just some minor suggestions . . .
In the 13 years I've been installing (early full time, now just for friends, etc...) it has been my experience that ANYWHERE you put speakers in a car it is a compromise.
- Rather redundant. An automotive cabin will never equal the acoustical environment of a recording studio, an anechoic chamber or a Dolby 5.1/THX designed theatre layout. The name of the game is to "simulate" those environments as best as possible given the type of vehicle and the type of install.
- Until which time we can all afford to have the movie's orchestra, or the live band play for us live in our living rooms, there will always be compromise between what is real and what is a reproduction.
Nothing you can do can simulate you sitting in a room in your house with the speakers equally seperated aimed directly at you (with a beer in your hand).
- That beer can is what totally screws up the path lengths
With that said, yes the dash locations have a weakness, the glass. But the components have them as well. With putting the midbass and tweeters way down by your feet do you honestly believe that the sound is not getting altered.
- Pathlengths are the primarly construction goal when designing a front stage. The mid-range drivers are what do most of the work setting up the "stage" height and width, followed by the tweeters (off-axis response varies depending on tweeter design), then the mid-bass and lastly sub-bass. Unless you build a custom dash, coated everything with fabric, sound absorption material and/or deadener you will always have reflections, and slight resonances not matter what you do.
-
from termpro.com:
Here is what you do. Start with all your wires ran. Then just have your mids play. No subs or highs, just mids. The little secret is that if you can image with your mids you are on your way to an awesome sounding car. Play with the angles of the mids and use the 7 beat drum track on the iasca disc or the 3 spoken voices track. You are looking for defined images, definite left, center, and right.
Dont be afraid to flip the phase on either mid to see if that helps imaging. Once you have something that you like, secure the angle of the speaker somehow and now add the tweeter to the mix.
Play with the angles once again and get everything in line, mid imaging lines up with highs imaging.
I hope this helps, this is the technique I used and it paid off. Believe me!
jay jensen
2001 iasca world champion
2001 rookie of the year
roc_jj@yahoo.com
- The kick-panel area of the majority of vehicles out there provide the best pathlength ratio compared to ANY other area in the car sans building a custon dash. Measure for your self the distance between your ears and each respective upper-dash speaker location and then the kick panel locations. I will bet you that the kick-panel locations have a pathlength difference from left to right of less than 6". (I've measured it myself in both my Monte SS's and now my Regal)
Especially the drivers side with the steering wheel directly in the way. I know on mine, to see the drivers side speakers, I have to lean over just to see them so you know the sound is not directly hitting your ears. It is bouncing off your pants, steering wheel, under dash, etc. before it even gets to your ears.
- The steering wheel is hardly a proven inhibitor to the car's sound system. You ever see any competition vehicles without steering wheels? As for your clothing, off-axis response and good aiming/mounting helps address that ... in some competition vehicles they move the front seats back to make more room for the front staging and "clearer" pathlengths for the mid-range (check Tim Baille's Regal
http://www.hzemall.com/).
- It doesn't matter if your eye balls "see" the speaker(s), your ears are what are important.
Upon trying both scenarios in the TTA I found what works best is a combination of the kick panel components and dash speakers. Both running full range with the dash speakers attenuated a little.
- Maybe you could contact Mike Lacher (Formula Firehawk #448 of 741, Future IASCA 1-600 Pro Street Competitor) and check out what he does for F-Bodies:
http://www.djsexay.com/ By the way, I think he can also make nice and sturdy fiberglass repros of G-Body stock kick-panels for you to build your custom kick-pods on. I have to send him some pics of mine to make sure.
- I also
highly, highly super
incredably suggest and recommend reading the articles on Audionutz site
. He goes into depth about how a SQ system is judged, how he sets his up and what to look for and how the acoustics of a vehicle effect car audio sound - excellent, professional reading. Goto either
www.audionutz.com or directly to the install guides at:
http://www.audionutz.com/guide.htm Oh, and look at the two installs he has featured ... nice ... to bad we can't hear/experience them over the web
- Just a suggestion
