woreyah

Hey fellas,
I'm fishin' for ideas on where to put my Kicker 8" mid-bass drivers, other than custom kick panels. One idea is to place them under the front seats in small enclosures. Another idea is to place one or both of them in a flat enclosure on the passenger side against the firewall. Any ideas or comments?

max'n out

If your using them as midbass' then you want um upfront...So the best bet is probley the door if you woun't do kicks. under the dash ain't gonna work.

woreyah

Can't do it, I'm putting my Alpine Type-Rs in the doors. I'm thinking about putting them in an enclosures firing upwards in front of the front seats. I know it might look ugly though.

max'n out

Build them in the floor.

woreyah

What do you mean?

max'n out

Cut the floor build the enclosure beneath it, mount the 8, then put a grill on it.

woreyah

Ok. now I'm going to show my ignorance. Are you talkin' cutting through metal? Down to where I can see the ground through my floor?

max'n out

yeh...the floor boar, where your feet go. anywhere within there that works.

jmax

Put the Alpines in the kick panels. Put the eights either close by or in the doors.

woreyah

I think I've decided. I plan to place both 8s in one small, flat enclosure. I will place it as far as possible from the passenger seat on the floor. I'm using an Alpine CDA-9813 HU, so I plan to use time correction to fix the positioning.

jmax

All the bass will sound as though it is coming from "in front of the passenger seat." Not something I would want in my car.

woreyah

I'm a big person(6'3", 260). Right now my left leg almost completely blocks the 6.5 in the door so most of the music sounds like its coming from the passenger side anyway. I'm hoping to tune the crossovers and slopes to point where the mid-bass isn't localized. If I were to put an 8" on the driver side I would have to actually step out of the car to hear it.

jmax

Placement is key. Be creative. You'd be surprised of the places you have that will work better.

woreyah

Check this install out. http://caraudio.primediaautomotive.c...atures02.shtml

Bass up front on the passenger side...

max'n out

Im not small either also 6'3", the best simplest cheapest way to do it, would be to mount the 8" in the door, the the mid in the kick recessed. I promise you if you just start tosing things in like you looking at, it's just not gonna work. You can have the balanced sound.

The only other thing i'd suggest, is to lose the 8"s up front and run only one mid on eachside in each door.

Or build the door to fit the 8" and other mid.

woreyah

Well I hate to say it but Tuesday when I go to my installer I may leave out the 8s for now. Of course I'm almost certain I'm going to miss the high bass notes(90hz-250hz), 6.5s just can't handle it.

Part of the reason why I don't want custom kicks is my installer wants my car for 2 weeks! Grant it, I do walk to work, but I've been feigning for some good sound since I bought this car.

I tell you, I can pop in a hip hop or dancehall reggae cd in some people's 'systems' and the sub-bass is deep(not really defined but deep), tweets nice and clear, even the vocals sound pretty good, but that mid-bass, , if you listen closely you're only hearing the lower end of most bass notes. That sucks!
That's what I'm trying to avoid.

max'n out

If you not getting good mid bass outta 6.5's then you need to do somthing with the enclosure or, stop messin with crapy mids, theres no reason a good mid cant reproduce mid bass acuratly and tightly, I among many others use 6.5's and can get great mid bass outta them. Maybe you should look into adding an eq.

woreyah

Well this time around I have a MUCH better HU(Alpine CDA 9813). In the beginning I was duped by flashiness and color(Panasonic HUs) but now I have one with some advanced features.

I hear what you're sayin' about crappy 6.5's, and I've heard that before but I just can't see how a 6.5 can produce that 'mind numbing' midbass I'm looking for.

But I will make sure to ask about the enclosure. Let me ask you, will a 6.5 in a small enclosure fit in the door w/o extensive cutting?

max'n out

Hu is a start but not the finish.

