Astro Build - 12 Cerwin-Vega 12"s in a Clamshell C-Pillar Wall

Colin - STAPUFT · April 14, 2014

Thank You much.

And Chive On! brother.

CstrokerV · April 14, 2014

im glad you found a recone it would be nice to see you replace them with the strokers though... ill donate 25 towards one lol

And you know if he has the 10" recones??

Colin - STAPUFT · April 19, 2014

He doesn't have any more of the Vega series recones. I missed that boat.

I would love to have a wall of the old Strokers myself, but I would have to seriously step up on power and knock over a bank or two to afford the woofers. From time to time one will pop up on eBay- usually in the $400-$500 range for NIBs and $200 or more for recones. ...high as a cat's back.

Colin - STAPUFT · May 2, 2014

Ok- so I didn't come up with this, but I stumbled across this write up somewhere (sorry to not citing the guy who wrote it and from what forum).

It is a long read, but worth it when tuning your system....

There are several different methods used to tune eqs. This is the one I use. An RTA is not needed if the steps are done correctly. This method uses crossovers and gain settings as the most important factor in tuning. I think the eq should be last in line when tuning. Remember after each step to write down your settings. If the sound gets worse, then you can go back to the previous step’s settings and start over.

1. Set all bands flat, as well as the head unit bass and treble.

2. Turn off the subs. Using music with a good bass line, run the highpass crossover up and down until the midbasses can play as low as possible without any distortion or excessive door panel vibrations.

3. Unhook the mids and tweeters, allowing only the midbasses to play. Listen to mono pink noise or a well-recorded song with a centered vocalist. Test CDs such as the IASCA test CD or Autosound 2000 Test CD 102 or 103 will work great. Listen to where the centered sounds are coming from. Then reverse the polarity of one midbass (Reverse the speaker wires coming from the passive crossover and going to the speaker, just flip the positive and negative wires. I usually flip the driver’s side speaker.) and re-listen to the test CD. If the sounds are more centered then keep it as is. If the centered sounds are more diffuse and un-locatable, then flip the polarity back to where it was originally.

4. Then unhook the midbasses and play the mids only and follow the same polarity and listening tests as before. Mark your best settings.

5. Do the same procedure for the tweeters.

6. When you have tested for the proper polarity from all three ranges of speakers, hook all of them back up with respect to each set of speaker’s best polarity. You can have any combination of polarity, such as all the midbass and tweeters straight and one midrange reversed.

7. Now you should have the correct “acoustic” polarity set within each set of speakers. Next is to set the acoustic polarity between the sets of speakers.

8. Listen to some very familiar music with a good range of sounds. Then flip both midbass’ polarity and listen again. Before you only flipped one midbass, now you are doing both at the same time. For example if the left midbass was reversed and the right was not before, now the left will be not reversed and the right will be. Listen to the music again. If the midbass is more powerful and full then leave the wiring as is. If the midbass sounds weaker and wrong then restore the wiring as before.

9. Perform the same listening tests while flipping the mids and tweeters, and use the wiring configuration that sounds the best.

10. If you have went though all these steps adjusting the polarity of the speakers then the system should sound really good without any eq adjustments. You might want to play with the gain adjustments on the crossover and/or amp to better blend all the speakers together.

11. Now onto the eq! The first eq step is to adjust the tonality. While listening to familiar music, adjust each individual band up and down slowly. When the music sounds better then move to the next band. Adjust the left and right bands equally. (We’ll get to the separate left and right adjustments soon.) It really does not matter if the bands are boosted or cut, just that it makes the sound better. Not every band needs to be adjusted. In fact if you did steps 1 thru 10 correctly you should not have to adjust over half the bands. Having a 1/3 octave eq does not mean you have to adjust every band. It means you have the ability to adjust each band if needed. Watch out for big jumps from band to band, like one band set to +4 and the next band set to –6.

12. Continue through all the bands, take a break, and do the same procedure over again. But this time the adjustments will be smaller as you get the tonality dialed in. This step might take several days, weeks, or longer.

