SQ advice needed.

[caraudiochris]

One of your issues it lack of midbass? I am just making sure I understood that was a main issue you wanted to focus one.

Also you talk about doing adjustment with your time alignment, can your radio do that?

[DTS909]

A lot of good advice. Time for some upgrades.

[firebirdude]

No, this is incorrect ... cone area is what draws your stage and image back or down, not frequencies above 2000 htz ... small midrange drivers and / or tweeters capable of playing down to 2000 htz gets used the most. You want the sence of presence that something is there, not being able to telll that you actually have rears ...

I'm not contradicting you, but just asking you to expand on this. I've always been taught to use midbass drivers in the rear if the customer is set on rears. Something 75Hz-200Hz. But yet, you specifically say that it's cone area, not frequency, that pulls your stage to the rear.

[caraudiochris]

If you are capable of doing some time correction why not move up the crossover point on you subwoofer and get it imaged correctly to help with mid bass. I am not familiar with your woofer and I am not saying that you can do this with all subwoofers but, for example I have accomplished this with a JBL GTI mk II 12" crossed over at 200hz @ 24dB. Also did the same thing with a 15" Diamond Audio D6 at 180hz @ 24 dB. Using my time alignment in the CDA-9887(i believe that was the model) I was able to have both the sub and mid bass frequencies sit right over the dash and did not need to add any "frequency specific" speaker to my system(IE a 8-10" mid bass only speaker).

If you are talking about mid bass frequencies think about what how it was originally produced. For example a bass guitar plays thorough a four 12" sub cabinet to produce that sound. A kick drum is playing through a 22" round drum. Those frequencies can easily play through a well made woofer with little issue. Now if that woofer has a heavy cone that is more SPL oriented than you may have some issues because it would not be able to move fast enough to play that high. Evaluate what you have though, and see if you can get what you need with your current equipment.

Hope that helps!

[EyeMKermie]

Whitelightening-

thanks for the reply. I don't have an issue with my stage being pulled to the rear. My rears blend in nicely and really are only noticeable when tracks have stuff that is supposed to be behind you. directionally the sounds are coming from the right areas... but im going to call the imaging a little fuzzy. like if there are chimes playing on the left side you know its left.. just not if its imaged in the 1,2 or 3 o'clock position. I hope that makes sense.

Your point on power makes sense. I just wonder if these components can even take that much power. especially the 5.25 set up front. I don't mind making a small pod to move the front stage up to 6.5" mids but Id like if I can to keep everything stock-ish. or at least unnoticeable. This is my daily driver and while I spend up to 7-8 hours on some days in the car.. I have to park it in not so secure areas.. I don't want to make it known that I have a full custom setup.. I'll leave that for my hotrods.

[EyeMKermie]

Hey guys.. for some reason on my shop computer the quote function isn't working so I hope the posts don't get confusing. Thanks for all the feedback guys. I really appreciate it.

To answer some of the posts..

At this time.. no time alignment or lpf/hpf slope changes can be made. I will add some sort of processing at a later time. I used to have the sub crossed at 125hz to fill in some for the mids, but I don't like to send too many frequencies to my sub. Id like to keep the sub crossed at 80hz-100hxz cuz I think it sounds best in that range.

When testing my mids I used the ron tutt Sheffield drum record or jim keltner's improvisation drum track. I use a lot of chesky records tracks for other testing. my mids tonally sound decent but definitely lack the lower frequency power to give the drums a nice natural presence.

I think presence is my key word. lol.

[EyeMKermie]

hey guys.

Quick update.. played around with my car when I got home. Found an issue. Seems the crossovers on the 4 channel amp moved to somewhere around 200 (just a guess) and the gains were all out of whack. I'm definitely thinking it's time for a new amp. Anyways, readjusted my amps crossovers/gains and some of the mid-bass came back. thank God. I also did some fiddling with my subs crossover point. i moved it up as far as i could on the deck and then matched that on the amp. max lpf on the deck was 125hz, but at 125 the balance seemed to be off. It definitely made up for some of the lack of the mids low end but there seemed to be a noticeable step in the transition from sub to mid. So i moved the crossover point back to 100hz and it transitions a bit better now. I'm thinking its component upgrade time.

Per White lightnings suggestion I'm going to play around with tweeter placement in the pillar. I have some little tweeter pods that came with the NVX components so ill use those to test things out. I don't want to make anything permanent in case I change components. As much as I would like things to look stock I figure I can probably get away with a tweet in the pillar without anyone really noticing.

Oh since the crossover/gain issue has been corrected, the imaging seems to be fine, not pinpoint excellent, but good and that's only at low to moderate volumes. moderate being you can still here your passenger talk to you. higher volume than that and it loses a bit of the imaging. I am hoping that moving the tweets fix all that.

[sirhutson]

I you havent at least dynamat or hushmat your doors. Like these guys said get rid of your rear speakers. You do not need them to achieve good imaging. Get a nice 4 channel amp that you can BI-amp and run an active setup. Meaning you can take out your crossovers and connect the tweets directly to the amp. But get a better highs amp for sure. JL 300/4 is a monster AB amp with real good sound.

[EyeMKermie]

I you havent at least dynamat or hushmat your doors. Like these guys said get rid of your rear speakers. You do not need them to achieve good imaging. Get a nice 4 channel amp that you can BI-amp and run an active setup. Meaning you can take out your crossovers and connect the tweets directly to the amp. But get a better highs amp for sure. JL 300/4 is a monster AB amp with real good sound.

Whole car is acoustically on point. deadened, ccf, etc. quiet like your favorite library.

and im going to keep the rear speakers just change them to something better. my girl likes to watch movies on road trips and whatnot. plus i have music recorded in surround/binaural.

I won't be bi-amping the car.. it works great.. done it in the past, but trying to keep this build cheap and simple. processing is in the plans for the future but unsure which to get.. that will come later. trying to get the car better pre-addition of a processor.

I will be looking into that amp tho. thanks for that recommendation

[White Lightning]

No, this is incorrect ... cone area is what draws your stage and image back or down, not frequencies above 2000 htz ... small midrange drivers and / or tweeters capable of playing down to 2000 htz gets used the most. You want the sence of presence that something is there, not being able to telll that you actually have rears ...

I'm not contradicting you, but just asking you to expand on this. I've always been taught to use midbass drivers in the rear if the customer is set on rears. Something 75Hz-200Hz. But yet, you specifically say that it's cone area, not frequency, that pulls your stage to the rear.

About the only way to really understand this is to get burned on it a couple of times in Sound Quality competition.

This is why I'm working on my midbass setup in White Lightning before next year's competition ... Now I know what I'm looking for on my 4th attempt in setting up midbass in this truck.