Hurin

Hi All,

I considered replacing my two blown door speakers in my 2000 Z28 ragtop myself via the instructions in this thread. However, I finally just broke down and took it to a local car audio shop. I had put it off too long and just wanted it done.

He put in Memphis speakers that have a filter built in for the tweeter, and he only used one of the wire pairs per speaker. He just bundled up the other pairs and tucked them in the door. If I understand things correctly, there is an unfiltered signal coming from the Head Unit and a mid-range-only signal coming from the amp. I assume he connected the Head Unit signal (they sound good, so I think that's a safe assumption).

My question is: I don't notice any real change in sound quality even without the amp's midrange signal. So, am I just very un-picky or am I just not understanding something? Shouldn't the lack of the amp's mid-range power cause some degredation? Or perhaps the higher quality (I hope) speakers are compensating for the loss in power?

Any thoughts would be appreciated. I think it sounds good. So I'm probably just being paranoid. . . but before I could hear it and decide I was okay with it, I was quite concerned to just see him ignore the pair of wires from the amp.

Thanks!

HiTechGent

It's your un-picky ears. The tweeters of the new speakers are at the same power/volume as the stock. The front mids will be quite abit softer for 2 reasons. One, they are not getting the higher amplified output from the Monsoon amp. Two, the mids are probably 4 ohm impedance instead of the stock 2 ohm so even if they were hooked up to the amp output, they would likely be softer.

The tweeters probably kick in about 2500Hz. So you'd be getting everything above that freq around the same sound level as you're used to. You are probably getting better SQ in this range also by using a better speaker.

Since you have mids in the sail panel still working off the amp, you probably would have to listen very closely to notice the difference in the bass level.

If you could conveniently disconnect the tweeters from the fronts and only listen to mids, you'd notice a significant difference in the sound level between the front and rear channels. The sail panel mids would likely be 2 to 4 times as loud as the door mids.

The most important thing is perception. If you can't hear a difference, don't worry about it.

I just installed the Alpines per the thread. And I know I can hear better bass from the door speakers then I had with stock. It makes me want to replace the sail speakers, even though they still work.

WhiteBird00

iTrader: (4)

Not exactly. The sail panel speakers are subs, not mids. If the front mids were connected to the unamplified signal from the head unit then 4 ohms is the correct impedance. The HU is designed for 4 ohms, it's the amp that is designed for 2 ohm speakers.

So, the only real difference is that the front mids aren't getting power from the amp. Since the aftermarket speakers are probably considerably more efficient than the stock ones, the difference in sound level shouldn't be that much. Overall, any difference in sound quality would come just from cleaner reproduction in the tweeters and, to a lesser extent, the mids. The mix would be nearly the same as stock until you push the volume up.

Hurin

So, the general consensus is that as long as I'm not a total audio-nut, this is going to be good enough and I haven't horribly screwed up my sound system by taking the amp feed out of the fronts? If so, that's good.

Quick note though, this is a convertible. There are only four speakers in the whole setup. The two in the door (fronts) and the two on either side of the back seat (I think this is what people call the "sail panels" but I'm not sure). Even before any of the work was done, all of the base appeared to come from the fronts. The rears are actually quite weak and hardly put out any base at all. Is that different than non-convertible Camaros?

Thanks for the input guys. I think it sounds alright so far (having only listened to a song or two). So, this is more for just discussion and curiosity than anything else. I'm trying to abide by "if it sounds good, don't go looking for problems."

Edit: I just found this thread that discusses the different setup for Camaro 'Verts. It looks like none of the lines comes off of the Monsoon amp (none from the HU) for a convertible with Monsoon. Here's hoping that whatever line he put in there had the full-range signal! And the lack of base from the rears appears to be standard because the speaker needs to be so shallow so that the top doesn't hurt it while retracting. I'm going to drive home now and take my fiancee out to dinner. I'll see if she thinks they sound okay and hopefully will just stop worrying/wondering about it.

I've carried these questions over to that other thread. Sorry for starting a new one when I could have asked it there. But it looks like the preliminary info with which I used to start this thread was wrong.

Best,

H