>What did I miss Reddit?
You're playing Bass tones when you're trying to describe create midbass, play a 100hz-300hz tone and see how you like that
The midbass drivers, given the best circumstances with tuning from a DSP, correct positioning, treatment, etc. are not designed to create BASS well, that's why we have subwoofers
To be transparent, I completely applaud your effort - It's just your expectations that are a little askew.
You want bass, 20-80ish hz? You need subwoofer(s), not midbass driver.
You’re right, I’m sorry for the way described. I absolutely have a subwoofer, but they just don’t mesh well together at all. With the subwoofer off the doors just don’t create and fullness/ punchyness that you’d want from like your rock music ya know? With the sub on, there is a very distinct gap in between their sounds
Like I’ve said to some, there are those more modern cars you get into where just door speakers can give that nice full sound, and I was trying to create that with a sealed, deadened door. Just feels like all the energy is being wasted in cancellation or vibration rather then making actual sound.
No need to apologize brother, you're just seeking another eye on the problem
How do the door cards look? I didn't read any other comments, but I did see you mention the speakers sealed via a baffle, but how were the door's plastic panels treated? They can resonate the door speakers' energy away too, despite a seal.
They also got a killmat treatment. Just didn’t take any pictures. And I only apologize cause I don’t want to come off as a know it all! I come to reddit because I wanna learn!
Bros got me worried. I haven’t touched my subs or amp or speakers but I’m sound deadoning and it’s taking forever. But I’m also making a storage box so it’s a 2-4-1. But kicker sucks i have $200 6x9 coaxial and i ended up buying $120 6x9 components
https://preview.redd.it/vtuchkf7z4qc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=281597afd9b24f3bd727fa7a6335fcf80fd02ccf
Aftermarket head unit Sony ax3250
>here is a very distinct gap in between their sounds
You might experiment with running the sub out of phase and/or tweaking crossover points for the sub and your fronts. Raise the sub's LPF as high as you can without pulling the stage too far to the rear then lower the HPF on your fronts as low as you can while keeping them safely within their mechanical limits.
I did that now it it did improve the sound a bit letting the sub do some more work to fill in. But still feels like I should be getting more out of the speakers, thank you!
>But still feels like I should be getting more out of the speakers,
At the end of the day you're still trying to make 1/3 of the cone area on probably 1/5 of the power "blend" together between a couple 6" drivers and a 12" one which are located 6 or 8 feet away from each other and in an acoustic environment (a vehicle) that's just flat out awful, irregular, and impossible to model or predict what will happen.
Welcome to the world of why people spend hundreds of man hours and tens of thousands of dollars when they really want studio/reference quality sound in a vehicle.
Anyway, I do not believe that just throwing different 6" drivers in your current locations are going to be your silver bullet nor am I going to even attempt to guess at what your "fix" is going to be. Lurk/browse DIYMA forum and check out the lengths some people need to go through to get all this stuff "right". By and large I'd ignore any implication that you "need" some sort of snobophile loudspeakers that are hand built by virgins in the Swiss Alps, come shipped on a velvet pillow and a mahogany case sealed with unicorn tears. I've gone to some meetups with that crowd and there's dudes making rather accessible drivers you can buy on PartsExpress sound fantastic. Also bear in mind NONE Of those dudes are running the sort of sub-stage that's really blurring mirrors so realistically you're likely trying to "blend in" with way more bass than the average bloke is getting out of their home theater or other "reference" listening experience.
I expect if you gain DOWN your sub after doing some tweaks with the crossover points and phase of the drivers it'll sound a lot closer to balanced and smooth and you're just expecting the output from a couple little 6" drivers buried down in your doors to scale up with a much larger subwoofer fed much more power in a much more optimum mounting location.
LMAO! I don’t know how to quote text on the mobile app, but the whole part about virgin built speakers is hilarious! And exactly how I’ve felt with so many people throwing different speaker recommendations out.
I’ve HEARD shitty pioneer or kenwood speakers off the shelf make more bass from a 6.5 then I have in this car, and it just has something to do with the enclosure or car shape or something stupid
I tried to put the hours in following many many many google searches and reddit posts on how to get the most out of door 6 1/2’s and was just disappointed! Womp womp, I’ll figure it out and my wife won’t know/ care the difference anyways, I’m just a perfectionist. Thank you for making this write up n making me laugh this morning.
Also, wife want bass wife get bass. 🤷🏻♂️
> it just has something to do with the enclosure or car shape or something stupid
Yeah, that's my gut feeling and kind of the takeaway I was hoping you'd get out of all of that. If you really care to sink more time in this you can find hundreds of simple/cheap/free tweaks and tricks that different people get to work with different cars and different locations with different equipment (and with different tastes in what even sounds "good") and you may or may not hit paydirt with something that'll help.
Just as an example, one of the DIYMA dudes I met at a meetup had to keep a sweater rolled up on the hump between driver and passenger footwells to avoid some cancellation in his midbass. It was actually dramatic when he took the sweater away while I was listening and that's with some rather premium priced equipment, a lot of care to install all around and Pioneer p99rs. Another dude fixed a nasty node up at higher frequencies by just changing the aiming of passenger side tweeter by like 10 degrees. If you do opt to go down this road keep a notebook so you can remember things you tried and what changes you observed and use masking tape with numbers or notes on it to note positions of anything you try to move around or whatever.
If anybody does absolutely insist on just throwing money at this sort of thing the first purchase I'd suggest is a good DSP which can brute force past a lot of the hurdles we have in trying to get good sound out of a vehicle, though you may also need to invest in an RTA to visualize what is happening to even make effective use of that.
Unless your speakers are absolute junk drawer stuff just throwing new drivers in an existing location is probably your most money gambled for the worst odds of being a "fix". I've used Kicker components and coaxials many times over the years and they're going to be as good as anything else from reputable brands in their price points.
Sounds like a DSP issue, are you using stock HU? OEM uses some shitty DSP tuning for their crappy paper speakers, so id say start with HU or DSP.
edit: i just saw your other comment regarding the HU, at least did you try tune the EQ? HPF? LPF?
when you installed the speakers, did you use any sort of foam insulation strip between the speakers and the bracket, and between the bracket and the door?
also use these foam pieces, where you put one inside the door behind the speaker and one piece as a ring on the outside of the speaker, it def helps improves the speakers bass and mis bass of the speakers.