6.5 can produce tremedous mid bass, provided it's in the right envorment it likes, and has the power. Wheather or not it fits is going to depend on many things. the 6" the enclosure, the material, and the installer. But if done right yeah easy. what i'm saying is if it don't it's the installer.

I think the best thing if you really feel you need an 8 and a 6 and you will not get kicks, is to invest some money into doing the doors, with a 8" and a 5. Maybe that would be teh best way to go.

As far as cutting goes, well I guess it depends on your idea of extensive, and wheather or not you car whats covered up, and how stock you want it to be when done. Or if you want it to go back to stock.

woreyah

Power. I'm using a Phoenix Gold Titanium 500.4(75WattsX4) for the components. Is bridging possible? Anyway, the amp produces 250X2 bridged which I think may be too much for 6.5 Alpine Type-Rs. They're rated at 200peak 50RMS. Do you think that's too much power?

Whitemax

You might want to look at using Kicker 6.5 free air subs for the mid bass if your looking for good midbass, and you're not using subs. But no 8 is going to produce Mindnumbing bass. I have a pair of Dynaudio 7" components up front in semi-aperiodic enclosures in the doors, with a JL stealthbox and I dont get mindnumbing bass. The midbass is the best money can buy without using an eq, and the sub bass is deep and tight, but I wont win any SPL contests with it.Only other idea I might have is somehow turning the center console into a sub enclosure, and using an 8" sub in it. I just dont know if you can get a speaker magnet near the Airbag computer....

Kojiro_FtT

Well, if you really have your heart set on using those 8" mid-bass, why not put them in the rear doors? That would work nicely, and they won't interfere with the window. Just gotta cut slightly larger holes in the rear doors. Decent positioning, no loss of passenger legroom, problem solved.

Kojiro_FtT

No that's not too much power. Better to have too much power than too little. Too little will ruin your speakers much faster. However, I doubt you will really get 250x2 from bridging a 75x4; that's not a real world number.

Another thing to think about, you may want to consider bi-amping your components anyways; if you are a mid-bass fan, you will want more control over the gain between the tweeters and the 6.5's.

max'n out

Your power level is fine, don't buy into the idea that you need 1000000 watts. PG's stuff is fine. I run 50 watts to every speaker outta the Zapco amps. Bidging is only gonna be possible if you sum the speakers (mono) you would lose the stereo affect...I wounldn't do it. I woun't bridge it at all.

I agree with the dynaudio suggestion their speaks are nice. Very capbalbe of playing down to around 50hz nicely. Anything below that you will need a dedicated sub.

woreyah

Oooo, I never considered bi-amping. Correct me if I'm wrong, could I use my 4 channel amp, set the rear to high pass, use the front channels to power the tweets and the rear channels power the mids?

Also, I asked my installer earlier about installing the 8s in the rear doors, he dismissed it right away saying the hole is too small. I think he feels that I'm a little conservative and don't want extensive cutting.

woreyah

Good point, I didn't know that about bridging. I'll scrap that idea.

woreyah

Oh I didn't mention my sub, it's going to be the Phoenix Gold Elite 12 powered by my Rockford bd1000 until I can replace it with a PG mono. It should be here today(according to UPS tracking). My 80Hz< response should be good.

Kojiro_FtT

Yes. You still want to use the cross-over if you can, but also use the high/low pass filters at the amp to save power. When bi-amping, if you sent a 75x2 watt signal unfiltered to the cross-over, estimate that half of each 75 watts gets burned off by the cross-over. But filtering at the amp, all 75 watts are available for the appropriate speaker's frequencies. You don't have to worry about all that when doing conventional wiring with cross-overs because the cross-over splits the signal instead of filtering it, and minimal power is lost in the cross-over.

This is all assuming that your Alpine cross-overs allow for bi-amping; might wanna check the user manual. Usually there is a jumper or wire to cut if you want to bi-amp, and obviously an extra set of terminals for the extra channel input. I hope I explained all that clearly...

