MECA 2011 Season

eloplayspolo

MacLeod wrote: »

I'm going back to Honda and never looking back.

good move.


What happened to the civic you talked about before? thought u said u were going to trade the accord in for one. I've seen a ton of high quality installs in the 8th gen civics...

MacLeod

Gonna wait. Finally got a positive cash flow so don't want a new car payment to put me back to square one. I'll keep this heap another year and pay it down some then trade it in on an Accord or something cheaper like that then trade the wifes in on a Civic for me to play with. By going with 2 cheaper cars instead of one expensive car, our payments should be kinda close.

Gonna be an uphill battle cause the wife loves her SUV's but this nearly $4/gallon gas is helping my case.

MacLeod

Ah dude, theyre perfect. They've got a big ole area in the A pillar area. It's not hard at all to close that in and stick a 4 and tweeter in there. Then your stock door locations are way low and forward. It's one if the best platforms out right now.

jay27

How's the season going?

By the way, MacLeod, I'm curious to know if the people you compete against have been surprised by your success given the fact that your system (at least in the past) was probably much simpler (2-way system with the SR6500, 1 SR124) and probably much cheaper than so many of the other competitor's set ups.

MacLeod

Yup. I got made fun of the first couple years I competed for using "Circuit City brand speakers". Wasnt until my 3rd year I didnt hear so much of it.

My season is on hold right now. I have done one show and I won my class in that but havent done any since. I really REALLY REALLY hate this Ford Edge I have so Im not sure what to do with it. I keep thinking Im gonna buy something like a Honda Civic for myself and give the wife the Edge so Ill wait and put everything in that. Then I say why get another car payment?

All I have left to do is hook up a 3rd amp for the mids and drill holes in the A pillars (mids are mounted behind them) and wrap them in grill cloth. A good afternoons worth of work but I just cant seem to do it. I do have 2 jobs and a 1.5 year old so I dont have a whole day I can devote to doing it so thats part of why its taking so long.

Im really starting to Jones for some competitions so I think Ive finally broken down and will keep this stupid Ford for another year so Ill probably finish up the install this weekend.

arun1963

Are the SR 6.5" in?

MacLeod

No. Gonna stick with the 5's for now. I really really dont want to hack the door all to pieces just to fit these things in when Im going to be trading this heap in as soon as I can. Hell I went thru the 2007 season with the 5's and did pretty good. Never got dinged for lack of midbass.

MacLeod

Well I give up, at least for a while. Im sick and tired of trying to build a competition stereo without taking up any room for groceries and baby stuff. There is no room in this thing for a 3rd amp and not that it would matter cause I really dont want to hack the door all to pieces to reinforce the plastic freaking door panels to fit a decent sized midbass. Not to mention I hate this car and want to get rid of it as soon as possible too.

So Im gonna take a sabbatical from competition til I can trade the wifes heap in on a Honda Civic or something that I can use and put a stereo in without having to worry about the wifes legroom.

God this is frustrating. Stuck with a car I hate and one I cant put a stereo in. I need a drink.

Vital

lol, why did you go with Ford to begin with?? I mean it's not like you got into car audio AFTER you got that car....

MacLeod

I let the wife influence me too much. I really loved that Accord I had. Very comfy, fun to drive and built like a brick s**t house. She wanted more room and blah blah blah. Plus I get a fleet discount on Ford thru my work.

Its not Ford's fault. I could build a bad **** system in this thing if I could utilize all of it. You cant use 3 amps and a processor when it all has to go under the back seat.

exalted512

MacLeod wrote: »

I need a drink.

With this week at work...tell me about it! Can't believe Wednesday hasn't even started and it feels like it should be Saturday.

Oh well, going to the track this weekend to relieve some stress:biggrin:
-Cody

Kazimir

Fun part about Honda is figuring how to get around the ELD... Damn treehuggers.

http://www.honda-tech.com/showthread.php?t=2873474
Link shows how to bypass.

arun1963

MacLeod wrote: »

Well I give up, at least for a while. Im sick and tired of trying to build a competition stereo without taking up any room for groceries and baby stuff. There is no room in this thing for a 3rd amp and not that it would matter cause I really dont want to hack the door all to pieces to reinforce the plastic freaking door panels to fit a decent sized midbass. Not to mention I hate this car and want to get rid of it as soon as possible too.