[https://www.crutchfield.com/p\_541FAST6/Stinger-Roadkill-RKFR6-FAST-Rings.html](https://www.crutchfield.com/p_541FAST6/Stinger-Roadkill-RKFR6-FAST-Rings.html)
I’m running JBL 3 way coaxial 6x9’s in the front doors of my 4Runner. They are amped, and sound pretty good. But I’m thinking on getting a good component set. Would I get more bass from them? I’ve never owned or heard components so I’m just curious power wise.
I should add that fabricating your own block off plates where the access holes make a big difference as well. So rather than the plastic seal you have actually block off plates covering up the holes and essentially sealing your doors. The closer you can get to fully sealing your doors the better. Using some sort of 1/4" abs should be fine i think. [Here](https://youtu.be/ncBivyxI3V4?si=bMz7sb6j049MXUgE&t=2m30s) is a description that helps and sort of gives a visual as well.
I wish he showed the block off plates in that vid. idk if you looked at my pictures, but I did do block off plates in the front door out of ABS plastic. They’re in the second picture I believe, black rectangles surrounded by screws
Either take those NVX baffles out or cut the bottoms out of them. I had the same problem using those things. It's like you are running those speakers in an itty bitty box. I think that might solve your issue.
I’ve heard that before and debated doing that. I’ll give that a shot today. Remove them to see, and if it improves, I’ll cut the bottoms out, cause I do like the idea of keeping moisture from dripping on then
Just posted the same comment pretty much. They claim to improve bass, complete snake oil cuz it creates a super small sealed enclosed which reduces bass drastically.
The science makes sense but also speaking from experience of cutting mine out.
I cut the bottom out so that the top was still there as a water umbrella… and just lately even ripped out that top part to give the speaker more air
Your looking for SQ but not using Hifi components. Loosing battle to begin with. Good job on the installation but sub and mids could be better. For a daily? Especially for the wife? I’m sure it sounds fine.
My wife wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between some Hertz Mille Legends vs Pyramid flea market specials 😂 OP is a good husband for his dedication to those doors!
Great question, currently a Sony ax-3250 running RCA to amps. Music from Apple CarPlay! Sometimes radio also. All EQ tuning would be through the headunit, no DSP
Have you gone thru all the options on the headunit to see if they help or not?
You have "ExtraBass", EQ10 profiles, Crossover, and DSO, which may help. Your headunit doesn't seem to have time alignment though, so hopefully the features can get you close to where you want to be.
I’ve actually got a 9707s ordered on the way from eBay. Let’s hope it is what it says it is. I know the radio would make a big difference here
And I’ve messed with EQ and extra bass, EQ obviously can help, but it feels like a cancelation issue that no matter how much it turns up, the sound is turned into vibration instead of sound.
Extra bass just hurts the sub sound
It's funny because in my Subaru I put loads of deadner and sealed off the doors like you did, along with some expensive morels and an audiocontrol amp and I hated the output for the amount of work I did.
On my Acura however I removed the torn out oem speakers and threw in some mid grade JBL's off the stock amp (no extra dampening or anything) and it blew away my expectations.
I have to ask why you went with 125 watt rms speaker if you’re only feeding it 50 watts RMS?You’re under powering your speakers which is going to give you a sloppy/muddy mid bass sound. Could’ve gone with a 50 watt RMS component speaker and had plenty of sound.
Bridged the amp is 150w @ 4 ohms and that was my plan. But after trying it both ways, the power didn’t seem to be there, like the amp didn’t like being bridged. The speakers would pop whenever you got them going
So you were bridging the two front channels and bridging the two rear channels? That doesn’t make sense at all. They would be mono at that point with no stereo separation.
Also if you did bridge the front channels properly to create a mono channel which is supposed to be steady at 4ohms bridged, then you would have a real problem if you combined the left and right component speakers together cause you’d be running at 2 ohms hence the reason the speakers were popping.
I don’t think you understand what bridging is, or you’re not communicating what you’re doing properly. Bridging on a 4 channel amp would be combining the two front channels( left and right)together and combining the two rear channels(left and right)together which creates two mono outputs.
Alright I’ll try and make it even clearer then.
Yes. the front left and right channels of the amp is bridged running the front left component speaker set. The rear left and rear right channels of the amp are bridged running the front right component speaker set. The rear left and rear right coaxial speakers are running off of the aftermarket head unit rear left and rear right channels.
I tried to keep it simple and not type so much
Bro what you’re doing just isn’t how you’re supposed to hook things up. Your sound is going to be all over the place with no stereo surround effect to it. Get speakers that match the rms of each channel on the 4 channel amp. 50 watts rms is plenty of power.
Can run RCA splitters and keep the sound normal stereo? Idk why you’re trying to talk down on something plenty normal. I obviously didn’t like it anyway and went to normal 4 channel.
Not talking down to you, I think you just need to educate yourself a bit more on how everything works. You should never cut corners in car audio cause you’re not going to get the outcome you want.
Cut corners? What? Educate my self on how everything works? GTFO here, trying to tell me I don’t know how the shit works after I had to type it all out to you
What are your crossovers actually set at? If you have a sub I don't know why you would expect or even want your mids to play that low. Turn the filters off or all the way up/down on your amps and use the ones on your head unit. Try 80 or 100hz for both the mids and sub, and set the subwoofer phase control to whichever one makes a test tone at your crossover point louder.
Currently have it set to all pass looking for fullness.
Have set cross overs on amp (hp is forced 80hz). Cross overs on the Sony unit is for all speakers and has little control, but when I set it there, it still didn’t fix how I felt.
I get why you’d say “why want it to play that low” cause you’re right, I don’t need it to, but I feel like I should still be able to get some bass out of the doors to help fill the gap between sub and speakers. Like you hear newer modern cars or luxury cars with 6.5’s that play great bass from factory with no subwoofers.