EDIT: Ignore all that; just looked on the Alpine website and I count only 6 wire terminals on the cross-over; they won't support bi-amping. So you will have to skip them if you bi-amp and use the amps hp/lp filters.

NOTE: Max'n Out's comment about bridging the amp was assuming you were planning on using the amp to power all four speakers, front and rear. I'm assuming you are using that amp for the front components only.

woreyah

I realize placing the 8s in the rear doors is not the best but I might talk to him about it again. My first goal is to try to get the best performance from the 6.5s.

max'n out

You got the idea with getting all you can outta the 6.5's, but if you mount the8"s in the rear it's likely all the midbass will stay back there.

woreyah

No matter where I put the 8s, I'm hoping they don't sound isolated. I'm hoping good tuning will help that.

jmax

With the PG amp you can set one pair of channels to bandpass and the other to high pass. No passive filter will be needed. The power loss in passive crossovers is not 50%. Closer to 5-10%, not audibly different. Just be sure to set the frequencies correctly. Being able to set up the on board crossover for bandpass to one pair of channels and high/low pass to the other is the one great benefit of that amp. And you can do this with a single pair of RCA inputs.

I agree that having the midbass in the rear doors only will pull the sub bass image to the rear. It's not real bad with a high quality SQ sub. But with an average sub it's obvious.

woreyah

Good point, I knew that. Scary thing is, the shop I go to sells PG but didn't know I could set the rears to bandpass.
If I do install the 8s in the rears I'm going to mute'em to get the 6.5s right. I'll listen to various tracks and listen for those gaps or weak spots that I've experienced in the past. When it comes to setting the high pass, that'll depend on what Alpine recommends and at what point I think the 6.5 is being pushed to hard(or too low).

jmax

Heck, I didn't know it until I had a 475 for about a year. I finally read the manual - Go figure.

woreyah

The Phoenix Elite 12" sub just came in today. I got pics and I'll try to post tomorrow to show you guys how massive this thing is. I can't imagine why someone would want two in their trunk.

jmax

So they can have twice as much bass as you!

woreyah

riigghhtt. Hey, if any of you guys have a write up on how to fix rattles can you post the link. From what I read on the .org I'll be spending time doing that.

jmax

Other than the basic dampening material stuff it is difficult to do a write up for individual cars. As even two maxima's may have drastically different internal layout of speakers, amps, people, etc. Go to any of the big name dampening company web sites for what they advise. Beyond that you will need to play it by ear. Below are a few web sites with decent to excellent info:

http://cascadeaudio.com/
http://www.soundown.com/
http://dynamat.com/


There are more out there if you need.

woreyah

My system has been installed for about 2 months now. Everyone, thanks for the input. Pics are a low priority since the install was basic. I will post pics of the radio and tweeter install. The custom tweeter location looks very clean.

After several hours spread out across a few weeks tweaking the HU and amp crossover settings I finally have the sound at a decent quality.

Here are a couple of notes:
1. Alpine Type-R tweeters sound very good, not too tingy, sharp and clear.
2. The 6.5s produce decent mid-bass but could use a lllliiiittttle help from the 8 inch mid-bass drivers I installed. The 6.5s support vocals well.
3. The 8 inch mid bass drivers in the rear doors still need tweaking
a. I'm having problems getting the crossover set using my amps bandpass feature.
b. The speakers are pushed beyond the limit(distortion) on heavy bass tracks.
c. Because of the speaker position, I can't really hear them.
4. My sub amp(RF bd1000a) gain is at 100% and my sub, after break-in sounds good! But something is wrong with this picture, my gain shouldn't have to be that high just to get good bass. Any ideas? The installer insists that everything is set up correctly and that the amp is just not powerful enough. Someone suggested that I may not be getting enough voltage to the amp.

5. The rear deck rattle is not that bad(yet) and the spoiler only rattles slightly on the heaviest bass.

Other than that I love my new system.

woreyah

Correction, it's only been a month.