trying to setup a small LIGHT system in my mkIII. 1 sub, 1 amp,2 6x9 and head unit. now I don't know much about systems exept I like them loud. is it possible for me to setup a nice single sub spl system? and how do I go about doing so, other than just pulling out the check book? also are bass tubes crap? they look like it.
single sub setups
- Thread starter madseacow
- Start date
my setup consists of:
-2 rockford fosgate 150w 2 way(directional tweeters)6.5's custom mounted in the doors
-two pioneer 350w 4 way 6.9's in custom boxes in the rear of the hatch
-a damn fine pioneer head unit (cost over $500, cant remember the model #)
-a crappy radioshack amp that i got for free driving a 10" sub custom mounted under the carpet into the spare tire well.
hopefully jeff lange will post pics of his setup. its clean and well done. i have no pics of mine yet...
dr. jonez uses a bass tube and he seems to like it. if i had come across one i'd have gotten it, but instead i got over 50% discount on my sub because my friend works at best buy.
-shaeff
-2 rockford fosgate 150w 2 way(directional tweeters)6.5's custom mounted in the doors
-two pioneer 350w 4 way 6.9's in custom boxes in the rear of the hatch
-a damn fine pioneer head unit (cost over $500, cant remember the model #)
-a crappy radioshack amp that i got for free driving a 10" sub custom mounted under the carpet into the spare tire well.
hopefully jeff lange will post pics of his setup. its clean and well done. i have no pics of mine yet...
dr. jonez uses a bass tube and he seems to like it. if i had come across one i'd have gotten it, but instead i got over 50% discount on my sub because my friend works at best buy.
-shaeff
Single subs can work just fine. Generally you'll either need a fair bit of airspace in your sub enclosure OR a lot of power to drive it. Give it both and it will be LOUD. A single 10 or 12 in an enclosure that uses the spare tire well and the hatch up to where your targa bolts in, with a good amp powering it, is fully capable of cracking your hatch glass if you buy high enough on the stereo food chain.
I'm not a fan of 6x9 speakers. IMHO they distort the sound because they aren't round. I'd rather mount good 5.25 inch speakers and give them some more power.
I run 5.25 JL audio co-axials with outboard crossovers in the doors and rear seat locations, plus a pair of old MTX black gold 10inch subs in the rear. It will make the hair on your arms move. It's not hard to breathe yet, that would require something with some more SPL, like 10s with a much longer throw, or 3 12s perhaps.
I'm not a fan of 6x9 speakers. IMHO they distort the sound because they aren't round. I'd rather mount good 5.25 inch speakers and give them some more power.
I run 5.25 JL audio co-axials with outboard crossovers in the doors and rear seat locations, plus a pair of old MTX black gold 10inch subs in the rear. It will make the hair on your arms move. It's not hard to breathe yet, that would require something with some more SPL, like 10s with a much longer throw, or 3 12s perhaps.
I had the problem of finding space in the rear for 2 12's and the targa top. Had some good ideas,but none were good enough. So I decided to take out the rear bottom seat being as NO American round eye could possibly fit back ther for more than 5 minutes. I removed the rear bottom seat,made a custom fit enclosure,and set 2 Audiobahn 12's back there for some serious rompin' bass!
I use stock speakers since it is still good and fairly loud if you turn the vol up high enough. I have a single 12" Momo in a box just big enough to fit the thing powered by a 850W max momo with 400rms at 4ohm but I don't think the 12" can hit that high on the rms. I also have two tweeter connected to the 200W old amp which also powered the front set. They are all running through external X-over. The deck I have is really old, it a freaking sony xplode that I got 5 yrs ago if u believe it. The sound and sub hit hard if the song has the bass for the amp to hit. I was gona replaced the front with Rockford component but decided not too and saved the the turbo upgrade/repair which I am gona be doing on sunday 
.
A dual 12" box might fit in the back if you remove the wood that is covering the spare tire and removed the tire to make that surface flat. I have a dual 12" box and it will only fit if I create that extra depth for the box. I used to have a single 10" box for my Type-R alpine that fit perfectly in the rear but it's now in my bro car. The box is now cut in two with 2/3 in his car and the 1/3 in my car housing the 12".
