The Install 2010

TakeTheTime

Yeah Mac ^ how do you "hear" where in the door the rattle comes from anyway?
I'm also having some trouble with my SR5250's, producing excellent midbass --> rattledoor

Mahna Mahna

How is the sound from the 5250 compared to the 6500?

MacLeod

Im experimenting now with staggered crossover points. Im trying the 4 KHz for both at 24 db/oct but there's a harshness there Im not crazy about. Putting the tweeters at 4 @ 12db/oct and the mids at 2 @ 12 db/oct does seem to make it sound a little better. Gonna play with it some more.

TakeTheTime wrote: »

Yeah Mac ^ how do you "hear" where in the door the rattle comes from anyway?
I'm also having some trouble with my SR5250's, producing excellent midbass --> rattledoor

Well its a really complicated and technical procedure perfected over many years or experimentation. I put my face right in the speaker grill and listen.

I play the stand up bass track on the Chesky disc and just sit with my nose in the door panel and listen for where it comes from. First you take the door panel off and make sure its nothing inside the door that is rattling, then you just figure out where the door trim piece is buzzing up against the door panel. Grab ya some 1" thick foam and fix 'er up.

How is the sound from the 5250 compared to the 6500?

Different. The 5250's dont get down as low so its not as meaty sounding. On the other hand, the midrange is better. Dont get me wrong, the midbass is very good especially for a 5.25 but Im having to get creative with the sub's tuning to get the good punch and power down low without pulling the subbass to the rear.

The 5250's WILL play down to 50 with no problem and decent authority but 63 is the best for tonality. Its smoother and doesnt affect the midrange. However this will depend on what type of music youre listening to. If youre into rock and/or metal, Id drop them down to 50 in a heartbeat. If youre into jazz, hip hop or anything with heavy bass, 63 is what would probably work best.

How does it compare to the SR?

Impact wise, Id say its a close race and maybe even a tie. However, the SR is more refined.

arun1963

Whats wrong with the imaging?

MacLeod

Wont focus up

arun1963

Normally I got the best imaging when I had a well defined and proportionate 'mouth'. A focused and well defined mouth always gave good imaging. I normally screwed up on the mouth when one of these things was out.

1. Tweet angles. Remove the plastic sails and play with the angles.

2. 800hz and 8khz. These two frequencies are critical. These frequencies are hotter on opposite sides. These frequencies help in defining the stage width. In my set up I got best results with 800hz at -4/-2 (L/R) and 8khz -2/-4 (L/R). Sometimes while chasing extra width I would open these up more and while I got better width I would always lose out on the 'mouth' and imaging would suffer.

3. Near mid and far tweet. Try tuning only these two drivers. Get them balanced and connected.

I hope this makes some sense.

4. Work a bit in the 6-12khz range.

If you can bring your focus back to getting a well defined mouth, the imaging will fall into place. I always lost the imaging when I got too focused on other issues like width, height, depth, impact etc.

Also check on the TA. If your far tweet is delayed more than it should be (chasing extra height) that could hurt too.

MacLeod

arun1963 wrote: »

Normally I got the best imaging when I had a well defined and proportionate 'mouth'. A focused and well defined mouth always gave good imaging. I normally screwed up on the mouth when one of these things was out.

1. Tweet angles. Remove the plastic sails and play with the angles.

2. 800hz and 8khz. These two frequencies are critical. These frequencies are hotter on opposite sides. These frequencies help in defining the stage width. In my set up I got best results with 800hz at -4/-2 (L/R) and 8khz -2/-4 (L/R). Sometimes while chasing extra width I would open these up more and while I got better width I would always lose out on the 'mouth' and imaging would suffer.

3. Near mid and far tweet. Try tuning only these two drivers. Get them balanced and connected.

I hope this makes some sense.

4. Work a bit in the 6-12khz range.

If you can bring your focus back to getting a well defined mouth, the imaging will fall into place. I always lost the imaging when I got too focused on other issues like width, height, depth, impact etc.

Also check on the TA. If your far tweet is delayed more than it should be (chasing extra height) that could hurt too.

The problem is the drivers side mid is 90 degrees off axis AND blocked by the arm rest while the passenger mid is almost dead on axis and has a clear path. Not easy to get both playing at the same levels.

