Speakers for my showcar

beardog03

are they facing into the door because of the sound they make..?!!!

Man you must either have a mile of interior leg room , or none at all..!

CrBoy

jamas33 wrote:

you think???

Hell yeah!

MacLeod

beardog03 wrote:

are they facing into the door because of the sound they make..?!!!

No, Audiobahn users have to face their speakers inverted like that to show off the cool chrome flames and all. They figure if youre dazzled by all that cool chrome you wont notice how bad they sound.

PoweredByDodge

re - leg room.

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I have very little leg room. I'm 5-11" and about 240 lbs, that leaves me "perfectly comfy" with no room to spare if it were an automatic... or "just a little peeved" because i like a little more leg room when driving stick shift. I measured everything with my "absolute minimum driver sitting room" necessary to keep me from being angry or uncomfortable and then built. Some people feel very comfortable sitting in it, others hate it. Passenger room is not an issue as the dash is a little different shape on the passenger side, and you can tilt the seat farther back.

re - inverted, why?

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I had initially planned on dumping them in "normal" with the stock speaker grille covering them. I had also planned on not iso-mounting the woofers. However, when I really started to look at what I had to work with, I realized 1 - I would have to iso the woofers if I wanted them to fit, and 2 - the test box with them iso-mounted blew the 'standard' test box out of the water... not in loudness but in sound quality and the ability to drop to sick low frequencies without getting "muddy". The nail in the coffin was when I realized that the magnets and baskets of the midbass 6x9 drivers were so large that they would not fit in the stock location... they kept hitting the window track... and they stuck out almost 2 inches. So I inverted them, cut out the stock grille, and they fit quite nicely.

And actually, the sound quality from the midbass-es with the 3.5" coupled components in the dash outdoes some of the polk gear I've had. Retail for the setup would be about $240 which is extremely cheap, although I'll be the first to admit that it is in dire need of a unique crossover. It wasn't made to be a 3 way set... its a 2 way set matched with a modified 6x9 set. I've got it "good enough" for now, but I imagine it will impress me even further once the crossover network is built.

... edit --> note, on their own, the 6x9's working as 2 ways don't sound all that great... they're hallow, somewhat dead. the 3.5 comp's lack any form of bass response whatsoever, i mean even 500 hertz is an issue for them, and power handling sucks. But when you put them together in the manner described above, they just come to life like you would not believe.

hellohello

audiobahn... SQ... I think Ive just heard it all!

exalted512

anyone ever heard of db drive? anyone everheard of audison and focal? Theres a guy here in college station that runs the latter. Hes actually pretty good. He wins all over the state using focal's be tweeters which are 5k+ $$. All focal speakers and all audison amps. He's not sponsored, but they do give him deals on their equipment. Let me repeat, hes really good, I'm not just saying from personal experience, hes won competitions all over. He got beat by someone using a 3k $$ db drive system.

Moral of the story, youd be surprised when something is installed right how good that system can be...
-Cody

MacLeod

That doesnt necessarily mean the DB Drives sounded better. The one thing Ive learned about competiting lately is that soundstage is what wins. That situation doesnt mean the DB's sounded better than the Focals. He couldve just had a perfect soundstage where the Focal system did not.

All things being equal, the Focals would smoke the DB's. So why installation has a huge effect on the overall SQ it is still always a good idea to use high quality gear.

hellohello

im not understanding the "iso" method, Im guessing you have a sealed enclosure inside the door, and the mids are mounted aiming into said enclosure... now heres where im a lil lost, are the polarities reversed on the mids, or are they firing into the enclosure?
either way i find it amusing...

MacLeod

The polarity doesnt have to be reversed. Bass frequencies are omnidirectional so theyre not really firing in any direction and besides, changing the polarity wouldnt change the direction of them anyway.

You also dont need an enclosure inside.

This practice is solely for looks. It has no effects on SQ. Now if you were to stick midrange speakers inside out like that it would because midrange frequencies are directional.

PoweredByDodge

at the moment, the mid-bass in the doors ranges all the way up to around 1k more like a mid-range ... that will change when the crossover is built. so yes, the speaker wire polarity is reversed on the door speakers because they're "backwards".

the iso thing is not the door speakers... it's the subwoofers... see attached image...

MacLeod

Oh, woops. I thought he was talking about the mids. Inverted, iso, whats the difference?

PoweredByDodge

inverted is inverted... iso is inverted bolted to the face of another speaker that's mounted "normal". there are other forms of isobaric inclosures, but commonly, when someone says "iso", they mean two speakers bolted face to face.

here are some other iso examples that are not "face to face"...

http://www.the12volt.com/caraudio/boxes2.asp

the main advantages of iso are....