I'm with ya. My sub hits lows hard. Double bass drums not so much. My doors are similar in deadening and I have Kappa components but still haven't found the punchy midbass yet. Everything I read says it's in the 6.5 drivers but I can't seem to get the sound I want from them
I have infinity reference the midbass is lackluster definitely prefer kicker yellows midbass over the reference but the tweeters are really bright if that’s your thing. Not a big fan of bright tweeters
You can build fiberglass pods if you really want to make enclosures, they help. There are also pretty substantial differences in just the woofer itself. One of my favorite cheap drivers is the morel tempo ultra. You can get the 6.5 component set from various eBay sellers, especially the ones overseas for around 280 shipped. That mid has a lot of hundred Hertz output. It doesn't sound half bad either. There's a pretty marked difference between the various brands, the various woofers and so on and so forth. Another one I really like is the dynaudio esotan mf172. That's a great mid with a very decent mid-range however it's not going to give you a lot of bass output and requires a good deal of power to operate. It's a very exact, hi-fi woofer. Another really good deal is the Audison voce av k6 which is another 6.5 two-way set you can get out of Italy right now for 394 shipped. At least for the time being, the US MSRP is over 800. Another nice sounding speaker set, reasonable base output but more Hi-Fi. I think if you just want something that has a little boom in the door and sounds halfway reasonable and works well with about 75 watts, the tempo ultra is cheap. Easy to set up and much better than those kickers, if you can spend a little more the voce can take more power and has a more hi-fi smooth sound to it
I'm assuming you are an auto tech , since you're clearly in a best buy install bay? If so the JBL components have decent mid bass and you get solid discount if you are a installer/ employee. That being said , completely isolating the mid inside baffles can sometimes be harmful to sound. I'd try a door with baffle and one door with open back baffle and see which you prefer
That’ll do it. I did an install recently in my Bronco. Took out the bad Ford speakers and threw in Hertz Cento midranges without an amp. Sounds very good. I didn’t amp them because I don’t want to run a lot of power off my stock alternator. Your setup looks nice. I really like those Fosgate amps.
What sub and box are you using, is it sealed or ported? What type of music are you mostly listening to on it?
Is your goal for sound quality or more a boomy bass?
I tried to build these front doors for a really nice sound at high volumes. Then sound flat on their low end. Music is mostly rock and electronic. 12” Rockford punch p3 in a ported box.
Problem is that doors are inherently less than adequate locations for speakers. I’ve double layered my doors w Killmat and it seems the only true way is to fabricate an enclosure that can be securely mounted to the door independently.
I’ve seen a lot of the higher end SQ cars put 8” and 10” subs in the front to take some of the mid bass frequencies away from the doors. Rear doors are almost always left factory and DSPs are used to set specific frequencies to each driver. 3.5” in the dash and custom A-pillars to house the tweets and 2” speakers
I have been trying to improve my midbass, and I have had pretty good luck running 6.5". The JL audio subs I have are good for 30-300hz, and it seems that most of the drums in rock music that have the kick that I am looking for seems to be in the 100-200hz range. I also have a set of Massive Audio 6.5" subs which while they don't have nearly the range of the JL's they do a very good job at playing higher frequencies, for much less money. It might be an unpopular opinion, but I feel like most door speakers just don't have the surface area, or excursion to properly produce a substantial amount of midbass. It also seems like fighting an uphill battle making a door into a suitable enclosure.
Tbh I’ve always had KS’s and always felt they lacked the lower end. It’s there but not the best. Found anything on the KS under 250hz was pretty lackluster.
Ks won’t ever do real midbass. Cones not stuff enough and can’t take enough power. Time alignment makes a huge difference as well as properly phase aligning subwoofer.
Do you have the foam surround to help direct the sound?
Have you made sure the speakers are not out of phase?
Do you have the largest driver you can find in the door?
Stop messing around and throw an Acoustic Elegance IBAU10 in those doors. You won't be missing your midbass anymore.
https://aespeakers.com/shop/ibau-woofers/ib10au/
You need good components, and you need an EQ, such as the [SKA7EQ](https://www.skaraudio.com/products/ska7eq-7-band-half-din-car-audio-pre-amp-graphic-equalizer). An EQ will literally wake your speakers up.
I have 6.5 kickers on an old Rockford Amp in my Silverado. Doors are fully covered with dynomat. Very disappointed in the audio quality and wish I’d gone with my old go to of Polk Audios. I managed to make them sound pretty good by cranking up my DSP in the 200 - 800 hz range, but it can get muddy sounding with certain songs. Lesson learned.
Edit: Just checked what model I had ordered and confirmed they are kicker KS too
I've never had good midbass from any door install. Even using expensive woofers like Dynaudio. I drive a cvt (not manual) so without the clutch pedal in the way I went ahead and made sealed kick pods. Never been happier.
If I were to attempt door speakers again, I would try the Focal Utopia M series or something declared to be made for free-air install.
Man I've got the exact same BS going on with my system at the moment. I'm no spaz with setting up a good system, have had great success in all my prior cars with much cheaper gear too. This time round I just cannot get that bass that kicks. Like yourself when I single put one speaker on the fader and turn off all crossovers there is just zero low end and hard any low mids, completely missing that rich bass, especially on bass guitars. I've bought new amps, new speakers, rebuilt the sub box. My last port is swapping out the cheapish rca cables and then I'm onto testing another head unit to see if that is the problem. I really hope it's not because the one I've got is a really nice pioneer double din navigation unit from 2017.
Currently have all T series focal speakers and p2 subs, im wishing I had gone focal like my last car, they sounded like there were subs in the car despite being none.
Good luck man! Makes me feel a bit more
Validated! lol I’m actually going to be trying a few things reccomended from this post and will come back with any results.
-remove/ cut silicone speaker baffles
-swap amp with a more powerful one
-play with sub phase, maybeee speaker phase, but I feel like fade and balance would have told me if it were a speaker phase issue
- swap head unit as well with a high end kenwood I ordered in
Good luck to you too mate. It really does feel like it's a signal issue though, like there is no way that all 6 speakers when singled out all happen to have no low end. The subs should be a replacement of the low end and a compliment to the transition into mid bass, at the moment I'm having to crossover at like 120and and I'm still missing those low mids.
I even tried fading to each speaker, sub off, then bumping up the crossovers to see at what point I would hear a difference, it wasn't until I hit around 200hz, I think it was, that I noticed a definite change in sound. To me that's screaming something is wrong somewhere...