Staggering the crossovers helps. 2 KHz is where things start to get more directional so by cutting the mids off at 2, it lets the on axis tweeters carry this load. I dont like cutting the mids off in the middle of the vocal range but my options are limited. I cant run the tweeters down to 2 cause tweeters playing that low never seem to sound good. But using each with a 12 db/oct slope seems to work. Ill find out tomorrow cause Im 95% sure thats the tune Im going to use for this show. Ill know more once I get it out and in front of some judges.

arun1963

One addition to point 3 and please don't laugh at this one. After you're done connecting the near mid and far tweet, try playing with the delay on the near tweet, which is switched off. Wait a couple of seconds after each adjustment. You may find that you can focus up the drivers that are playing a bit better. This often works as the best near tweet delay, when I'm playing all drivers. You may need to eq the tweets a bit.

I'm not so sure about the staggered xover points. It can't be helping with focus. Again, maybe you're correcting something else at the cost of focus. There's got to be another way to handle the original problem. What is it?

arun1963

MacLeod wrote: »

The problem is the drivers side mid is 90 degrees off axis AND blocked by the arm rest while the passenger mid is almost dead on axis and has a clear path. Not easy to get both playing at the same levels.

Cut the damn armrest off.

TakeTheTime

MacLeod wrote: »

Different. The 5250's dont get down as low so its not as meaty sounding. On the other hand, the midrange is better. Dont get me wrong, the midbass is very good especially for a 5.25 but Im having to get creative with the sub's tuning to get the good punch and power down low without pulling the subbass to the rear.

I see what you're talking about, I've been experimenting with the sub/midbass
and have concluded that sub cut off at 50hz and the SR5250's at 65hz is the
best crossover (with 24db/slope on both) point in my car. This way the SR's
play low enough to get some of the nice sounding midbass, and great punch
and they still can play pretty darn loud without distortion - and I think 50hz
is the absolutely highest I would cut my sub in order to not get it dragged
backwards in the car. Though in SQ-competitions I'm gonna cut the SR's
at 50hz - maybe 40hz, doesn't do any harm since they don't go loud in SQ...

MacLeod wrote: »

The 5250's WILL play down to 50 with no problem and decent authority but 63 is the best for tonality. Its smoother and doesnt affect the midrange. However this will depend on what type of music youre listening to. If youre into rock and/or metal, Id drop them down to 50 in a heartbeat. If youre into jazz, hip hop or anything with heavy bass, 63 is what would probably work best.

Yeah, they go even lower. When I switch from 63hz to 40hz, I notice A LOT
more bass upfront from the SR's! But I disagree with what you're saying about
50hz when playing rock/heavy - when I play loud, the SR's is having some
trouble with the brutal midbass around 50hz - I think 63hz is the best...

MacLeod

I'm not so sure about the staggered xover points. It can't be helping with focus. Again, maybe you're correcting something else at the cost of focus.

Sure it can. Focus is almost all EQ'ing. Youve got some frequencies coming at you stronger from one speaker than another and that smears things. It also can fix phasing and cancellation issues some by blending the tweeter and mid together better. This aint my ides, the passive crossovers that come with the SR's for example - the mids are cut off around 1.6 and the tweeters around 6. But they blend together for a near flat response. Car Audio and Electronics did a review on these and graphed their response with just the mid and just the tweeter as ran thru the crossover. Id link to it but they took the graphs off the website and I cant find them anywhere.

MacLeod

Ugh. This is getting frustrating. Im definitely going with kick panels next season. This is ridiculous. Ive swapped in some Morel soft domes I had lying around cause they play down to 2.5 and still sound good and that seemed to help. I think Im gonna try some large format tweeters eventually. Yeah theyll look like pure **** sitting there all big, but Ive gotta have something that can play down to 2 KHz with quality. Id like to find the guy who decided to put these speakers where they are and kick him in the nuts!

arun1963

waaaaaa . Hey it's a Ford.

Kicks would be great. With the current placement, you'd be struggling to balance the mids beyond like 400hz. To balance them you'd have to attenuate everything and then let the big dome tweets to take over from 2khz. But that's in the middle of the vocal range as you mentioned. Transition issues.

I'm saying don't wait till next season. Fabricate some el cheapo kicks and get the mids placed right. Then you won't need to do any of this stuff. You taught me that placement is king.

Good luck for tmrw. Oh yeah, if you do find the guy, give him a kick from my side as well, for mounting the mids up high.

arun1963

how come only u and i are talking?

TakeTheTime

I'm talkin' too! I like kicks-mounts, if they're properly mounted.
One of the good things about kick-mounts, is that the speakers
doesn't get slammed with the doors all the time - I don't know,
I just think speakers don't like that. But I guess car audio
speakers are made to handle door-slammin' and such!?