1) non linearities (imperfections in any single speaker) are canceled out when they are forced to drive together.
2) effectively, virtual cone strength is increased, assuming you have a fixed SEALED volume of air between the two cones and there are no leaks. air will compress, so it's not a doubling by any means.
3) can use enclosure size that's only 1/2 of what a single driver should have. lets you make super small or really odd sized boxes if you have to. By using 3/4 of the single driver box size, and doing an iso-mount, you can achieve better low frequency response.

None of this means it'll be any louder than a single sub. iso mounting 2 subs just gives you the ability to make it sound better... not louder. you have to use twice as much power, twice as many subs, and more tricky box building in order to get the same loudness as a single sub with half the power... but... you get improved bandwidth and a more true sound... depending on how you do it.

MacLeod

Way too complicated for me. Ill stick the tried and true single sub in a sealed box approach!

hellohello

oh, i thought it said you iso'd the mids in the door... at least thats how it looks in that pseudo paragraph

audiobliss

Wow, that isobaric stuff is really amazing. It just helps you reach lower and tighter? That's all I'd be after, anyways. If room is not a problem, is there a benefit of an isobaric setup over a traditional box/mounting using the same number of drivers?

neomagus00

yeah, if you have the power and drivers to spare, you'll lose sheer spl over using them all separately, but like pbd said, you'll gain sq...

audiobliss

Sounds like a worth while idea, for sure.

MacLeod

I dont think so. If it were wouldnt you see a lot more iso systems? To date Ive NEVER seen one.

Now Im definitely not knocking Vinnies install nor am I saying they is no improvement in performance, I just think you can get just as good a result the old fashioned way and with a lot less trouble and cost.

Its kinda the way I feel about tubes. Yes they do sound great but I believe you can get the same results with SS and for a lot less.

exalted512

MacLeod wrote:

That doesnt necessarily mean the DB Drives sounded better.

I never said they did, i could tell you for a fact that dont. the point of the whole thread was what you explained. You dont have to have great over the top equipment to get good sound. An excellent installation is always key, not just the price tag of the speakers.
-Cody

VR3

Macleod...

You pretty much explained why it isnt done more often...

"Alot more trouble and alot more time..."

Thom

If the inverted mids are running up to 1K there should be a pretty noticable difference in sound between inverted and normal mounting.


I heard the Focal Be three way components in the Tweeter "Dream Store" in Vegas. They sounded ****. Not that they would in a car, and every installer is different, so I'm sure they must sound good somewhere. I was just amazed at how bad they sounded for a $3500 system in a special sound room. The Alpine F#1's sounded much better. Of course install is everything. I've placed higher at shows with MM6's than guys in my class with Focal, Quart, and other expensive components.

MacLeod

Youre not the first person Ive heard say that. Even CA&E's review of them a couple months ago was less than stellar. Its not so much they suck as it is they dont offer $3500 worth of performance.

PoweredByDodge

go figure on this one... but the nicest sounding focals i ever heard were poly-kevlar's ... they're something like 350 msrp for a set. they went online obviously cheaper than that. i'd compared them with the 700 something dollar poly-glass that were out at hte time and i thought the polyglass was just dead compared to the p-k's. go figure.


as far as "lower and tighter" -- not exactly... you get a more ideal functioning driver. the two speakers work as one, and work more as if they were 100% perfectly manufactured. by opening up box size you get a bit better low freq response, but you can't go too big or you'll end up doing the same thing as if it were just one speaker in too big of a box... it'll lose integrity during excursion... flap around like hell, sound like junk. it's not done often because it costs twice as much for the same output, and it can often look less attractive than a normal mount. i've already got pretty good hearing loss... i'm just glad i haven't lost much "bandwidth", just overall sensitivity, so everything still basically sounds the same, just quieter... so being the loudest isn't something that's important to me anymore. i've come to accept "loud enough".

exalted512

and the mm6's midrange sucked too!
guess im not really helping...
-Cody

MacLeod

exalted512 wrote:

and the mm6's midrange sucked too!
guess im not really helping...
-Cody

Dude! WTF are you talking about?!?

The MM6 mid was very clean and the most detailed mid Ive ever heard, even more detailed than the SR's.

Plus they could handle a ton of power and were built like a small sub! I think, dollar for dollar, that the MM6 is the best speaker ever.

exalted512

egh, their midrange was decent at best. the new mm6500s are lightyears above them in sq. But they did handle tons of power and abuse.
-Cody