13. In tuning you will find some eq bands will raise, lower, move the sound closer, or farther away if adjusted in certain manners. For example, lowering 5 KHz will generally move the soundstage farther away and raising 2 KHz will make the soundstage rise. Each vehicle and system will have different settings that will be the best. The best way to achieve awesome sound is to constantly adjust.

14. When you are satisfied with the tonality of the system, it is time to start adjusting the left and right channels separately. These adjustments should not affect the tonality, but improve on the imaging and soundstaging. Using the Autosound 2000 Test CD 102 or 103 “My Disk” listen to the individual frequency pink noise tracks. (Test CD103 has the tracks arranged in an easier configuration.) Each frequency band should sound like it is coming from the center of the soundstage. If one band is off to one side, then use each band’s left and right eq controls as a balance control. This is very similar to the head unit’s balance control, only now you are balancing each frequency band by itself. For example if 200 Hz seems to be shifted to the left of center, lower the left 200 Hz band and raise the right 200 Hz band one dB at a time until the band is centered. If a frequency is shifted to the right, lower the band’s right channel and raise the left channel in small amounts.

15. When you have when through all the bands take a break. Then later go back through each band one by one and make any further needed adjustments until all the frequencies are lined up in the center of the soundstage.

Colin - STAPUFT · May 2, 2014

Holy crap go do this.

Once you do it, it makes perfect sense why it works (made me say duh) and made me wonder why I never thought of doing this before.

This was especially helpful with my setup (having multiple speakers and amps- some running full active x-over and others running active with a passive x-over for bandpass purposes). Just keep isolating speakers and flipping the leads on one of the two and listen for the best center image and bass response. Then do it with the sets of speakers and get each set (high, mid, low) matched to each other (front and rear) then do the front and rear as well. ...and it gives you an excuse to go out and tinker with stuff.

Results?

Soundstage even further out

Midbass and bass response better and cleaner

Mono tracks and frequencies are dead center

Left and right went way left and way right

Everything jumped up in the soundstage
Nuances easier to make out
And louder and cleaner (I can only figure that is due to less cancellations. I actually had to lower my gains considerably (helping with even more headroom), and it is still louder).

Seriously... go do this.

Colin - STAPUFT · May 25, 2014

More amps! I got tha' fever baby! And the only cure... is more Amplifiers. I gotta' have more amplifiers baby!

^ these two are happy campers. Today was unbox some of the hoard and clean it up day. It was also diagnose day for my other 3 just like this and prep for the final one I have coming. :D

Oh my- I wonder what I could do with 12 subs and 6 "600 watt" amps? Muwahahaha! These amps are VERY similar to the the one that BigDWiz tested on the Amp Dyno a bit back:

Mine are a bit newer than that one and rated at 200x2 or 600x1 at 4 ohms with 12.5 volts. I hope to get all of these going and run my subs in 6 sets at 8 ohms each. That would give them at least 250 watts RMS each. ...then make myself a little switching system with some evil relays that will *at the press of a button* change them from series to parallel for 2 ohm loads- that would give them about 600-700 watts dynamic for the quick braap braap.

I got plans... slow moving plans.

Colin - STAPUFT · May 28, 2014

Muwaaaahahahahaha!!!! I do need to do some work on the bottom 4 amps, but that is a very conservatively rated 3,600 watts RMS. ...more like 4,800 watts RMS. ...all that at 4 ohms too.

Colin - STAPUFT · August 6, 2014

Had a really fun time in Meridian, MS at Hi-Fi Cruisin's Summer Bash this year. Good car show and USACi show. Ran the van again in Street Beat 4 and pulled out a 150.6 on track 7 (iirc that is 46 hz). Pretty happy that she's still got it in her and that she held the number. That's 0.3 more than last year and I haven't changed anything. Could have been the difference in the track or the weather, who knows. ...I might have been turning the knobs further to the right too. First in SB4 and First in Sq Rookie 1. Fun times.