So, if two people **** about the same thing, would that make it brand bashing?? :biggrin: Guess I shouldn't start.

MacLeod wrote: »

So Im gonna take a sabbatical from competition til I can trade the wifes heap in on a Honda Civic or something that I can use and put a stereo in without having to worry about the wifes legroom.

Well, you'd still have to 'heel proof' the solution. But yes, that's much easier than having to dealing with daily reminders on how the SQ install, takes up leg space. Till the day something in the install scratches the said heel. Yeah heel proofing is simpler. Been there, done that not with legroom but equally 'significant' stuff.

MacLeod wrote: »

God this is frustrating. Stuck with a car I hate and one I cant put a stereo in. I need a drink.

You really have to try chilled Smirnoff Green Apple.

MacLeod wrote: »

I let the wife influence me too much. I really loved that Accord I had. Very comfy, fun to drive and built like a brick s**t house. She wanted more room and blah blah blah. Plus I get a fleet discount on Ford thru my work.

Well as time passes, there's only one way your 'needs' are headed. As someone who's further down the road, I can assure you that my needs today are way south of where they were 10 years ago.

MacLeod wrote: »

Its not Ford's fault.

See, I knew it would have been brand bashing.

MacLeod wrote: »

I could build a bad **** system in this thing if I could utilize all of it. You cant use 3 amps and a processor when it all has to go under the back seat.

Not worth it if you're going to be pulling everything out down the road. Look at the bright side, you're still active, you have the processor, plenty of clean power and good drivers. Ok, so placement of mids on the Fords sucks. For a change, do it only for yourself. :cool:

MacLeod

Oh Im not giving up. I still love competitions so Im gonna figure something out. 99% sure it wont be in this ride though so Ill have to get something else. Dont really need another payment but then Ive never been that smart in terms of money.

I would love to have a Honda Element. Man those things are just BEGGING for a competition level stereo. Theyre girlie as hell but I still want one. They must be made of gold though cause even 4 year old used ones are damn near $20,000!

arun1963

I was talking about while you are on sabbatical. You love it too much to quit .

Was looking at the Element. I can see why it's a girly car. Lots of space for stuff and kids, with a ton of safety features. Girls are very practical with things they aren't really passionate about. A few things that I think I picked,

Nice flat dash, not very deep to boot. Can you cut and mod a bit at the tweet location and mount the mids? You can then put the tweets in the pvc thingys and have a vertical array going.

I think a near vertical windshield will reduce reflections of the glass, given the placement of the mid/tweet. Nice stock placement for the midbass and what looks like deep floor wells. An opportunity to mount the midbass way forward.

It seems the whole cab has special urethane flooring, so its probably a quiet ride. Fabric seats (I bet the fabric is thick too) to help lessen reflections.

It comes with a 7 speaker (including sub), 270 watt stereo. Maybe you should just hook up a MS-8 :biggrin:

jay27

Funny, I was just looking at a Honda Element online last night doing research with the wife. It's amazing what you look for in a vehicle once you start having kids and what you get excited about. I was in a friend's minivan one time and thought, "the amount of space in here is awesome"!

MacLeod

Tell me the audio gods are not against me. My nice, high dollar optical cable just snapped in two. Was going to mount my H700 under the passenger seat and was snaking the wire thru and had a pretty good clip going. Felt a little tug and SNAP.

Im sitting here drinking a beer thinking very hard about just going out there and ripping everything out and returning it back to stock.

MacLeod

Its all out. Thats gotta be a record. 1 pair of mids, tweets and midbass along with a processor, head unit and 3 amps all out and the stock gear back in within an hour and half.

arun1963

MacLeod wrote: »

Tell me the audio gods are not against me..

Chances are at that point you felt the whole world was against you.

MacLeod wrote: »

My nice, high dollar optical cable..

:eek: does it carry the 0's and 1's better?

MacLeod wrote: »

Im sitting here drinking a beer thinking very hard about just going out there and ripping everything out and returning it back to stock.

I can identify very, very, closely with that reaction :redface:

MacLeod wrote: »

Its all out. Thats gotta be a record. 1 pair of mids, tweets and midbass along with a processor, head unit and 3 amps all out and the stock gear back in within an hour and half.

Ok, so now you know that you can put it all back in in a couple of hours tops, once the need to do so, strikes you.

Don't think you'll like the stock sound, much. Whenever I'm in any friends car and they crank the sound, my first reation is to turn the damn thing down. The great thing about life is the fact that, 'this too shall pass.'

