Aftermarket stereo thoughts

[funkle]

About 3 years ago, I did a complete replacement of my stereo. Basically, it is a 4.1 Audison system consisting of 6" mid/woofers in the kicks, 2" tweeters in doors, and a 10" sub in a box in the trunk. It does some things well, and initially, I liked it, But I'm liking it less and less. Now I'm to the point where I'm considering making some major changes, which seems crazy considering what I spent on it. It has amazing clarity, and deep bass. But it feels very disjointed, with no meat, and no sense of emersion. Everyone says the behind the seat speakers are not necessary, and all you need are the front soundstage speakers. But I'm starting to find fault in this logic. One of my best car audio experiences was my 330i with the HK system. Not necessarily a very high end system, but it just nailed it in terms of that immersive, visceral feeling. The lesson here is that while factory systems may not be the highest quality components, they can be designed & perfectly tuned to the specific car. Too bad the Z4M stereo was so sucky. I've come to the conclusion that what my current system lacks is that a) the mids lose a lot of definition because they are buried down by my feet. b) the system is totally front firing, so while more correct from a soundstage format, loses the sense of immersion that my 330i had. c) the trunk located sub hits down low, but doesn't have good mid-bass or integrate musically. I'm thinking that I'd really prefer to be wrapped in speakers, and to have the 6" subs firing right behind the seats, so even if they don't have the extension, they may have more impact due to closer proximity.

So my thinking now is to replace the 4.1 speakers with 10 speakers, in the original locations, and similar sizes, except the mids might become 3" rather than 4". This way I'd hopefully regain some of the emersion I'm missing. Also, I have a pretty loud exhaust, and I'm thinking some sound from the back would help overcome it. I'm considering adding dynamat as well. The Audison tweeters are accurate, but very harsh, so I'd need to ditch them as well, in favor of a warmer setup. My use of this car is primarily HPDEs. And I regularly spend 2 hours driving each way, so while I like the exhaust for the event, a little less drone on the highway would be nice. And while I can remove the sub for the event, it takes up too much of my trunk. Any thoughts on this?

[elerner61]

Here we go. My reference is what I installed in my car: OEM amp feeds a JBL MS-8, amp from the MS-8 feeds the tweets and a separate 5 channel amp feeds mids in the stock door locations, mid-bass in the kicks and two 6.5" subs in the stock sub locations. Nothing in the behind the seat locations.

I think you're missing what the mids in the doors bring to the party. Those mid-bass in the kicks are buried too deep and a lot of mid fill sound gets lost down there. Your sub in the trunk probably hits harder down low but you may be missing some warmth it could give if it was in the passenger compartment. Depends on the content you're playing. To me, the mids behind the seats just provide "noise" in my right ear. Maybe with the top up and the windows closed there would be some value to them but I spend so much time top down in this car (love those heated seats) so I just left them out of the equation.

In the end, this car is loud, and a convertible. Only so much you can do.

[funkle]

Originally Posted by elerner61

Here we go. My reference is what I installed in my car: OEM amp feeds a JBL MS-8, amp from the MS-8 feeds the tweets and a separate 5 channel amp feeds mids in the stock door locations, mid-bass in the kicks and two 6.5" subs in the stock sub locations. Nothing in the behind the seat locations.

I think you're missing what the mids in the doors bring to the party. Those mid-bass in the kicks are buried too deep and a lot of mid fill sound gets lost down there. Your sub in the trunk probably hits harder down low but you may be missing some warmth it could give if it was in the passenger compartment. Depends on the content you're playing. To me, the mids behind the seats just provide "noise" in my right ear. Maybe with the top up and the windows closed there would be some value to them but I spend so much time top down in this car (love those heated seats) so I just left them out of the equation.

In the end, this car is loud, and a convertible. Only so much you can do.

I know you posted on your system in the past, but did you replace your speakers? If so, with what?

I reached out about my issues on the diymobileaudio forum, and the consensus over there is that that the hardware is top notch and should provide excellent results, so it's most likely a tuning issue. One of the guys there with a lot of experience has offered to tune my system. I'm going to give that a try first. I had an autocross yesterday, and the drive there & back reminded me of just how painful this system is. I had a headache by the time I got there.

[elerner61]

I had a set of CDT 2-way separates that I had previously installed in my Miata that I leveraged (worked well there because both drivers are in the door, tons of space in those 2nd gen Miata doors). I picked up a pair of CDT mids that were complimentary and the JBL MS-8 handles all of the crossing. For the subs I used a pair of JL 6.5". The system sounds really nice about 90% of the time. The CDT drivers are by no means world class, but they sound good enough to me for the price point and they make a large variety of drivers to satisfy a variety of requirements.

[tominizer]

Install and tuning is everything. Even if you have incredibly good gear, if it's installed poorly and not tuned for the car, it's likely to not sound very good and provide a lot of disappointment. Will be interesting to hear how it goes after the DIYMA guy plays with it for a bit.