.A dual 12" box might fit in the back if you remove the wood that is covering the spare tire and removed the tire to make that surface flat. I have a dual 12" box and it will only fit if I create that extra depth for the box. I used to have a single 10" box for my Type-R alpine that fit perfectly in the rear but it's now in my bro car. The box is now cut in two with 2/3 in his car and the 1/3 in my car housing the 12".
fitting things in places ain't a problem. I've got a cutting wheel. how do I know how to match amps to speakers to enclosures to my car for the best out put. my neighbor just keeps telling me to make sure they are matched up, but what do I look for?
I'm running a JVC head, into a 444W explode amp and a 200WPrecision power amp thats driving 3 8" MTX subs in an enclosure, and two Sony 6x9's in their own enclosures on the back seats, and a Rampage 6 cd changer. I bought the car this way, and it sounds pretty good, BUT...I'm going to re-do it because 1). The sub enclosure is pretty heavy 2). Needs a crossover to clean it up some 3). The imaging is poor (sound is all behind me). 4). No room left in the hatch 5). If the kids ride with me, the 6x9's have to be moved, thats a pain. But I can't bitch when I only paid 2300 for the car and its solid, has the stereo and new tires. Just need to figure out how I want to do it with what I have!
Momo website has a table that give you an idea as to how big the box is for the setup that you want. They have spec for single 10" to dual 12" and maybe bigger sub, I am not sure since I haven't visit the site since I last installed my sub. For power wise I would just get an amp that can provide the max rms power for the speakers if you can get one, it is not important if your speaker make full use of it rms if you don't have the fund for it. Basically make sure the amp can provide the power the speakers need or you will overheat and overload the amp and it will go into safe mode and turn off.
Don't worry too much about the 'matching', despite what your neighbor thinks.
Most of the time, speakers are killed by not enough power, causing clipping, which makes for uncontrolled movement of the speaker cone, which will tear it apart.
Rarely, you can push too much power through a speaker, heating it up far enough that it will melt the coil and fry the speaker. This takes a TREMENDOUS amount of power to fry a halfway decent speaker. Very good speakers will wear out long before you can blow them up this way.
Smaller speakers (tweets) can be destroyed by excessive SPL (Sound Pressure Level)just because the wire leads in them are small and fragile enought that they cannot take the huge air movement that you get from bigger stereos.
As for matching, in today's world you can buy a bit higher than entry level components and trust that their power ratings will be somewhat reasonable. Get them reasonably close - a 500watt amp that runs two channels into 100watt speakers will work just as well as a perfectly matched set of 250w speakers.
Most of the time, speakers are killed by not enough power, causing clipping, which makes for uncontrolled movement of the speaker cone, which will tear it apart.
Rarely, you can push too much power through a speaker, heating it up far enough that it will melt the coil and fry the speaker. This takes a TREMENDOUS amount of power to fry a halfway decent speaker. Very good speakers will wear out long before you can blow them up this way.
Smaller speakers (tweets) can be destroyed by excessive SPL (Sound Pressure Level)just because the wire leads in them are small and fragile enought that they cannot take the huge air movement that you get from bigger stereos.
As for matching, in today's world you can buy a bit higher than entry level components and trust that their power ratings will be somewhat reasonable. Get them reasonably close - a 500watt amp that runs two channels into 100watt speakers will work just as well as a perfectly matched set of 250w speakers.
Adjuster
Supramania Contributor
Two sets of 4" componet speakers with tweeters mounted on the door panel, and rear speaker housings. (Crossovers under the seats, and rear cargo panel.)
Use one 5 channel MTX amp. (With a seperate remote control dial for the Sub.)
One 10 Diamond Mag Alloy sub in a custom box built to allow the Targa to still fit in place. (Box is at a slight angle, between where the targa top goes, and the rear seat backs.)
This setup will give you a headache in a hurry at full bass, and has excellent highs/mids etc. (Sounds fine to this old dude.)
Pretty low profile too as the tweeters are the only part you can see with the rear cargo cover in place.
Use one 5 channel MTX amp. (With a seperate remote control dial for the Sub.)
One 10 Diamond Mag Alloy sub in a custom box built to allow the Targa to still fit in place. (Box is at a slight angle, between where the targa top goes, and the rear seat backs.)
This setup will give you a headache in a hurry at full bass, and has excellent highs/mids etc. (Sounds fine to this old dude.)
Pretty low profile too as the tweeters are the only part you can see with the rear cargo cover in place.
So to those who have made custom boxes, how much space is between the spare cover and the targa holders?
I had a q-logic box that could fit a ten and allow for the targa to still fit. Infinity perfect 10" and a JBL 300.1 class d amp. Sounded really good.
