Trying to increase the overall sound quality in my car. I have two 12s in the hatch (thinking about just using one though) and have ordered some tweeters that I am going to put in the dash. I was thinking about putting some mids in the front doors and wanted some opinions from some audio guroos. Will this sound decent? Is there a better setup to go with as far as creating some mid-bass in the car? All my speakers are stock as of right now. Thanks in advance.

how are you planning to run all of this? do you have a (or a few) multi channel amp(s) to devote the adiquate power to these speakers? have you thought about what crossovers to use? soem of my favorite mid-range speakers include the image dynamics chamelions, the a/d/s 3-series, and the pre 1999 diamond audio hex series. there are others, such as morel, kefs "kar" series, and nearly anything by dynaudio that are great but will be hard to find/afford.

the key to great midbass really relys on the way they are installed. if you are planning on putting them in the doors, make sure you completly seal the rear wave from the front, meaning you should block all the inner door holes with wood/sound dampener/etc. you might also have to sound deaden certain parts inside the door to keep them from rattling (such as the door lock levers), especially if youre running a high power setup.

your best bet is to go around to audio shops and listen to what they have, then make your desicion from that. all the speakers i mentioned above tend to have a very organic, rich, and deep sound to them, as it fits the type of music i tend to listen to and the sound i enjoy.

Yeah I hear ya. I am not trying to create anything spectacular though, I am just trying to add depth to my music. Right now I have highs and lows but nothing in between. I hadn't thought about crossovers either, my amp does have the signal outs and has the ability to carry the low pass through the outs to the next inline amplifier. I guess my questions is, is the doors the best palce for a mid bass speaker or is there something better, keeping in mind I an not going all out, and do not have the money to do so.

i would imagine that the doors are great assuming you arent running anything too grandiose.

in the past, ive tried to run both 6.5" and 8" midbass speakers (recieving everything 150hz down and about 100 watts) and did not have great results. there was a lot of rattling and it was hard to seal the doors adaquatly. however....if you are just looking for a simple upgrade, the doors should provide a great and easy placment for the midrange speakers.

on another ntoe...if you are going for a more simplistic system, you can probably ignore all the suggestions for speakers ive made above. some of my favorite speakers in the price/availibility range you might be looking at are the cerwin-vega "vega" series and believe it or not, regular old pioneer cheep-o mids. again though, i stress that you listen to many speakers on your own to decide what YOU like. ;)

Don't waste your money on a set of tweeters for the car. Instead, buy a good set of 6.5" components and place them in the stock locations.

Time to give away a secret (well not really a secret, but something that most people do not understand)

Wire your passenger side woofer out-of-phase and the rest of the vehicle's speakers in-phase. While this will put the car "mechanically" out-of-phase, it will put the vehicle "accoustically" in-phase, thus giving you mid-bass.

This has been a proven technique in the competition circuit and will work for your car.

Good luck to ya!

>Wire your passenger side woofer out-of-phase and the rest of
>the vehicle's speakers in-phase. While this will put the car
>"mechanically" out-of-phase, it will put the vehicle
>"accoustically" in-phase, thus giving you mid-bass.


Because if both speakers are "in phase" they will cancel each other out, correct?

"Because if both speakers are "in phase" they will cancel each other out, correct?"

that depends on the frequency. while runinng the passengers mid out of mechanical phase will re-enforce some frequencies, it will still cause others to be cncelled out. the overall reseult is better though.

i have all kinds of reverse mechanical phasing in my car. it took a loooooong time to find the right combination.

the reason to reverse the mid is due to the position you are in when listening to them. if you were sitting in the perfect middle of the car there would be no reason to do so, but because you are closer to one side than the other, such actions may be necissary.

Yes, but that's why most people prefer kick panel pods. It puts the speakers closer to an equal length of distance from your ears. :thumbsup

>Yes, but that's why most people prefer kick panel pods. It
>puts the speakers closer to an equal length of distance from
>your ears. :thumbsup

I just put the q-form pods in with 5 1/4 Alpine type R components. They sound great but the placement of the pods is a bit annoying. It completely covers the dead pedal on drivers side and rrequires you to put your foot somewhere else when not on the clutch. Im getting used to it but it still annoys me to a degree.

I've just finished putting a MM6 Polk/MOMO component set in my 95, and i must say it was very easy and the sound is great. I removed the factory door speakers, and removed them from the speaker mounts. The polk almost fits right in without any modding, but I had to cut out the grill that surrounds the hole in the back of the mount. The polk then fit in snug and the magnet cover on it sits so that it seals off the hole that was left after cutting. I then cut off the starburst plastic pieces that guard against someone kicking the door grill in, and painted the grill black. Ran the wires through the factory wire channels and mounted the crossovers behind the sidewalls of the lower console. I then removed and gutted the factory dash speakers. You can easily remove the grill and just rip out the speaker. I remember having to remove two or so phillips head screws that secured the magnet to the housing. After that, you are left with a perfect mount for the polk tweeters. I removed the momo grill on the tweeter, hot glued the tweeter in place, and then re-aplied the factory grill to the housing(after I painted it black for effect). The red of the dome tweeter contrasts perfectly with the black of the grill. Also, for effect, I reapplied the "MOMO" insignia that was glued to the momo grill of the tweeter. Now you have a polk tweeter which will mount perfectly in the factory location. These are running off an Alpine v12 80x2 amp. I am very pleased with the results.

SPL is correct about the frequencies that you are trying to "enhance". Finding the proper phasing in our vehicles has always been a challenge. I struggled with this for most of my first season of competition.

Once JL Audio worked with my car at the 2001 IASCA World Finals, we changed some crossover points and the phasing of the passenger woofer and I scored the 3rd highest sound quality score.

Wiring the vehicle as I have described will give you fantastic imaging for the drivers seat. In order to get proper imaging and staging for both seats, you will have to do kick panels.

Good luck to ya!

Thinking about it, I think I know what you are talking about. I think my deck will do something similar. It will adjust the timing, or send the signal to the farther speaker before it does the closer speaker. By doing that it moves the "sweet spot" to the drivers seat or wherever you want it. While this works with speakers running off the deck I would have to assume it would not work while running speakers on an amp. Please explain how to wire something "out of phase" if you would. Thanks!

Im not looking to win any competitions, I just want to fill in the missing sound.

Here's how I recommend wiring up the components in your car.

Hook up the positive to positive, negative to negative on every speaker in the car, except the front passenger woofer. On that woofer, hook up the positive to negative and negative to positive. (In essence, wire the woofer up wrong). Keep the tweeter wired up "correctly".

With the woofers wired up in-phase ("correctly" for easier terms), the sound waves are firing "into" each other. When this happens, some of the frequencies get canceled, thus resulting in lowering the sound volume of that particular frequency.

When you wire the passenger woofer "incorrectly" the sound waves are firing in the same direction, which will not cancel them out. It will amplify them slightly, but most people will not hear the amplification.

Hope this helps! Feel free to email me and drop me your IM. I'll be glad to help out in any way I can!

read the last few posts of this thread for more info on phase interaction (although i could write many pages on the subject! ;) ):

http://forums.2gnt.com/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=10&topic_id=5197&mesg_id=5197&page=

the feature you have on your deck is equivilant to a phase modifier (assuming it works on timing and not amplitude). it might be a valuable asset for tuning purposes, so you might want to experiment around with it for a little while if you happen to have the speakers hooked up to the deck right now. the info you gain from such an experience might help you make decisions rearding mechanical phase later on.