Interior sound quality: Suggestions?

SandSanta · Oct 16, 2006, 09:10 AM

I'm somewhat of an audiophile when it comes to my music and have been tweeking with car stereos for quite sometime now. When I bought my evo, I figured that I'd accept that the car wasn obviously not going to be a decent soundstage and be content with the mechanical music I created on track days. Life I reasoned, would be ok without rich music while driving.

Well, by some chance my front left speaker shorted out and I made the colossal mistake of using the "well since I'm going to be in there anyway" and replaced my front speakers with a pair of polk DB6500 components and threw in a pair of sony xplod (dont ask) v-whogivesa**** I had lying around. I figured with new tweeters and door mount midrange woofers, I'd be able to have the sound imaging projected a bit ahead of me, towards the center of the dash.

As it turns out, the xplods are overpowering the polks up front and I constantly feel as if the music is originating from behind my head. Now I'm definitely going to yank the xplods out of there and replace em with DB6500's for the rear as well and may even have those driven by the HU instead of an amp but my question is this:

Have any of you guys noticed any sound imaging problems with the stock placement of speaker holds? It seems as if having the tweeters up by the A pillar wouldn't be as efficient as having them in the door panel, a foot above the woofer.

Pure Playaer · Oct 16, 2006, 09:12 AM

haha get n intake n exhaust and listen to your car, i.e. the turbo spool

instead of the stereo

just a suggestion lolol

SandSanta · Oct 16, 2006, 09:32 AM

Yea I'll be sure to add a BOV and pshwwwweeee every ten minutes.

...
<3 =)

macnewma · Oct 18, 2006, 10:29 AM

Well, nothing about the evo's audio is ideal. You could go to great lengths to get great imagine and sounstage. If you don't want do that, just adjust the fader on your head unit so the rear doesn't overpower the fronts.

SandSanta · Oct 18, 2006, 02:00 PM

Yea I just disconnected the rears. I have bigger issues with rattles and creaks then imaging at this moment.

DontRevMe · Oct 18, 2006, 03:52 PM

There is nothing wrong with the EVO's potential to create a nice sound stage. I dont see the issue.

BillAce · Oct 18, 2006, 04:40 PM

I run 6.5" in the kicks and tweeters in the pillars and really do have good height, depth and imaging. I've literally spent 10 minutes tuning and it is pretty solid. The 2 main problems in a car are the midbass location, they should be as far as possible from the listening position and tweeter positioning to prevent bias to one side. I have measured arrival times for many 3 way systems with a door mounted midbass, and a midrange the kicks and the tweeter mounted in the kick or pillar. In every case the longest arrival time is the midbass in the passenger door. Even though it is physically closer than the other speakers on that side. Phase can help this in a 3 way system but is not as effective in a 2 way setup. This is because the speakers are slower to react to signal, the door is a poor enclosure, the baffle is weak and resonates under pressure and cancellation due to the wavelength of the midrange frequencies and obstacles in the door location. Ditch the rear speakers and mount the front speakers in a better location if you really want some improvement.