I am still trying to make the audio system in my 2001 Z28 with the Monsoon system reasonable to listen to. With the SLP Loudmouth II exhaust, there is a significant amount of noise to compete with. So far, this has been an epic failure.

I have purchased and installed cheap hatch speakers, cheap sail panel speakers and cheap component door panel speakers. It sounded like crap so I purchased the better-quality CDT audio sail panel speakers and installed those. Still sounds like crap so I am returning to the door speakers to replace them.

When I installed the current door speakers, I mounted the mids in the stock recess but the tweeters wouldn't fit inside the door panel using the mid-range mount bracket. So I used a hole saw to cut a hole in the door panel to surface mount the tweeters on the outside of the door panel.

I am now looking to replace the door-mounted mid-range only and I plan to keep the current tweeters, especially since I already cut a hole in the door panel.

Does anyone know the crossover frequencey for the door speakers? I would like to find a 6.5S" mid in the correct frequency range.

PS What is the difference between 6.5 and 6.5S?

Thanks.

 

If you're using a the stock headunit and mosoon amp, meaning you didn't run any wires, then the front mids are getting half the power of the rear speakers due to the stock ones being dual voice coil and aftermarket ones being single.

Your components in the front came with a crossover correct? They are designed as a system to function together. You best bet will be to run a small 35 x 2 or 50 x 2 amp to power them.

If you have an aftermarket head unit. I would just run wiring straight from the head unit to the front components.

Once you start mixing and matching component sets and different drivers you can get into a mess of building a crossover that will work correctly and you may still not be happy without going to a fully active setup meaning seperate amps channels per speaker and some form of electronic crossover prior to the RCA's hitting the amps.

That monsoon amp in the stock system is a real distortion box. You can only bypass it with speaker level to rca units and then an amp. OR run directly from an aftermarket head unit.

Best bang for your buck is an aftermarket head unit and run speaker wires directly from it to the speakers, or crossover on the front components.

Keeping the stock head unit can end up running you as much as the amplifiers and speaker to line level converters in the long run.

 

No, this is a second thread where you have advocated ditching the Monsoon amp as a distortion problem when it's simply not true (not bad for your first day here). The doors speakers ("front mids") are single voice coil in both Camaro and Firebird. They have two pairs of wires because they are component sets - separate mids and tweeters - although the component tweeters in Camaros are mounted coaxially in the mids. Also, the Z28 the OP is talking about doesn't even have dual voice coil subs in the sail panels like a Firebird does (and they're not mids in any f-body)

It is never a good idea to give up the Monsoon amp and use head unit power alone unless you want to put some sort of full-range speakers (such as coaxials) in the sail panels to replace the factory subs. The Monsoon amp is not particularly powerful but it's certainly more than the head unit alone and it produces clean amplification when given a clean signal. That's the problem - the factory HU is a distortion machine that starts cllipping as early as half volume or less.

The best sound will of course come from using a good aftermarket HU, an amp for the front speakers, and a sub and amp at the back. But the best "bang for your buck" (i.e. low cost upgrade) is first a good HU and then some upgraded speakers. Leave the amp alone until you're ready to replace it with a better one... why give up power you already have?

Perhaps you might want to read the Monsoon FAQ sticky and peruse some of the countless other threads on the subject in this forum.

For the OP, your best bet is to get the CDT components sold by one of our sponsors, Kee Audio. They are coaxially mounted components that match the mounting and wiring of the factory system and have been proven many times over to be a good upgrade to a Monsoon system. In any case, the crossover is not going to be the problem. You can just rely on the filtering in the amp to take care of protecting your tweeters and almost any decent (non-WalMart) mid will respond well in the doors.

6.5S designates an oversize 6.5" speaker that can be used in both 6.5" and 6.75" mounting locations.

 

Thanks for that post man. I see you read that response from this same guy in the other thread.

 

if you dont want to go with the cdt audio, look for a component set that has bi-amp connections if you want to use the crossover that comes with the set. im not sure what the stock crossover frequency is and im interested to know myself. depending on that you can get away without using the component crossover.
for clean sound im partial to polk. infinity is nice because of their 2ohm options, but a little harsh imo on the highs.

you didnt say what kind of budget you were working with. is your budget enough to get a decent 4ch amp, component set for the front, and coaxial set for the rear? not sure if you were planning on a sub or not. if you were thinking about a sub and didnt have an amp for that you could even go with a 5ch amp to save a little space. re audio is really good for a budget setup as far as speakers and subs, but i dont like their amps.

new to the site, and new to my camaro, so still learning some stuff about it. longtime car audio fan though.
had my car less than a month. so far swapped out to a kenwood excelon headunit, 0 guage knukonceptz kolossus flex amp kit, jl 500/1, and 10w3v3 in an h.o. box that i had in my last car. the monsoon is ok for the moment, but i have a bad driver front and plan on a more aggressive muffler since 1 of the problems with the car when i bought it was a small hole in the muffler. im leaning towards the jl 6ch amp and havent decided on the speakers yet.

 

Thanks for the replies.

I didn't state this - I plan to keep the stock head unit and amp.

Also, I indeed did read the sticky at least twice. I also did a search for "frequency" in this subforum - there are about 242 threads with frequency in them and none that I saw have the actual frequency for the door panels in them.

While the sticky correctly states that the door speakers are are actually two-each with their own wiring (crossover done elsewhere), it does not state the crossover frequency. That is all I am asking. "Mids" is generic enough that it is hard to look at alternative component pieces and be sure I am not creating a void in a given frequency range.

