifically for your vehicle and install. This will be much better than an off-the-shelf design.

Best: This will require a fully digital processor. I personally am going this route and am using a Sony ES XDP-4000X digital processor. However that also requires the use of an older Sony ES head unit. So if you want to use your current head unit, then here’s some other recommendations. You can go with Alto Mobile unit here: http://www.altomobile.com/html/ucs_pro.html or even a pro sound Behringer unit found here: http://www.8thstreet.com/product.asp?ProductCode=6788&Category=Audio_Processors The Behringer unit will need it’s power supply changed to 12 volts though. But I can point you to a guy who has done several of those mods to that unit. Now you will want to get some good speakers, like say the one’s I recommend above. You can use the processing to dial in those speakers to sound there best. The results are similar to the “better” description above. However with the digital processor you will have access to multiple memories where you can keep different settings for different situations.

I recommend deciding which direction you want to go, and move on from there. That will make it much easier to answer your questions.

Steven Kephart
Adire Audio

Four speakers - No Subs yet

With good 6 1/2" speakers in the stock location and FIE setting at 150 I find the sound quality and staging to be adequate.

I plan on putting in subs at some point, but there is absolutely no hurry.