Think race car that spends most of it's time on the street, so I'd like a decent setup to listen to while tooling around, but don't want to add significant weight or take up too much space. Any thoughts on this?

I want something simple that sounds good. Preferably without a separate sub, but needs OK bass, if that's not possible I won't go with more than something like a single 8 or 10". My older f-bodies always seemed to have problems reproducing decent bass with anything in the rear sail panels, but i've wondered if that was a problem with the speakers facing each other and the bass from both sides canceling. Is there some way of dealing with that? Is it just crappy parts that I've used before and good stuff will sound OK.

Preference:
1- "high powered" head unit (recommendations? I have 2 older pioneers that I like, but don't have some of the modern features, no easy way of getting MP3's into one, the other the only good way is through it's ipod interface)+ speakers in stock location (again, recommendations?). My instinct is that the 6x9's in the back will move more air and result in more (I know, not necessarly better) bass, but making a mounting plate to mount say a round 6.5" isn't a big deal if it's really worth the effort
2- the above with a 2 or 4 channel amp (ligher than adding a sub)
3- #1 with a small sub and amp

 

Usually the further you can get the speakers away from the listener the better they sound. Having a sub or two in the hatch usually sounds best in my opinion. You could make the box removeable because most of your weight is in the box and the subwoofers.

Things to look for in a head unit is subwoofer outputs if you're wanting to put a sub in.

 

im running a pioneed 1200mp deck with 2 jvc 540 watt ea 6x9s with 2 polk audio 4x6 up front in the dash, and an 8 in rockford fosgate sub in the hatch. i usually have the gain more to the rear then the front. sounds great and not overwhelming bass.

 

After having MANY different setups in thirdgens, I'd recomend a NICE new head unit(you can get these for under $150 all day now) with "plate" 4x6's in the front.




They feature a seperate midrange speaker and tweeter so you get much better sound. Not many plate options for 6x9's, so you can get a high quality 6x9 OR a plate that allows you to mount a round 6.5 midrange speaker in it's place easily.

Try that out and if you dont like it, get a small box that fits in the bottom hatch area, attach the amp to the box and use easy to remove connectors on it so when you want to remove it, you can do so easily.

 

I stumbled across these for subs; do away with your rear speakers and drop these in place...

Tang Band W69-1042J

some people have been able to mod the dash spots to fit 5 1/4" speakers, really best option other than getting kick panel enclosures and going all out.

Small 4 channel amp, bridge the back 2 to channels for subs, run subs in parallel. use front 2 channels to run front speakers.

 

If you could brace / dampen / seal off the rear sail's and put some not so deep 8" subs... then keep your dash / door / kick for mids and highs... I've heard some amazing bass from 6x9's and 8" speakers...

 

Any recommendations for plate speakers (or components to make one, I mean how hard is it to make a nice masonite or 1/2" MDF plate)?

What about a head unit?

I'm not a total audio virgin, I've been building speakers and "stuff" (tube amps...) mostly studio monitors and bass cabinets for, wow, just did the math, on and off for over 25years, just never been much into the car audio thing, just a few really custom subs and things (dual chamber aperiodic setups or 8th order bandpass...)

Really, the only thing that the pioneer head units that I have sitting around don't do that I wish they did was play music off of USB or similar media.

 

what do you have for decks? if they've got the pioneer ir-bus (i think that was the name....), you can add an aux input or even an mp3 usb processor.

 

TB makes some decent drivers, but those don't seem like a very good choice for car audio- With that Qts they're going to want a tight sealed enclosure, and between the Re and SPL it's going to take a lot of power to get good bass out of them. Then add the tight Xmax compared to something like a Punch 8 just won't move that much air for the cone size...

Of course, real world there is more to a speaker than it's TS parameters...

again, not all out, even if I thought I wanted more (I get "get them further away from your ears and the distance evens out so you'll get a better stage") it wouldn't be possible (at least not easy) with cage door bars in the way.

