adding some serious speakers

ilikesound

my setup as of today consists of:
polk c400.4 driving polk momo mmc6500's (pair of components) with the tweeters in custom-made fiberglass A-pillars and the mid drivers in the stock locations. this amp also drives a pair of polk momo 6x9's coax
alpine mrp-m450 driving polk momo 8'' sub in custom sealed enclosure behind the passenger seat.
alpine cda-9857
ipod integration via fullspeed cable
jl interconnects, power and ground, fuses, and dist. blocks

now, on to my question:
im thinking about adding even more speakers, also the mmc6500 series in some kickpod type things on the floor. now, first would this improve or detract from the imagery of the soundstage or subtract from it? would i need to power these with some serious power to keep up with the pre-existing speakers? will the sub be drowned out in the mix? should i go with coax's for these new locations since i just want to "fill in" the midbass? on that note, should i just add the mid-drivers without tweeters? if i DO power them, will it be too much for the alt to handle? all these are feasible questions and it would be AWESOME if someone could chime in and give me an honest opinion, because i just want the best sound possible without going TOO overboard.

would pics help you guys?
thanks for lookin.

MacLeod

More speakers pretty much always means degraded sound quality. Having the same frequencies hitting your ears from multiple distances, arrival times and amplitude cause all kinds of phasing and cancellation issues. The best sounding system will generally always be the one with a basic, 2 channel setup.

The best way to improve your SQ would be to keep the 400.4, buy a set of SR6500's and bi-amp them off the 400.4. Disonnect the rear speakers, buy a 12" sub and a much bigger amp.

Jack from Indo

I agree with McLeod here, from my own experience as well, which I admit is not that much. But two guiding rules I will live by from now on is:

1. "Don't fix it if it ain't broke".

This shoulda been one o' them 10 commandments. World would be a much better place now if it hadda been, and people listened. If you're already very happy with your sound, but you wanna push the envelope, watch out in getting too fancy. 9 times out of 10 you are going to mess it up. It's like partying! Same fricking dynamic. 20 beers is not better than 6 or 7, no matter how tempting it was.

2. "If it is broke, 'Keep it simple, stupid" .

If your truly not happy with your sound the way it is now,
make sure you have exhausted every single one of the simplest solutions first. Diff. speaker placement, tuning, more power, etc etc.

ilikesound

i think the main thing is that the midbass's are in the doors firing at my frickin' legs. the tweeters are hitting my ears pretty well cause they are up on the dash sitting in my face..i just want to hear more of the drivers...any suggestions on that if i keep my existing setup? (i don't care what people say, i LOVE having some rear fill in my car, and i don't like to have an enormous amount of bass in my sound. tight, punchy and clean is the way i like it, and so far, its been fantastic.)

ilikesound

i had a JL w6 and it just sounded decent before the 8. i went from bandpass with a rockford punch (my first sub) then to a ported 12'' JL w1, then to a sealed 12'' jl w6 and im happy with the sound of the 8''. finally haha.

ilikesound

i am looking seriously at an audiocontrol unit, namely the EQX. is this a good deal or should i keep looking. also, why can't i order directly through audiocontrol? hmm..perplexing indeed.

Jack from Indo

Well, if you did what McLeod said, exactly to the letter, and biamped like he said, you would solve the problems you complained about, have much better control over your sound. If you could compare that with what you currently got, you would not even notice you didn't have rear fill. Well, anyway, that is what my experience is with rear fill, which I used to insist on too, until I got a well tuned setup like McLeod suggested.

We're all different, of course, with different tastes, but don't knock this till you try it. Most people are scared they aren't going to have a full, "all around them" sound experience without rear speakers, but that ain't so, not when you got good comps, and they're tuned right.

ilikesound

already tried it, didn't really sound all that different to me. i was thinking it would dramatically liven up the sound, but it didn't. so...i dunno, any other suggestions out there to help? i was thinking about upgrading the speakers to either SR or Focal components. let me know what you think. but if i can get a decent sound out those comps in the doors with an eq, ill take that any day, because i am happy with the SOUND of the speakers, they just don't hit me quite right in those spots i think.

Deadof_knight

Well for starters with the separation of the two being so far apart its gonna be hard to fix. Try bringin the tweets closer to the mids . make some custom pods or something mount them in the a/c vent closest to the mids ......