MacLeod

Judging is over so were just sitting here waiting for SPL to finish up. Judges comments so far are about what I expected. Lacking good depth and the mids and tweets ain't working together that well.

I don't figure I'll win this one but thats ok, I'm here for judges feedback and for some points. Basically its back to the drawing board when I get home.

TakeTheTime

Cool, so you're at competition now? I'm also gonna compete with my SR5250's in one month.

MacLeod

Yeah, I'm here now. They judge all the cars but they don't give the results til everything is done and SPL takes forever. They've still got RTA and install judging to do. Probably be 5 before we get outta here.

TakeTheTime

It's almost 10:00 pm here in Norway lol. But yeah, I've been at one comp. before, and it was the same thing. First (Emma) SQ-competition, followed by SPL/"DB-drag", and then the results...

catch22atplay

Oh i don't have the Chesky CD that MECCA uses. I bought the CHE-151 Various Artists - Gold Stereo and Surround Sound Set-up Discs so so many years ago. It has served me tremendously well. It also led me to buy a few of their other albums. Rebecca Pidgeon, Best of Brazil, and a few others.

The old test cd was great for testing levels, soundstage, imaging, subwoofer, etc. How does the newer test cd UD095 Various Artists - Ultimate Demonstration Disc compare? Is it mainly for listening after setup or for setting up? In other words would it be an improvement over my other test cd for setup purposes. Also i don't have a problem getting a cd for testing what i've set up. So if it's mainly for that that's ok as well. But just trying to find out if i should update my cd collection now for setup purposes.

Damn they got like 5 or 6 test Cd's. Here i thought there was only the one i've had all these years. Must update the cd collection. It's to bad MECCA charges $4.02 more for that cd than Chesky Records direct, if not a member .

So how's the competition going?

MacLeod

Yup, 2nd place. Im pissed!

I actually tied for 1st but I lost the tie breaker (tonality only scores) so I got 2nd. What pisses me off is one of the judges is a dumbass and counted off 1 point for noise because of the popping that Alpine do when you turn the volume up or down. Virtually all Alpines do this and so they dont count off for it but this guy is new and a dumbass.

Oh well, thats not the first time Ive been hosed by a judge and it wont be the last but Im also pissed cause I beat myself. I knew my system wasnt sounding good Friday night but I stuck with it. And one of the basic rules I have for tuning is to keep as many octaves coming from 1 speaker as possible but I still tried using the tweeters all the way down to 2.5 KHz.

So its back to the drawing board as of now. The tweeters are gone out of the sail panels. Theyre just too close and in your face there so theyre going on the dash first, up in the corners like they were in my Accord.

What a crappy way to start the season but the good thing is that I pissed now and that usually means Ill be spending 6 hours a night in my car for the next 3 weeks! n

catch22atplay

Going to custom fab some kick panels or concentrate on the tweets only? I know qlogic doesn't make kick panels for your model. But have you talked to them? I've previously had my truck be the prototype for truck accessories, courtesy Better Built. Not this Dodge btw. So anything is possible with a few phone calls. I've been dealing with Billy at Qlogic. Seems quite the helpful fellow. Give him a call if you decide to go that route. You never know til you try.

arun1963

Tweets on the dash and mids in kicks will solve all your issues. Just moving the tweets may not solve the problem in totality.

MacLeod

Q Logic doesnt make kicks for the Edge. I may do something like that next year but this year Im in Street class which mandates stock speaker locations but you can put 1 set of tweeters under 2" anywhere you want.

This Edge is a piece of **** so I really dont expect to have it more than a year, two at tops so I dont want to do anything to extravagant. I want a solid system but one that I can yank out and have the stock one back in, in around 45 minutes and one that I dont have to figure out how to hide 3" holes cut into the trim pieces.

Tweets in the dash should solve a few problems. The imaging problem is due strictly to the crappy left side speaker location. Cant be helped but maybe I can lean on some heavy EQ and fix it some. The tweeters are gonna be cut off at 5 KHz to start off with. Im going back to my rule #1 and since my 5250's will play up passed 6 KHz, Im gonna cut them off at 5 so Ill have nearly 7 octaves coming from one pair of drivers and only 2 coming from the tweeters.

Also, with the mids playing so high, that should keep my width where it is but with the tweeters far forward in the dash (the Edge has a huuuuuuge dash) that should give me more depth.

I cant wait to get started on it as soon as I get home from work today. Getting beat is a great motivator!

TakeTheTime

Sounds good Mac. Yeah, tweets on the dash is a great idea. It works very well for me anyway.

arun1963

MacLeod wrote: »

Q Logic doesnt make kicks for the Edge. I may do something like that next year but this year Im in Street class which mandates stock speaker locations but you can put 1 set of tweeters under 2" anywhere you want.

