[Closed] Car Audio - basic questions about setup...

So you haven't got any tweeters at all at the moment?

I found that tweeters like to be able to interact with each other, so raising them on pods out of the dash, or (as I did), mount them facing each other in the doors, works well. This was with Focal tweeters.
The doors have the advantage of being easy to gain access and cut holes in.
Having them facing each other this way, makes the sound come from higher up the car - something which is hard to achieve.

I can't really see any advantage in having another pair of midrange units in the car - would probably make it sound worse, if all you're worried about is the main driving position.

HTH

No, just some JBL mids, or something. By tuning the freq at the amp end, I've got the sub doing the low freqs and the front speakers doing mid and upwards.

It's possible your JBLs have tweeters in the centre of them. I'd be surprised if you could listen to it at all without something there.

I had some Boston Acoustics mid range units & tweeters.

Tweeters on the dash (they had a base that enabled you to perfect the positioning), mid units in doors all powered by an Alpine 6CH amp that also powered some Infinity 6x9s on the rear shelf. Sounded amazing!

Those were the days driving around in my MK1 Golf GTI with the Prodigy blasting out!

It's been at least 5 years since I installed the stuff (carpet up, power line down one side, speaker cable down the other..), so I can't remember the model of the speakers.

The JBLs seem to do a reasonable job of both high and mid freq, so they must be a combined model?

Computers is my thing, not audio!

This is the same dash as I have (nothing currently in the dash mounted speaker holes). IIRC, underneath the grills, there are small mounts for tweeters.

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As above, tweeters are all you really need. Although you say it doesn't have the range you want. Which bit of the range is missing?

Xiphon....Single wiper on a Mk3 Golf??

Sorry - not my pic! Found it on Google, as it's the same dash as mine.

Sounds like a pair of tweeters is what I need, mounted underneath the dash grills.

Next question - can I wire in the tweeters to the same terminals as the mids at the amp end (do they auto-magically filter out the mid/low freqs?) or do I need to somehow split the audio signal?

Cheers for your help everybody, much appreciated 🙂

EDIT: What range is missing?

Well, the amp only does a so-so job of getting the right balance between mid and highs, without either sounding flat or 'tinny'. The config for bassy music doesn't work particularly well with, say, classical (yes... lol... classical music) or metal.

You can do that, but you'd be better off with some crossovers. They'll split the signal and feed the mid-range to the door speakers and treble to the tweeters.

Crossover - that's the word I was looking for.

So the crossovers terminate just before the speaker end, and feed off extra wires to the tweeters?

IIRC I just have the bog-standard 'spade' type connectors at the mo.

That's what I'd do. Need to get the correct crossover though. A lot tend to be just bass/everything else. I got some included with a mid-range/tweeter speaker bundle I bought once, but never used them. I'll see if I can find them.

Just found them. They're yours if you want them.

Cheers - can you shoot me an email - it's in my profile 🙂

This car audio malarky makes computers look easy... well to me anyway 😯

The Flying Ox - ta very much.

Will report back 🙂

i learnt a long time ago a very expensive lesson that with car audio less is more.

I spent a small fortune (an entire years student loan) making my car quite loud had 6 speakers, a sub, 2 amps, 6 channel active crossover and remote control. my mate bought a reasonable headunit and a decent pair of speakers and the sound quality was 10x better than mine. gutted.

buy better quality stuff not more of it.

oh and building your own crossovers to tune the frequency is v. easy.

buy better quality stuff not more of it.

If I could afford a top-end Bose sound system, then I would.... but I can't...

I have a Kenwood iPod head unit, a rockford 10" sub, a mutant 4-ch amp (which does it's job fine), and a pair of JBL hybrid mid/tweeter speakers.

Most likely, I'll pick up some good value tweeters and wire them in through crossovers.

I'm sure it will be good enough for me.

1 x 4-ch amp, 2 x 6x6" speakers (in front doors), and 1 x 10" sub.

So you mean a 6" circular speaker? or do you mean 6x9" speaker? 6x9's are terrible quality, get yourself a decent set of component speakers (circular) upfront, and a decent quality amp to power them, even an old 2nd hand Phoenix Gold would be much better.

6" circular speakers, not 6"x9".

Had to bodge them a bit, to fit in the doors... but they work.

buy better quality stuff not more of it.

This is true to a larger extent. In all my years of car audio I have found that 20% equipment, 80% installation, is a good rule of thumb.

You can have £1500 worth of component speakers but they will still sound like crap if poorly installed.

buy better quality stuff not more of it.

I had speakers in the rear, in the parcel shelf, sub in the boot and and component speakers up front. I ditched the rear speakers, leaving the components upfront and sub in the boot, with a little bit of fine tuning they sounds miles better than before all running off one amp. The sound stage sounded perfect when sat in the drivers seat, not so good anywhere else, but still miles better than before.

It's a lot easier to setup 2 speakers than 4 or more. 😉