The only constant on everything is the swing of the pendulum. You'll be back.

MacLeod

arun1963 wrote: »

Chances are at that point you felt the whole world was against you.

No, just the car.....and maybe the engineers at Ford with their plastic door panels.

:eek: does it carry the 0's and 1's better?

No but it was supposed to be "more durable for the car environment". To be fair, it did last 5 years and thru 3 different cars.

Don't think you'll like the stock sound, much. Whenever I'm in any friends car and they crank the sound, my first reation is to turn the damn thing down. The great thing about life is the fact that, 'this too shall pass.'

The only constant on everything is the swing of the pendulum. You'll be back.

Im not leaving car audio, just this particular car. With everything back to stock itll make it that much easier when I decide to pull into my local Toyota or Honda dealer and trade it out. Plus I wont be driving around wanting to play with the EQ or anything.

All my gear is out and stacked up on the shelf ready to go for the next car.

arun1963

MacLeod wrote: »

Plus I wont be driving around wanting to play with the EQ or anything.

Ok, I have a confession to make. I'm sort of a Jekyll and Hyde persona, while on the road. If the sound is right, then I'm the normal aggressive and somewhat rash, Delhi driver. Other days, I think mostly when I'm hearing better, I'll be the PITA old **** who's doing 30 in a 60 lane and won't get out of the way. Why? cause I'm playing with the 2-5khz range trying to get the top end of the piano to sound right. I'm a pita most of the days.

Thing is, I know its pointless tuning on the road. For one, I'll never get around all the crap happening and secondly, what ever I come up with, won't work when parked. But its just an insane desire to have 'the' sound right there and then.

MacLeod wrote: »

All my gear is out and stacked up on the shelf ready to go for the next car.

I'm sure it will find a home soon.

arun1963

This seems like the right thread to post this in. These processors seem to be getting a lot of love on some of the EU forums as on diyma.

http://www.extremeaudio.de/gb/helix-c-dsp-digital-sound-processor.html

http://www.extremeaudio.de/gb/helix-c-dsp-digital-sound-processor.html

C=competition and P=Performance. Just based on specs both units seem like a cut above whats available. Some of the unique features:

1. 31 band eq per driver, but here's the twist. You get the typical 1/3 octave frequencies, but for each frequency you can fine tune in 1/12-1/24 oct intervals above or below the frequency. So instead of tuning at 1.25khz you can chose 1.35khz. You can cut each frequency in 0.5db steps upto 12db, on q's from 0.05 to 15.

2. TA is in 7mm steps. That's about 0.27" and 0.02ms. You can delay each driver to 10.5ms

3. You can adjust the phase on the sub from 0-360 deg's in 22.5 deg increments. Great for keeping the sub connected while delaying the mids and tweets.

4. Crossover points selectable at 1/12-1/24 oct intervals from 20-20kz. Choice of linkwitz or butterworth filters at 0 to 48db/oct.

Both versions are expensive though. I figure if I get this now, maybe I'd manage to dial it in before I die. Assuming that it doesn't drive me to insanity before that .

MacLeod

Both those links dont work. They sound interesting though. Having essentially a parametric, 1/3 octave EQ would be pretty cool if youre tuning with an RTA.

If I were in the market though Id be eyeballing the new Apline H800. The H700 was a masterpiece and all you really would ever need so the H800 should be as good.

arun1963

http://www.extremeaudio.de/gb/helix-c-dsp-digital-sound-processor.html

http://www.extremeaudio.de/gb/helix-p-dsp-digital-sound-processor.html

Hope this works. What I love about this processor is the ability to first choose 31 bands from 256 bands per driver and then set them vs just getting 31 bands at 1/3rd oct. That and the phase correction on the sub. Run the eq on a 0.5 q and you have a graphic eq.

Greg Peters

MacLeod wrote: »

Both those links dont work. They sound interesting though. Having essentially a parametric, 1/3 octave EQ would be pretty cool if youre tuning with an RTA.

If I were in the market though Id be eyeballing the new Apline H800. The H700 was a masterpiece and all you really would ever need so the H800 should be as good.