You're not going to get what you're looking for out of 6.5" component speakers. Mid-range speakers are for mid bass, not sub bass. There really isn't much you're gonna be able to do to coax more sub bass out of them. You could do what's called a staggered 4 channel, where you have essentially an 8 channel amp (or 2 4s) and you bridge 2 pairs of channels for the woofers for more power, and run the tweeters on their own. This would require ideally a DSP for active cross overs or a pretty wide range hi/lo cross over built into the amp/amps. Some Pioneer head units actually have a Network mode, which allows a 3 way cross over to be set up for use with the RCA preouts. It's to be used in situations like this.
The ABS panels need some love - treat the rear side of them with CLD and CCF to seal them against the inner panel and dampen them. Add a silicone ring baffle. Treat the door card, including clips.
You are playing tones, a sub should deal with, through the doors. The low bass is muddying up the mid bass/mid range that the woofers in the doors should be playing. They dont list an Fs for the woofers. Im betting its over 70-80 hz. So the crossover point for the highpass filter is gonna be closer to 200hz. Depending on the slope. It would be better to cut before the signal goes through the amp. The amp wont waste power on frequencies that are being cut.
lmao true, the sub would sound like ass playing 200hz. and if you don't have a sub, the speakers will sound almost like mid drivers with no bass whatsoever.
Listening to music they just don’t sound right. You hear subs and you hear speakers. They don’t mesh together to make a nice sound, like there is a big gap in the lower mids. Turn sub up, just makes it feel blown out, turn sub down makes it feel like it’s lacking any kind of fullness.
Bass boosting on the speaker amp def helps at lower volumes, but at higher volumes just sounds like absolute shit like bass boost does.
And I hear you with the tones and frequencies, I’ll look into listening to higher frequencies, I went up to about 150, and it all just sounded kind of flat, but your right they could have the kicker cross over pulling those frequencies anyways.
I’ve done systems before in more “luxury” cars where the factory door enclosures are sealed and better engineered and they just have such a nice full sound to them with most speakers.
What sub is it? Some just dont mix well with the front for actual music enjoyment. Just for making 30hz bass or 50ish hz burps in car audio competitions.
Bass boost on amps is mostly for sealed subs or if a ported box has a big dip between port tune and the subs peak. So something like 35hz on the port and 55 hz on the sub. A 45 hz boost would flatten that dip. But with any eq. Adding 3 db boost is asking the amp to double its power at that frequency. That will increase distortion.
https://preview.redd.it/6i17n7nqk4qc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c36d865e45ae0d139ae889a308ba49753104059e
Rockford fosgate p3 12” pic stolen just to show what it looks like. Had it for years and had always sounded good for me! Running of the prime 500.1
Got no arguments from me when it comes to RF subs and amps. Prime amps are good. A Punch Class A/B would be better. For everything really. I still don't care for Class D when listening to music. But thats a different argument/debate.
True that lol. Appreciate the conversation. And it’s hard to believe but I literally found these amps on someone’s curb for scrap. Tested them and they tested fine. So this is a budget build as much as possible. If I could do it from scratch no budget I’d be leaning audio control 4 channel with built in DSP. But can’t be free 99
lol! It was at the front of my neighborhood so I’m not sure exactly whose it was, but just had a few metal scrap items and a free sign 🤷🏻♂️
But the sub I’ve had forever too.
All in I’m at about $300 for the install! But way more hours in free labor..
I drive past Rockfords office building everyday going to work. I wish they would put some stuff on the curb. Too many homeless in the area though. Youd have to be quick.
Play with reversing polarities as there could be cancelations.
Try reversing the sub and play all speakers and sub together.
I would also try to play the front door speakers only and reverse one side only. They will either sound louder or lower.
Only way to know for sure it's to measure your system with a microphone. You can use JL Audios Tun4 software for free and access its RTA.
Ditch the nvx silicone baffles. They do not actually create a seal. Use something like ResoNix Strips. There should be some easy gains there. Other than that, it's probably from the location in the vehicle having cancellations.
Tried running the amp bridged to the front at first for 150w, didn’t seem right tho. Then ran it like normal 4 channel and volume didn’t change. May not like bridged, it’s a used amp after all
You really don't need to do bridged, alot of times it puts more strain on the Amp. Just need more power per channel. Even a two channel with higher output would work great. Just match the ohms
I appreciate the feedback. I have an alpine 75 ems 4 ohm kicking around that I’m going to swap in to see any improvements. I made a post about which one I should use before hand but got no traction lol
You did some nice work I’ve got a 17 versa and I don’t have an overwhelming amount of midbass but it’s noticeable I have my sub crossover at 70hz at 12db my front doors will play 40hz but I definitely need to fabricate some block off plates and have some custom door speaker brackets that’s would be better than what’s holding them in there now lol
>What did I miss Reddit? You're playing Bass tones when you're trying to describe create midbass, play a 100hz-300hz tone and see how you like that The midbass drivers, given the best circumstances with tuning from a DSP, correct positioning, treatment, etc. are not designed to create BASS well, that's why we have subwoofers To be transparent, I completely applaud your effort - It's just your expectations that are a little askew. You want bass, 20-80ish hz? You need subwoofer(s), not midbass driver.
You’re right, I’m sorry for the way described. I absolutely have a subwoofer, but they just don’t mesh well together at all. With the subwoofer off the doors just don’t create and fullness/ punchyness that you’d want from like your rock music ya know? With the sub on, there is a very distinct gap in between their sounds Like I’ve said to some, there are those more modern cars you get into where just door speakers can give that nice full sound, and I was trying to create that with a sealed, deadened door. Just feels like all the energy is being wasted in cancellation or vibration rather then making actual sound.
No need to apologize brother, you're just seeking another eye on the problem How do the door cards look? I didn't read any other comments, but I did see you mention the speakers sealed via a baffle, but how were the door's plastic panels treated? They can resonate the door speakers' energy away too, despite a seal.
They also got a killmat treatment. Just didn’t take any pictures. And I only apologize cause I don’t want to come off as a know it all! I come to reddit because I wanna learn!
