Now that I've found a friend with a digital camera, it's only a matter of time until I get some pics up for you guys, along with a detailed explanation of my installation and some MS-paint style labels and diagrams on the photos to help further explain (I believe Richie77 is working on a FAQ). I need to hurry while my car still looks pretty clean heh (washed it last week). Anyway, a few things:

1. Tweeter mounting still just doesn't seem quite "right." Not only are the highs a bit sharp (easily fixed by droppin down the high end EQ a couple of notches), but I definately don't have a front dash image when I close my eyes. Big deal I know, but I try to be a perfectionist with what I've got to work with. =p They are currently located at the base of the A-pillars, aimed as best I could towards the middle of the car. It comes out to where the passenger side tweeter is aimed at me, and my side tweeter is aimed at the passenger. I was thinking of adjusting them and aiming them away from me and the passenger, and towards the windshield and the 500 feet of dash that camaros have. Any input on this?

2. Burnt a CD today, mostly jazzy/beboppy style music. Literally, it's all the soundtracks from Cowboy Bebop, so for those of you who know what that is you know what I'm talking about. Lots of natural instruments going on there, horns, guitars, bass guitars etc. Some of the higher notes on the bass guitar seem to make my mids rattle. This is the whole reason I installed this sound system anyway! Because my stock speakers were busted and rattled! Heh, however I'm 99% sure this new slight rattle is caused by something else. I think the mids are actually hitting the door grilles, as I noticed when I put the panels back on that the speakers don't exactly line up with the grille area nor did they have a lot of space in there. I believe Steve from fbodyaudio mentioned having to modify his door a bit so the mids would sit deeper, because the cones would touch the door grille and he blew some speakers that way. Maybe this is a dumb question, but is there any way I can remedy this without cutting into my doors or something? I might just turn down the volume a bit when such high-bass resonating notes occur. *shrug*

2a. Related to 2, I also found that I could up the HPF to 125hz and that obviously remedied it, but I don't like setting the LPF to 125hz. Is it feasible to have the LPF at 80hz and the HPF at 125hz? Is that 45hz gap even humanly noticable? =p

3. I searched the forums about phase, and still wasn't really sure what I need to do. The head unit has a sub phase option, where I can set it to normal or reverse. In general I've gathered that I would set it to reverse if I had the magnet outside the enclosure, cone facing inwards. But it sounded like there were other situations where a normal mounted sub would also need a reverse phase. Talk about listening for "holes" in bass, etc. I don't know what all that's about, what do I need to be listening for?





EDIT: Lol, I feel sorry for the LS1tech community having to read my posts. I'm on a 1600x1200 20 inch monitor, so my posts never seem very long. I read a post on a 1024 monitor in the library earlier and realized what a book it was. Sorry guys.

 

Hey Matt - good to see you back!! Was wondering how things were going.. Don't worry about the long posts - most folks get talked about for posting two words.

You have some very intelligent questions, especially for someone who claims to be so new to this. That night when you, me and Richie were chatting, we talked a little about crossovers. It's perfectly fine to leave that gap in there, so long as there's no noticeable 'hole' in the frequency spectrum. It's all done by ear, and you are already listening for things on your own that I've tried to teach people to hear.

As for the door-panel rattle, you'll have to get creative on this one. Either recess the speaker, or space out the panel. Sorry I can't give you an exact "do this/do that" explanation, but it's one of those things ya gotta see to be able to do I guess. My opinion is that you've got enough 'smarts' to do quite well with this - it's obvious you don't need half as much help as many other people I've come across. I'd trust you to work on my stuff, so retain your confidence and go for it!

I'm lookin forward to seeing those pics - I'm really glad you're getting things worked out.

 

actually, if you just mounted the mids in the stock plastic trim ring, the rattling is most likely the plastic piece shaking from the music, causing it to slap against the bare metal of the inside of the door. this is where your sound deadening material will come in very handy.

it is possible that it's the mids slapping against the plastic door panel, but i kinda doubt it. i don't have that problem in my system (my mids are actually slapping the back of the flush-mounted tweeter pods that i mounted inside the stock speaker grille, directly over the woofer, but that will be fixed with a little trimming of the plastic of the rear of the tweeter pod).

 

Just my suggestion as I have entered in SQ car shows and SPL.
The best way I have solved this is aiming the tweeters towards the middle of the roof, like where a dome light might be. Both tweeters need to be aimed at the exact same place.

It sounds like to me that the way you have them aimed, they are crossing in front of you.

 

Hmm, never thought of the speaker trim rattling. Believe it or not, I think GM actually stuck some sort of cushion on the back of there, I could have swore I remembered it. Either way I'll check into that. And if it IS the door panel, good thinking Daley! Seperating the panel from the door a bit... maybe I can wedge/fasten something in there to bulge it out a bit.

And yeah shouldaboughtthez, they technically are crossing in front of me. I've currently got the mount screwed to the A-pillar, which would aim the tweeters slightly downward directly into the dash if I put the tweeters straight into the mounts. Here's a diagram I did in paint! Disregard all those guages, I found this image on google heh:


I drew the yellow lines to simulate where the sound would go. It'd hit the dash, especially on the driver side where the dash humps up for the speedometer displays. SO, even though the mount aims there, I kinda rotated the tweeters within the mounts as best I could to aim them towards the passengers and upwards a bit. That resulted in what I described, with them crossing over and hitting the passengers from the opposite sides. I also drew in there how I would implement the other two options so far. Towards the windshield and towards the middle of the roof of the car (I guess I'd have to put it on the dash).

I hate to move the mount though, there'd be a screw hole visible. =(

 

Option one I would not do. When putting it on the dash, you are either going to have to run the wire through the vent on the dash or some other way. And your staging on the dash will suck oh so bad.

Option 2 is alot better. Only your tweeters will be firing at each other. If you could get them to angle up towards the rearview mirror it would help out alot.

 

Talk to Tapout on here or FbodyAudio. He mounted his to the backside (frontside?) of the A-pillars bouncing them off the windshield. It's kinda like a bank shot in basketball. With the sound source being so close to the windshield already, I imagine you're getting some reflected waves that are slightly out of phase (ie. you hear direct sound as well as some reflected sound from 0.1 seconds ago at the same time).