Turbo. Targa. Life.
SupraMania Shirt Slinger!
Being the resident audiophile, I'm gonna have to tell you NOT to mount your tweets in your doors. You'll get the best sound stage if you mount them in kick panels along with your mids. Don't use rear speakers as they just muddy up the sound--after all, how many times have you ever been to a concert and had the players behind you?
I'd say just take out the back seat (as someone said above) and make yourself a nice big ported box. But bigger isn't always better. It's best to closely match your subs to the amount of air space they need to play in. Also, despite what Grim says, it's VERY easy to provide too much power to a speaker...trust me. I watched a guy blow a set of JL audio w6's, I've seen Alpine type R's blow, I've seen ALOT of stuff blow. Mostly because people try to run too low resistance to an amp that can't handle it. You should be fine though as long as you don't go TOO far overboard. I've been running my Infinity Kappa 12" Dual 4ohm voice coil sub (300w rms) on 500w RMS wired in parallel down to 2ohms for...well a long time and it plays GREAT...LOTS of bass
He is right about the clipping though, that will *** up a sub, or any speaker for that matter, REAL QUICK.
I'd say just take out the back seat (as someone said above) and make yourself a nice big ported box. But bigger isn't always better. It's best to closely match your subs to the amount of air space they need to play in. Also, despite what Grim says, it's VERY easy to provide too much power to a speaker...trust me. I watched a guy blow a set of JL audio w6's, I've seen Alpine type R's blow, I've seen ALOT of stuff blow. Mostly because people try to run too low resistance to an amp that can't handle it. You should be fine though as long as you don't go TOO far overboard. I've been running my Infinity Kappa 12" Dual 4ohm voice coil sub (300w rms) on 500w RMS wired in parallel down to 2ohms for...well a long time and it plays GREAT...LOTS of bass
He is right about the clipping though, that will *** up a sub, or any speaker for that matter, REAL QUICK.
Me too - though I have finally switched to a 'proper' front soundstage. Tweets in the doors works fine as long as you buy a head unit that can adjust speaker timing... but now we're getting into a whole new level of sound system.shaeff said:i happen to like the sound coming from behind me...
-shaeff
What's wrong with mounting the tweeters in the doors? I've got inverted dome-ferite cooled tweeters, in my doors (up towards the top of the inner door panel acrooss from the exterior mirror) midranges mounted in the dooor panel where the stock speakers were powered by a 1000 watt amp and 1 10" sub running 500 watts mono all using active crossovers and I've never had any complaints in fact it kick ass!
Ideally, you want all your speakers the same distance from your ears. Mounting them in the doors generally plays havoc with that idea.
Most people cannot hear the difference until someone points it out to them - usually in a vehicle with the capacity to adjust the timing on individual speakers.
Most people cannot hear the difference until someone points it out to them - usually in a vehicle with the capacity to adjust the timing on individual speakers.
Turbo. Targa. Life.
SupraMania Shirt Slinger!
You have a 1000w amp going to your components eh? Unless it's 1000w peak power, I think you need to try running that by me again. There isn't a set of components on the market that'll handle 1000w to them.
Grim is correct about the distance thing. I all of your speakers are the same distance, you don't get that effect of one speaker being louder than the other. Unfortunately, with the driver sitting off-center in the vehicle, this is nigh impossible to achieve without hacking up your vehicle.
This is where DTT or Digital Time Correction comes into play. This adjusts, in miliseconds, a delay between when the signal is sent to each individual speaker. While a mS may not sound like much time, it makes a HUGE difference.
Grim is correct about the distance thing. I all of your speakers are the same distance, you don't get that effect of one speaker being louder than the other. Unfortunately, with the driver sitting off-center in the vehicle, this is nigh impossible to achieve without hacking up your vehicle.
This is where DTT or Digital Time Correction comes into play. This adjusts, in miliseconds, a delay between when the signal is sent to each individual speaker. While a mS may not sound like much time, it makes a HUGE difference.
Check out DynAudio components, from Denmark. Heavy gauge aluminum voicecoils - and the coil on a 5 inch speaker is nearly 4 inches in diameter. I used these for nearly 15 years in my car, they just don't die. I've roasted just about every other brand of speaker - JBL, JL, Alpine, Kenwood, MTX, Jenson, Eclipse, and a bunch more that I can't think of off the top of my head.Turbo. Targa. Life. said:
Admittedly, the chances of someone here owning these and not knowing what they are is pretty small.