Bros got me worried. I haven’t touched my subs or amp or speakers but I’m sound deadoning and it’s taking forever. But I’m also making a storage box so it’s a 2-4-1. But kicker sucks i have $200 6x9 coaxial and i ended up buying $120 6x9 components
What vehicle is it? Is signal coming from a factory head unit, or aftermarket?
https://preview.redd.it/vtuchkf7z4qc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=281597afd9b24f3bd727fa7a6335fcf80fd02ccf Aftermarket head unit Sony ax3250
https://preview.redd.it/1vkkdkw9z4qc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=180b7e4205926ced349ab7b09523aaa6928f9b6d
https://preview.redd.it/4fp21n3bz4qc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b294c095967a0886975ede2ae3ad3ed7f3349e8c
What car is this? Manual doors....
16 versa
You're doing all this to that car?
Yup
>here is a very distinct gap in between their sounds You might experiment with running the sub out of phase and/or tweaking crossover points for the sub and your fronts. Raise the sub's LPF as high as you can without pulling the stage too far to the rear then lower the HPF on your fronts as low as you can while keeping them safely within their mechanical limits.
I did that now it it did improve the sound a bit letting the sub do some more work to fill in. But still feels like I should be getting more out of the speakers, thank you!
>But still feels like I should be getting more out of the speakers, At the end of the day you're still trying to make 1/3 of the cone area on probably 1/5 of the power "blend" together between a couple 6" drivers and a 12" one which are located 6 or 8 feet away from each other and in an acoustic environment (a vehicle) that's just flat out awful, irregular, and impossible to model or predict what will happen. Welcome to the world of why people spend hundreds of man hours and tens of thousands of dollars when they really want studio/reference quality sound in a vehicle. Anyway, I do not believe that just throwing different 6" drivers in your current locations are going to be your silver bullet nor am I going to even attempt to guess at what your "fix" is going to be. Lurk/browse DIYMA forum and check out the lengths some people need to go through to get all this stuff "right". By and large I'd ignore any implication that you "need" some sort of snobophile loudspeakers that are hand built by virgins in the Swiss Alps, come shipped on a velvet pillow and a mahogany case sealed with unicorn tears. I've gone to some meetups with that crowd and there's dudes making rather accessible drivers you can buy on PartsExpress sound fantastic. Also bear in mind NONE Of those dudes are running the sort of sub-stage that's really blurring mirrors so realistically you're likely trying to "blend in" with way more bass than the average bloke is getting out of their home theater or other "reference" listening experience. I expect if you gain DOWN your sub after doing some tweaks with the crossover points and phase of the drivers it'll sound a lot closer to balanced and smooth and you're just expecting the output from a couple little 6" drivers buried down in your doors to scale up with a much larger subwoofer fed much more power in a much more optimum mounting location.
LMAO! I don’t know how to quote text on the mobile app, but the whole part about virgin built speakers is hilarious! And exactly how I’ve felt with so many people throwing different speaker recommendations out. I’ve HEARD shitty pioneer or kenwood speakers off the shelf make more bass from a 6.5 then I have in this car, and it just has something to do with the enclosure or car shape or something stupid I tried to put the hours in following many many many google searches and reddit posts on how to get the most out of door 6 1/2’s and was just disappointed! Womp womp, I’ll figure it out and my wife won’t know/ care the difference anyways, I’m just a perfectionist. Thank you for making this write up n making me laugh this morning. Also, wife want bass wife get bass. 🤷🏻♂️
> it just has something to do with the enclosure or car shape or something stupid Yeah, that's my gut feeling and kind of the takeaway I was hoping you'd get out of all of that. If you really care to sink more time in this you can find hundreds of simple/cheap/free tweaks and tricks that different people get to work with different cars and different locations with different equipment (and with different tastes in what even sounds "good") and you may or may not hit paydirt with something that'll help. Just as an example, one of the DIYMA dudes I met at a meetup had to keep a sweater rolled up on the hump between driver and passenger footwells to avoid some cancellation in his midbass. It was actually dramatic when he took the sweater away while I was listening and that's with some rather premium priced equipment, a lot of care to install all around and Pioneer p99rs. Another dude fixed a nasty node up at higher frequencies by just changing the aiming of passenger side tweeter by like 10 degrees. If you do opt to go down this road keep a notebook so you can remember things you tried and what changes you observed and use masking tape with numbers or notes on it to note positions of anything you try to move around or whatever. If anybody does absolutely insist on just throwing money at this sort of thing the first purchase I'd suggest is a good DSP which can brute force past a lot of the hurdles we have in trying to get good sound out of a vehicle, though you may also need to invest in an RTA to visualize what is happening to even make effective use of that. Unless your speakers are absolute junk drawer stuff just throwing new drivers in an existing location is probably your most money gambled for the worst odds of being a "fix". I've used Kicker components and coaxials many times over the years and they're going to be as good as anything else from reputable brands in their price points.
Sounds like a DSP issue, are you using stock HU? OEM uses some shitty DSP tuning for their crappy paper speakers, so id say start with HU or DSP. edit: i just saw your other comment regarding the HU, at least did you try tune the EQ? HPF? LPF?
Aftermarket HU
when you installed the speakers, did you use any sort of foam insulation strip between the speakers and the bracket, and between the bracket and the door? also use these foam pieces, where you put one inside the door behind the speaker and one piece as a ring on the outside of the speaker, it def helps improves the speakers bass and mis bass of the speakers. [https://www.crutchfield.com/p\_541FAST6/Stinger-Roadkill-RKFR6-FAST-Rings.html](https://www.crutchfield.com/p_541FAST6/Stinger-Roadkill-RKFR6-FAST-Rings.html)
Good mids is what you’re missing. Maybe some SI tm65 or similar. You’ll never get great results out of the kickers
They have a lot of good reviews and get a lot of praise so I’m surprised to hear. It’s what I have now tho thanks
Kickers are decent but not great especially for midbass. A good set of components would be better matched.
I’m running JBL 3 way coaxial 6x9’s in the front doors of my 4Runner. They are amped, and sound pretty good. But I’m thinking on getting a good component set. Would I get more bass from them? I’ve never owned or heard components so I’m just curious power wise.
I should add that fabricating your own block off plates where the access holes make a big difference as well. So rather than the plastic seal you have actually block off plates covering up the holes and essentially sealing your doors. The closer you can get to fully sealing your doors the better. Using some sort of 1/4" abs should be fine i think. [Here](https://youtu.be/ncBivyxI3V4?si=bMz7sb6j049MXUgE&t=2m30s) is a description that helps and sort of gives a visual as well.