Ok, that explains it. I kept thinking, why is he insisting on doing it this way...why is he going against the basics

MacLeod wrote: »

This Edge is a piece of **** so I really dont expect to have it more than a year, two at tops so I dont want to do anything to extravagant. I want a solid system but one that I can yank out and have the stock one back in, in around 45 minutes and one that I don't have to figure out how to hide 3" holes cut into the trim pieces.

Why do you want to limit your install today for something that you're going to do once, 2 years down the line? There may be a way to improve the mids situation but you would have to cut the door panels. Not sure you'd do that.

MacLeod wrote: »

Tweets in the dash should solve a few problems. The imaging problem is due strictly to the crappy left side speaker location. Cant be helped but maybe I can lean on some heavy EQ and fix it some. The tweeters are gonna be cut off at 5 KHz to start off with.

Yes, you will get good depth and it will help a lot with the near tweet issue. You may want to try cutting your far mid and tweet at 4khz and the near ones at like 5khz. You're letting your near mid which is blocked play higher while restricting the far mid, which is on axis and has a clear path. You'd need to eq here a bit.

MacLeod wrote: »

Also, with the mids playing so high, that should keep my width where it is but with the tweeters far forward in the dash (the Edge has a huuuuuuge dash) that should give me more depth.

Looking at the pictures you posted, the dash also looks flat which is good for fewer reflections. Tweets in the base of the a-pillars.....crossing 0 again

MacLeod

I'm not limiting my install, the class I compete in is doing that. All I'm limiting is the complexity of it. I dont see a need to pull out the seats to run wires down the middle of the car when they work just as well running under the door sills. No need in cutting holes in trim panels when I can make pods out of PVC caps. It ain't worth spending 4 hours in a dealership parking lot ripping stuff out when it doesnt effect SQ.

Not gonna cross over mids at different frequencies. That never works cause the differences in intensity between the left and right aren't linear. 4 KHz for instance is actually hotter on the left than right as is 2.5. It depends on reflections, interaction with the tweets and such. It's easier and more effective to use EQ to even them out.

That might be worth a try if you dont have independent EQ though.

arun1963

MacLeod wrote: »

I'm not limiting my install, the class I compete in is doing that. All I'm limiting is the complexity of it. It ain't worth spending 4 hours in a dealership parking lot ripping stuff out when it doesnt effect SQ.

My comment was solely with reference to speaker placement. Yeah the other stuff doesn't really matter. How wide is your armrest and what's the distance from the driver to the end of the armrest? If you can reduce this distance it would surely help in getting better balance between the mids. But you'd need to cut the door panels. Then when you sell you can swap out the mids and tweets with $20 drivers and tell the buyer you upgraded the speakers .

MacLeod wrote: »

Not gonna cross over mids at different frequencies. That never works cause the differences in intensity between the left and right aren't linear. 4 KHz for instance is actually hotter on the left than right as is 2.5. It depends on reflections, interaction with the tweets and such. It's easier and more effective to use EQ to even them out.

That might be worth a try if you dont have independent EQ though.

Hasn't really worked for me either but I can only do 16 frequencies for L/R just thought you may make something out of it with 31. Keeping mids and tweets at the same point is what works for me. I could never get progressive to work me though I've had some results with overlap between the mids and tweets. But 95% I'm running same point.

I figured if you could get progressive to work, maybe you could do something with this as well.

MacLeod

So I stuck the SR tweeters in the corners of the dash (just layed them there for a test run). Yes and know. Depth may have improved a tiny bit but my width has collapsed to inside the A pillars. That blows.

Also, I couldnt get them to blend with the mids. On the narrator track, you could tell it was 2 sets of drivers. I played with crossover points and threw my old Dashmat up there and that helped but not great.

Im gonna live with it for a day and try to tune on it tomorrow and see what I can come up with.

Listening fatigue has gone down quite a bit. With the sail panel setup, they are so wide that the right tweeter especially is aimed right down your ear canal. Alice in Chains new CD has several tracks where they have everybody singing at once and the guy on the right was like a laser beam on my eardrum, just screeching. Thats gone now. Hooray! Something worked out.

arun1963

The blend between the mids and tweets should improve as you bring the tweets in towards the edge of the dash. Try placing them about half way. Apparently mids and tweets can handle separation on the vertical axis but not the horizontal. This one I've tested. With the shape of your dash, as you bring them in, it will also take them further apart. You may gain some width.