I'm looking to upgrade my car's stereo system soon and I had a few questions. Jim85IROC seems to be quite knowledgable about the subject (not to say no one else is... I've just been reading a lot of his posts), so I have a few questions:

1. Since I want the highest quality sound possible, I'm deciding to scrap the 4x6s entirely and pick up a set of 6.5" components for the kickpanels. Any recommendations on which component sets to use (I have no knowledge of what components are good/bad since I was mostly researching coaxials)?

2. I recall one post where you mention that kick panels provide a much better imaging source in these cars than the doors and the dash. However, you did not mention anything about the 6x9s in the sail panels. Should I eliminate these as well, or will that create an undesired effect? Will it sound as if all the sound is coming from the kick panels and nothing else? Should I just upgrade the factory 6x9s with a better one? I want to be immersed in sound, rather than hearing it all from one direction.

3. Another question on imaging... I noticed the kick panel on your car has the tweeter positioned behind the driver, but I've seen other people's kick panels with the tweeter in front of the driver. Does this effect the sound quality at all?

4. Although all I have in my car right are the stock speakers and a cheap Sony headunit, the wiring is a complete mess from cutting and soldering wires together. The previous owner did a poor installation of a Jensen cassette deck which was basically a "twist and tape" job. I took it upon myself to solder together all the wire connections and cover them with heatshrink tubing, but it is still a jumbled mess of stock wires along with some wires from both the old Jensen deck and the one I have in there now. Would you recommend that I just replace all the wires altogether instead of dealing with this mess of stock and aftermarket wires? Will all these solder joints effect the sound quality at all?

5. Did you ever start any molds of your kick panels? I would be interested in buying them so long as they are not ridiculously priced. They look very factory, which is another thing I am looking for in my system.

Thanks for all the help!

 

1. sound quality is highly subjective. The best I can suggest is to listen to a lot of stuff locally. I've found that most of the Boston Acoustics and Alpine stuff sounds pretty good, but again... personal preference plays a big role here. For online brands, I'm very happy with my CDT cl-61a components. I've got a set of RE components on the way, and I'll give a full report when I get them. So far, people seem to regard those very highly and many people have proclaimed them the online "value" leader. They may be worth considering.

2. If imaging is your priority, then I would suggest either eliminating the 6x9s, or leaving the stock ones in there but attenuating them enough that they don't draw the image back. At low levels, they can provide some amount of ambiance and spatiousness without detracting from the image. But, usually I just rip mine out because I'm not interrested in spending the money to amplify them.

3. Yes, tweeter position effects the sound quality. This is sort of a hit or miss, trial and error type of thing. Any time you move the tweeter around, it effects the phase relationship between it and the woofer. Unfortunately, the crossover is usually designed with the assumption that the woofer and tweeter are flat on the same plane. Moving the tweeter will have a fairly drastic effect on the frequency response around the crossover frequency. However, moving the tweeter also has a drastic effect on imaging because high frequencies are highly directional. I chose my positioning because it helped give me more equal path lengths as well as better line-of-sight positioning so that neither tweeter was off-axis from my listening position. Personally, I feel that this has a much bigger effect on overall sound quality than the phase of the drivers at the crossover point. Having a little boost or dip at 3khz really doesn't change the sound very much in my opinion... at least not with popular music. However, having tweeters too far off axis, or not aimed properly does have a profound and very noticable effect on sound quality and imaging.

4. From the sounds of it, it would be better to just remove that wiring and start fresh.

5. I'm planning to pull the kicks out of the car as soon as it starts to warm up a little bit (no heat in my garage). After I take the mold of my kicks, I'm going to try to get drivers and design a crossover specifically for those kicks that address the specific phase of each kick panel. This should allow me to package an application-specific set of kicks & components that is capable of much, much better sound quality than you can typically get without pissing a ton of money into a custom setup. I'm kind of excited about it because by offering the whole thing, it gives me the ability to use less expensive home audio tweeters instead of overpaying for crappy car tweeters that need a high crossover frequency. Because of this, I think I'm going to be able to build a fantastic sounding set of drop-in kick panels with speakers for around the same money that a typical set of high end components sell for. I can't wait to get started on it.

 

Thanks, man. I really appreciate the help.

Let me know the results of that kick panel home audio experiment. Sounds like a good idea.