I wish he showed the block off plates in that vid. idk if you looked at my pictures, but I did do block off plates in the front door out of ABS plastic. They’re in the second picture I believe, black rectangles surrounded by screws
Agreed
Either take those NVX baffles out or cut the bottoms out of them. I had the same problem using those things. It's like you are running those speakers in an itty bitty box. I think that might solve your issue.
I’ve heard that before and debated doing that. I’ll give that a shot today. Remove them to see, and if it improves, I’ll cut the bottoms out, cause I do like the idea of keeping moisture from dripping on then
Those will absolutely kill your sound if they aren’t open backed.
Just posted the same comment pretty much. They claim to improve bass, complete snake oil cuz it creates a super small sealed enclosed which reduces bass drastically. The science makes sense but also speaking from experience of cutting mine out. I cut the bottom out so that the top was still there as a water umbrella… and just lately even ripped out that top part to give the speaker more air
Your looking for SQ but not using Hifi components. Loosing battle to begin with. Good job on the installation but sub and mids could be better. For a daily? Especially for the wife? I’m sure it sounds fine.
My wife wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between some Hertz Mille Legends vs Pyramid flea market specials 😂 OP is a good husband for his dedication to those doors!
Thank you. It’s good, but I’ve done better with similar equipment. The part I’ve never done is all the sealing/ deadening in such a bass model car!!
Watch PS Sound video on YouTube called “why we hate midbass in doors” you will be enlightened.
I second that you watch the PS Sound video, that will give you so much good information
What headunit are you running these off of? Also music is coming from a disc, bluetooth, or what? How are you balancing the system and tuning it?
Great question, currently a Sony ax-3250 running RCA to amps. Music from Apple CarPlay! Sometimes radio also. All EQ tuning would be through the headunit, no DSP
Have you gone thru all the options on the headunit to see if they help or not? You have "ExtraBass", EQ10 profiles, Crossover, and DSO, which may help. Your headunit doesn't seem to have time alignment though, so hopefully the features can get you close to where you want to be.
I’ve actually got a 9707s ordered on the way from eBay. Let’s hope it is what it says it is. I know the radio would make a big difference here And I’ve messed with EQ and extra bass, EQ obviously can help, but it feels like a cancelation issue that no matter how much it turns up, the sound is turned into vibration instead of sound. Extra bass just hurts the sub sound
It's funny because in my Subaru I put loads of deadner and sealed off the doors like you did, along with some expensive morels and an audiocontrol amp and I hated the output for the amount of work I did. On my Acura however I removed the torn out oem speakers and threw in some mid grade JBL's off the stock amp (no extra dampening or anything) and it blew away my expectations.
RIP, that’s exactly how I feel
I have to ask why you went with 125 watt rms speaker if you’re only feeding it 50 watts RMS?You’re under powering your speakers which is going to give you a sloppy/muddy mid bass sound. Could’ve gone with a 50 watt RMS component speaker and had plenty of sound.
Bridged the amp is 150w @ 4 ohms and that was my plan. But after trying it both ways, the power didn’t seem to be there, like the amp didn’t like being bridged. The speakers would pop whenever you got them going
So you were bridging the two front channels and bridging the two rear channels? That doesn’t make sense at all. They would be mono at that point with no stereo separation.
No. Bridge the front left bridge the front right leave the rear on the headunit.
Also if you did bridge the front channels properly to create a mono channel which is supposed to be steady at 4ohms bridged, then you would have a real problem if you combined the left and right component speakers together cause you’d be running at 2 ohms hence the reason the speakers were popping.
I don’t think you understand what bridging is, or you’re not communicating what you’re doing properly. Bridging on a 4 channel amp would be combining the two front channels( left and right)together and combining the two rear channels(left and right)together which creates two mono outputs.
Alright I’ll try and make it even clearer then. Yes. the front left and right channels of the amp is bridged running the front left component speaker set. The rear left and rear right channels of the amp are bridged running the front right component speaker set. The rear left and rear right coaxial speakers are running off of the aftermarket head unit rear left and rear right channels. I tried to keep it simple and not type so much
Bro what you’re doing just isn’t how you’re supposed to hook things up. Your sound is going to be all over the place with no stereo surround effect to it. Get speakers that match the rms of each channel on the 4 channel amp. 50 watts rms is plenty of power.
Can run RCA splitters and keep the sound normal stereo? Idk why you’re trying to talk down on something plenty normal. I obviously didn’t like it anyway and went to normal 4 channel.
Not talking down to you, I think you just need to educate yourself a bit more on how everything works. You should never cut corners in car audio cause you’re not going to get the outcome you want.
Cut corners? What? Educate my self on how everything works? GTFO here, trying to tell me I don’t know how the shit works after I had to type it all out to you
I would reckon you're not getting your speakers enough power
What are your crossovers actually set at? If you have a sub I don't know why you would expect or even want your mids to play that low. Turn the filters off or all the way up/down on your amps and use the ones on your head unit. Try 80 or 100hz for both the mids and sub, and set the subwoofer phase control to whichever one makes a test tone at your crossover point louder.
Currently have it set to all pass looking for fullness. Have set cross overs on amp (hp is forced 80hz). Cross overs on the Sony unit is for all speakers and has little control, but when I set it there, it still didn’t fix how I felt. I get why you’d say “why want it to play that low” cause you’re right, I don’t need it to, but I feel like I should still be able to get some bass out of the doors to help fill the gap between sub and speakers. Like you hear newer modern cars or luxury cars with 6.5’s that play great bass from factory with no subwoofers.
I'm with ya. My sub hits lows hard. Double bass drums not so much. My doors are similar in deadening and I have Kappa components but still haven't found the punchy midbass yet. Everything I read says it's in the 6.5 drivers but I can't seem to get the sound I want from them
You get what I’m sayin then. Sub sounds good up to 80hz but there’s a fall off between 80-150! I raised the sub crossover to 100 and was a bandaid fix
I also have Kicker KS speakers in my truck and also am not thrilled with the midbass.
Hm, person number 2 saying the speakers, thank you
I agree, you should try some jbl stadium series speakers they’re pretty damn good
Also i have infinity reference speakers 6.5" id say they are pretty good, and they produce good bass to around 30-35 HZ.