I have looked at the Kee Audio pieces for the f-body kits. I am simply looking to comparison shop. It appears that there are various component systems that come with their own separate speakers and crossovers. Since the only piece I need is the mid-range speaker, I was looking to save a few bucks buying only that piece.

Yes, I have been posting over time as I get the opportunity to look at this. There are reasons.

I assume that no one knows what the frequency is that feeds the door-mounted mids?

 

My comment about reading the sticky was directed at the poster who claimed that the Monsoon amp creates a lot of distortion although it's good that you read it as well. I don't think anyone knows the frequency since it's handled internally in the Monsoon amp and GM doesn't publish those kind of specs. Assuming the Camaro version works similarly to the Firebird, the mid signal to the doors is unfiltered (receives full-range signal) and only the tweeter is protected by a high pass filter. The high pass filter is external on Firebirds but built into the amp on Camaros.

 

As WB pointed out, Firebirds have a simple first-order high-pass RC filter inline with the door and hatch tweeters. I would assume the Camaros has the same filtering built into their amp modules, but maybe not. If you have a Pontiac or know someone with one, measure the resistor and capacitor, then use the values to either calculate the frequency they are tuned for or put the values in an online calculator. The R/C elements might even say their values on the side if you unwrap their little taped up bundle.

http://sim.okawa-denshi.jp/en/CRhikeisan.htm

Regardless, as WB pointed out again, it really doesn't matter because the "mid" cone in the doors and hatch get full range anyways. The HPF is just to protect the tweeter from burning up trying to produce low frequencies.

I'd measure it myself but my simple meter doesn't do capacitance and my car isn't near for a while.

As far as the sail panels go, nobody knows because they would have to take apart the Monsoon amp module and find the LPF inside it to know for sure. I suspect it's something like a 200-300 Hz LPF but I really don't know for sure.

You can put the finest speakers available in your car and so long as you keep the stock HU, you will suffer with distortion. If you want to dump those CDT speakers at a discount, let me know.

 

you can by mids by themselves, you just have a much better selection buying component sets. both sonicelectronix and onlinecarstereo have sections under speakers for midbass drivers.
i also dont like mixing speaker brands myself. different brands use different materials, different settings, etc. so it can throw off the sound.
since you plan on using the stock amp, look for 2ohm stuff to get the full power out of the amp.
you also dont have to limit yourself to 6.75" mids. they have an adapter to put a 6.5" in that opening. you have a lot more 6.5" options than 6.75"

 

Sorry for the mis-understanding and thanks for the additional replies.

It appears that I would be able to buy a higher quality mid OR full range for the door if it is seeing full-range frequencies. Maybe it doesn't matter if I just get a full range and it just doesn't see the higher frequencies.

Since I spend +13 hours a week in this car, I would really like something that I can turn the volume up loud enough to hear it where I don't have to back off the bass so much to avoid distortion.

The reason I am researching this now is that I would like to come up with a plan and order something soon. I am doing a bathroom rennovation to make the wife happy and also trying to get my stock car ready for this season. The bathroom is overbudget already. Based on what I saw working on my stock car, it also appears that I will need to replace the clutch as well as the clutch hydraulics and I am running out of money. If I get the speakers now, when I run out of bathroom/stock car money at least I'll have my speaker upgrade purchased...

When I get to this and get the speakers installed, I'll report what I learn if anything.

 

I know this is an older thread, but I just created this little write up on my forum from what I did today and thought I'd copy over here. Might help somebody.







Here's another option to replace the front door speakers in our Monsoon system. I chose to use a set of Infinity Kappa 652.9i two ways. I like them because they handle 75 watts RMS, the tweeter is able to be aimed up towards the listener, the factory bracket DOESN'T need to be modified and (most of all) the driver is 2 ohm which matches the factory speaker.



Once you remove the factory speakers, be sure to try to save the gaskets. I reused mine and it worked great. I also cut off the plug from the back of the speakers so that I could make this a "plug-n-play" install







These Infinity Kappa speakers come with an inline crossover. You will not need this, as the Monsoon system is already crossed over. I cut this off, exposing a red, black and white wire. The red wire is the woofer + and the white is the tweeter +. This speaker shares the black wire as a common ground.







I chose to use the red and black wire from the crossover to hook up the woofer. I then clipped the black ground wire going to the tweeter and the white positive from the crossover to hook up the tweeter.



When you look at the factory plug like this, the red (+) and black (-) pair on the left is the woofer. The tweeter's red and black pair is on the right.

If you need it, the factory color codes are as follows.

• Black - Driver - Tweeter +
• Yellow - Driver - Tweeter -
• Dark Blue - Driver - Woofer +
• Light Blue - Driver - Woofer -
• Light Green - Pass - Tweeter +
• Purple - Pass - Tweeter -
• Orange - Pass - Woofer +
• Dark Green - Pass - Woofer -

That's about all there is to it. These speakers sound amazing. Crutchfield listed them for about $150, but I found them on Amazon for $69. I highly recommend Amazon for a lot of car parts. I usually find the best prices there.

Any questions? Don't hesitate to ask.

 

Locate your nearest Dish Network guy, You will have to remove the door panel or the sail cover and speaker. He has a high frequency counter,he just simply hooks up positive to positive and ground to ground. There you go. Technicians has this counter to maintain HD signals,Most HD run between 285 megahertz to 900 megahertz.But they carry lower counters to add UHF and VHF signals! Hope this helps