The PXA H800 is on my list too, but the Asian/European models released so far have had some bugs, only one of which has been addressed by a firmware update so far.

http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum/diyma-sq-forum-technical-advanced/90860-alpine-pxa-h800-processor-discussion-thread.html

The Helix piece is probably pretty nice, but there isn't much in terms of user reviews and info floating around the interwebz just yet.

http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum/diyma-sq-forum-technical-advanced/109253-helix-dsp-whos-got-answers.html

MacLeod

Alright, figured Id post an update cause Im sure everybody is anxiously waiting for details on how my install is coming. OK, but seriously this has been the hardest f***ing install I have EVER done! Nothing, and I mean NOTHING has fit the first or even 50th time Ive tried to make it but Im finally over the hump. It took 2 nights but I finally got these mids to fit.

This was one of the first mounts I made. Id made a couple others but they were too big so I kept having to size them down. This one fit the best.



Then I ran into my first problem. I realized that Id need more space behind the back of the mid. It uses an AP vent in the back and requires at least a half inch of space behind it. I was gonna use one of the existing holes in the sheet metal (cutting is not allowed in my class). So I cut out a 1/4" piece of MDF to give it more space. Worked perfectly after 2 hours. These Morel mids have the mounting screws about .00001" beyond the cutout. So if the cutout is 1mm too big, its too big to screw the screws in. I went thru a millions cutouts for each. Infuriating! So I got the space I needed but now it wont fit behind the A pillar. So I need to size it down but couldnt figure out how to mount it if I got it too small. Then I thought "L brackets"! So I stopped by Lowes on the way home and after about an hour, came up with this:



This worked perfectly! Best of all, I had enough room to leave my airbag attached. I did have it unbolted and pushed up into the upper part of the pillar. God help me if that thing ever deployed. You can see all the other drilled out holes from my other 600 attempts to get something to fit properly in there.



The other best of all was that this left me with a lot of space behind the pillar so I wondered if I could fit my tweeter back there. I tinkered around for a bit and came up with this:



I think this is going to work very well. The tweeters arent as on axis as I would like but Ive got a lot of processing power so I think I can work with it. This will also have the mid, midbass and tweet working in the same direction and should clear up any phase issues for the most part. The thing I like best is that you wont see any speakers at all. Im going to drill a crap load of 1/4 holes in the trim panels then wrap them in grill cloth. When Im done, the only thing youll see is the sub box in the back and head unit. No speakers or amps will be visible and I will have given up zero storage or leg room aside from the underseat areas of the back seats and front passenger seat.

Tomorrow I have to work my 2nd job but hopefully I can get the holes drilled in the passenger side trim panel and run the wires for mids and tweets. Then Thursday I can wrap both panels and hopefully have enough time to get the amps hooked up. Friday night at the latest I should be done and can start tuning. Georgia State Finals on the 25th is my goal so that will give me a few days to tune. We're going to Florida for a few days next week so seat time will be precious little.

arun1963

looks good dude

JBD99ERIDE

Not sure if it was mentioned elsewhere in the thread but, are you still using the SR's in the doors or have you completely moved away from them?

Has the system produced sound yet or are you still installing? I thought I saw that you had gotten the amps mounted. I'm anxiously awaiting to see how this comes out..... should be awesome.

MacLeod

Yes, still using the SR 5's in the doors for midbass. I'd love to use the 6's but they just wont fit without more modifications than I'm willing (or able) to make. The only non-Polk gear I'm running is the Morel mids and tweets., and the Crossfire amp that'll replace the Polk 2 channel that has pink noise coming out the right side.

It played music (and pink noise) for the first time last night at 12:30. Haven't listened too much but this thing already sounds very good with ZERO eq! All I did was use some time alignment and crossovers and its already very solid. Not competition ready of course but take not going to take a lot to get it there. The mids and tweets in the A pillars is the best place for them IMO.

JBD99ERIDE

Yeah, I saw the other thread about the amp and tweeter problem. I'm sure the A-pillar loc is great, I have no room there even for tweeters unfortunately. Drivers side is taken up by a gauge pod and monitoring my motor trumps tweet location in this car. Best of luck getting all this sorted.

I have to say when I went from the just the 5250 setup in the kicks to including the 6500drivers in the doors, I also noticed a huge improvement with just time aligning over all previous configurations I had tried, which included 6500's in doors and tweets in sails 2way(had been that way for years). Getting the crossover right has been somewhat time consuming but its def getting there.

Not that I am comparing our systems as they are quite different and you know well more than I about car audio, but, ears dont lie...