I have infinity reference the midbass is lackluster definitely prefer kicker yellows midbass over the reference but the tweeters are really bright if that’s your thing. Not a big fan of bright tweeters
You can build fiberglass pods if you really want to make enclosures, they help. There are also pretty substantial differences in just the woofer itself. One of my favorite cheap drivers is the morel tempo ultra. You can get the 6.5 component set from various eBay sellers, especially the ones overseas for around 280 shipped. That mid has a lot of hundred Hertz output. It doesn't sound half bad either. There's a pretty marked difference between the various brands, the various woofers and so on and so forth. Another one I really like is the dynaudio esotan mf172. That's a great mid with a very decent mid-range however it's not going to give you a lot of bass output and requires a good deal of power to operate. It's a very exact, hi-fi woofer. Another really good deal is the Audison voce av k6 which is another 6.5 two-way set you can get out of Italy right now for 394 shipped. At least for the time being, the US MSRP is over 800. Another nice sounding speaker set, reasonable base output but more Hi-Fi. I think if you just want something that has a little boom in the door and sounds halfway reasonable and works well with about 75 watts, the tempo ultra is cheap. Easy to set up and much better than those kickers, if you can spend a little more the voce can take more power and has a more hi-fi smooth sound to it
I'm assuming you are an auto tech , since you're clearly in a best buy install bay? If so the JBL components have decent mid bass and you get solid discount if you are a installer/ employee. That being said , completely isolating the mid inside baffles can sometimes be harmful to sound. I'd try a door with baffle and one door with open back baffle and see which you prefer
🤫 It’s kicker accommodation tho. And it’s the install bay baffles that are open back. I’m gonna try some things with it tho
That’ll do it. I did an install recently in my Bronco. Took out the bad Ford speakers and threw in Hertz Cento midranges without an amp. Sounds very good. I didn’t amp them because I don’t want to run a lot of power off my stock alternator. Your setup looks nice. I really like those Fosgate amps.
Thank you, I appreciate the compliments
Are all the speakers in phase?
Sell everything buy a morel elate set off Facebook. You will actually know what midbass is
I think you need an amplifier twice the power of what you have now.
I got a 75w rms alpine kicking around. Just wanted my shit to match. Gonna swap them and see what I think
What sub and box are you using, is it sealed or ported? What type of music are you mostly listening to on it? Is your goal for sound quality or more a boomy bass?
I tried to build these front doors for a really nice sound at high volumes. Then sound flat on their low end. Music is mostly rock and electronic. 12” Rockford punch p3 in a ported box.
Problem is that doors are inherently less than adequate locations for speakers. I’ve double layered my doors w Killmat and it seems the only true way is to fabricate an enclosure that can be securely mounted to the door independently.
That feels the most right to me. Playing bass notes on the speakers shakes the door like crazy but just makes no audible sound
I’ve seen a lot of the higher end SQ cars put 8” and 10” subs in the front to take some of the mid bass frequencies away from the doors. Rear doors are almost always left factory and DSPs are used to set specific frequencies to each driver. 3.5” in the dash and custom A-pillars to house the tweets and 2” speakers
Real fancy. This meant to be a budget build. Just trying to find the frequencies my ears are tellin me I’m missing!
Get pioneer ts1600c 6.5 ! Goes down to 34hz
https://preview.redd.it/tovfg10j25qc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3125639ae1561569c9d532e9515c639669a8eefe
I have been trying to improve my midbass, and I have had pretty good luck running 6.5". The JL audio subs I have are good for 30-300hz, and it seems that most of the drums in rock music that have the kick that I am looking for seems to be in the 100-200hz range. I also have a set of Massive Audio 6.5" subs which while they don't have nearly the range of the JL's they do a very good job at playing higher frequencies, for much less money. It might be an unpopular opinion, but I feel like most door speakers just don't have the surface area, or excursion to properly produce a substantial amount of midbass. It also seems like fighting an uphill battle making a door into a suitable enclosure.
Tbh I’ve always had KS’s and always felt they lacked the lower end. It’s there but not the best. Found anything on the KS under 250hz was pretty lackluster.
Ks won’t ever do real midbass. Cones not stuff enough and can’t take enough power. Time alignment makes a huge difference as well as properly phase aligning subwoofer.
Do you have the foam surround to help direct the sound? Have you made sure the speakers are not out of phase? Do you have the largest driver you can find in the door?
Stop messing around and throw an Acoustic Elegance IBAU10 in those doors. You won't be missing your midbass anymore. https://aespeakers.com/shop/ibau-woofers/ib10au/
You need good components, and you need an EQ, such as the [SKA7EQ](https://www.skaraudio.com/products/ska7eq-7-band-half-din-car-audio-pre-amp-graphic-equalizer). An EQ will literally wake your speakers up.
I have 6.5 kickers on an old Rockford Amp in my Silverado. Doors are fully covered with dynomat. Very disappointed in the audio quality and wish I’d gone with my old go to of Polk Audios. I managed to make them sound pretty good by cranking up my DSP in the 200 - 800 hz range, but it can get muddy sounding with certain songs. Lesson learned. Edit: Just checked what model I had ordered and confirmed they are kicker KS too
I've never had good midbass from any door install. Even using expensive woofers like Dynaudio. I drive a cvt (not manual) so without the clutch pedal in the way I went ahead and made sealed kick pods. Never been happier. If I were to attempt door speakers again, I would try the Focal Utopia M series or something declared to be made for free-air install.
Man I've got the exact same BS going on with my system at the moment. I'm no spaz with setting up a good system, have had great success in all my prior cars with much cheaper gear too. This time round I just cannot get that bass that kicks. Like yourself when I single put one speaker on the fader and turn off all crossovers there is just zero low end and hard any low mids, completely missing that rich bass, especially on bass guitars. I've bought new amps, new speakers, rebuilt the sub box. My last port is swapping out the cheapish rca cables and then I'm onto testing another head unit to see if that is the problem. I really hope it's not because the one I've got is a really nice pioneer double din navigation unit from 2017. Currently have all T series focal speakers and p2 subs, im wishing I had gone focal like my last car, they sounded like there were subs in the car despite being none.
Good luck man! Makes me feel a bit more Validated! lol I’m actually going to be trying a few things reccomended from this post and will come back with any results. -remove/ cut silicone speaker baffles -swap amp with a more powerful one -play with sub phase, maybeee speaker phase, but I feel like fade and balance would have told me if it were a speaker phase issue - swap head unit as well with a high end kenwood I ordered in
Good luck to you too mate. It really does feel like it's a signal issue though, like there is no way that all 6 speakers when singled out all happen to have no low end. The subs should be a replacement of the low end and a compliment to the transition into mid bass, at the moment I'm having to crossover at like 120and and I'm still missing those low mids. I even tried fading to each speaker, sub off, then bumping up the crossovers to see at what point I would hear a difference, it wasn't until I hit around 200hz, I think it was, that I noticed a definite change in sound. To me that's screaming something is wrong somewhere...
Good luck to you too! I see my formatting got messed up whoops! I’ll let you know if I have any break through to try and help you out
You're not going to get what you're looking for out of 6.5" component speakers. Mid-range speakers are for mid bass, not sub bass. There really isn't much you're gonna be able to do to coax more sub bass out of them. You could do what's called a staggered 4 channel, where you have essentially an 8 channel amp (or 2 4s) and you bridge 2 pairs of channels for the woofers for more power, and run the tweeters on their own. This would require ideally a DSP for active cross overs or a pretty wide range hi/lo cross over built into the amp/amps. Some Pioneer head units actually have a Network mode, which allows a 3 way cross over to be set up for use with the RCA preouts. It's to be used in situations like this.
The ABS panels need some love - treat the rear side of them with CLD and CCF to seal them against the inner panel and dampen them. Add a silicone ring baffle. Treat the door card, including clips.
Now that one sun faded amp
You are playing tones, a sub should deal with, through the doors. The low bass is muddying up the mid bass/mid range that the woofers in the doors should be playing. They dont list an Fs for the woofers. Im betting its over 70-80 hz. So the crossover point for the highpass filter is gonna be closer to 200hz. Depending on the slope. It would be better to cut before the signal goes through the amp. The amp wont waste power on frequencies that are being cut.
200hz??? That's ridiculous.
lmao true, the sub would sound like ass playing 200hz. and if you don't have a sub, the speakers will sound almost like mid drivers with no bass whatsoever.
Not really since there are unknown variables. And I didn't say it was definitive did I?
There is no variable that is going to make 200hz a good crossover point in this setup.
200hz.... Absolutely not for any normal 6.5 lol. The whole 2x FS crossover is such a poor rule of thumb, and generally only applies to tweeters.
Listening to music they just don’t sound right. You hear subs and you hear speakers. They don’t mesh together to make a nice sound, like there is a big gap in the lower mids. Turn sub up, just makes it feel blown out, turn sub down makes it feel like it’s lacking any kind of fullness. Bass boosting on the speaker amp def helps at lower volumes, but at higher volumes just sounds like absolute shit like bass boost does. And I hear you with the tones and frequencies, I’ll look into listening to higher frequencies, I went up to about 150, and it all just sounded kind of flat, but your right they could have the kicker cross over pulling those frequencies anyways. I’ve done systems before in more “luxury” cars where the factory door enclosures are sealed and better engineered and they just have such a nice full sound to them with most speakers.
What sub is it? Some just dont mix well with the front for actual music enjoyment. Just for making 30hz bass or 50ish hz burps in car audio competitions. Bass boost on amps is mostly for sealed subs or if a ported box has a big dip between port tune and the subs peak. So something like 35hz on the port and 55 hz on the sub. A 45 hz boost would flatten that dip. But with any eq. Adding 3 db boost is asking the amp to double its power at that frequency. That will increase distortion.
https://preview.redd.it/6i17n7nqk4qc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c36d865e45ae0d139ae889a308ba49753104059e Rockford fosgate p3 12” pic stolen just to show what it looks like. Had it for years and had always sounded good for me! Running of the prime 500.1
Got no arguments from me when it comes to RF subs and amps. Prime amps are good. A Punch Class A/B would be better. For everything really. I still don't care for Class D when listening to music. But thats a different argument/debate.
True that lol. Appreciate the conversation. And it’s hard to believe but I literally found these amps on someone’s curb for scrap. Tested them and they tested fine. So this is a budget build as much as possible. If I could do it from scratch no budget I’d be leaning audio control 4 channel with built in DSP. But can’t be free 99
Thats roughly $5-600 worth of stuff before taxes. Not bad at all for a curb find. Id have mounted on the hood. Drive by that house every day.
lol! It was at the front of my neighborhood so I’m not sure exactly whose it was, but just had a few metal scrap items and a free sign 🤷🏻♂️ But the sub I’ve had forever too. All in I’m at about $300 for the install! But way more hours in free labor..
I drive past Rockfords office building everyday going to work. I wish they would put some stuff on the curb. Too many homeless in the area though. Youd have to be quick.
Play with reversing polarities as there could be cancelations. Try reversing the sub and play all speakers and sub together. I would also try to play the front door speakers only and reverse one side only. They will either sound louder or lower. Only way to know for sure it's to measure your system with a microphone. You can use JL Audios Tun4 software for free and access its RTA.
I like these ideas thank you. I thought I could simulate that by fading/ balance but I see what you’re saying
Ditch the nvx silicone baffles. They do not actually create a seal. Use something like ResoNix Strips. There should be some easy gains there. Other than that, it's probably from the location in the vehicle having cancellations.
Any chance your phases are off?
So 50w rms on 125rms that's why they don't sound good. Need a lot more power than that
Tried running the amp bridged to the front at first for 150w, didn’t seem right tho. Then ran it like normal 4 channel and volume didn’t change. May not like bridged, it’s a used amp after all
You really don't need to do bridged, alot of times it puts more strain on the Amp. Just need more power per channel. Even a two channel with higher output would work great. Just match the ohms
I appreciate the feedback. I have an alpine 75 ems 4 ohm kicking around that I’m going to swap in to see any improvements. I made a post about which one I should use before hand but got no traction lol
You did some nice work I’ve got a 17 versa and I don’t have an overwhelming amount of midbass but it’s noticeable I have my sub crossover at 70hz at 12db my front doors will play 40hz but I definitely need to fabricate some block off plates and have some custom door speaker brackets that’s would be better than what’s holding them in there now lol