Is that 5.25" in the stock location on a firebird? (I know that the stock location is tight compared to a camaro, where I know that I got 6.5" in a camaro before with only minor heat gun work)

That gets into one of my original questions, it seems like the back sail panels just aren't a good place for bass reproduction, with the 2 bridged in parallel I'd be worried that they'd cancel each other but don't know for sure. My '97 WS6 has the monsoon setup with DVC subs in that location and it just doesn't work great, even replaced with some Cerwin Vega subs (not the best but they were cheap and OK, I like ht 6.5"s that I put in the doors).

Again, maybe running them out of phase or something. I played with this in my '83 and finally added a plate over the rear well and put 2 sets of 6x9's which sounded much better, but I don't want to do that (or a real sub box) here because of the extra weight.

 

I'll have to look when I get home. both are 5 or more years old now, the newer one has some sort of bus architecture and I have the Ipod box (you can control an ipod throught the radio with it), the older one I don't believe does, it was from around the time that Pioneer started with the 50x4 stuff. I'm willing to spend money on new, if there is a real advantage performance or features wise but not sure there is.

I know that a lot of people aren't thrilled with the Pioneer stuff, but to be honest over the years I've played with a lot of stuff and I always seem to like how they sound and work the best, even compared to some high end Alpine stuff I used to have (I'm using it as a sound system in the shop right now.

I've also debated playing with the little Class T amps, they sound incredible for small desktop systems and I've wondered if they'd work well in the tight space of a car (and almost all of them use a DC power supply which will make them easy to use in a car)

 

Oh... I remember what it was with the newer Pioneer... that one used the same internal speaker amps, but the nice thing was that could adjust the RCA sub output curve to better match the rest of the setup (it was really nice that you could attenuate it at higher volumes if you had a weak sub, alternatively, giving more power at lower volumes to fill in some).

The older one could sort of do that but only to the rear speaker line level channels if you configured it for sub output or used separate EQ settings to the rear channel to make it primarily a bass output.

 

DEH-3300-2 and DEH-3800MP. Both have the bus plug... I forgot that I had the RCA Line in adapter wired up with the 3300 and iPod adpator. I don't know if both will work with both, and now that i see it I wonder if I could hook both up ot the 3800 (I wonder if anyone makes a USB drive adapter that plugs into the bus plug). Funny, looks like the 3800 is still sold and for more than I paid for it I think, the 3300 is not sold as a 3300u which has a usb plug added to the detachable front face.

I'm thinking I'm probably going to use one of them, looks like there isn't that much difference beween them and the newer models...

 

heh, I found the remote for the 3800... made sense in the chevy truck (in the factory tape location you could barely reach it...) not sure it makes sense for a TA

 

I did just that a few months ago with a pair of 8" Kenwood eXcelon woofers. I'm pretty pleased with the results though I could feed them about twice the power they're getting with no problems.

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/car-...tem-under.html

 

I understand the advantage with round speakers wrt to clarity, but I would imagine that the more surface area you can get the more air you will move the better the bass reproduction. I'd be very suprised if most people could hear the difference in quality/clarity in a moving f-body... unless I'm missing something.

A typical 8" should have the same or less surface area as a 6x9...

 

But being the mass is not evenly weighted on the pole, 2 sides (9 inch) weigh more then the other 2 sides (6 inch) it would tend to break up sooner than a round (weight evenly distributed) speaker...

.02
I've heard some amazing bass from 6.5's (some DCM home speakers), 6x9's in cars and 8" subs too...

I think best bet is if you actually get to hear stuff before you buy it...

Raf

 

I like the lower end Alpines because they are more simple to use and have AUX input on the front. Thats what I did in my build last month and it gets plenty loud even with the car running.

As far as plate speakers, honestly no, as this car had some pretty nice Sony's already in place. Boston Acoustics were the last ones I bought which were great!

 

I'm with you 100% there... that's what I meant by my earlier "Of course, real world there is more to a speaker than it's TS parameters..." For example, my current favorite home sub in a _large_ room (29x19" open to the kitchen and hall) uses 1 Punch 8 as a driver, OTOH, I spent some time tinkering with some of the Fostex bannana fiber cone drivers that the audiophile guys were raving about a while back and HATED them in every enclosure I tried.

The BA speakers or plates (do they make plates?)? I was looking at them on Amazon last night and I was surprised how cheap they've gotten, much cheaper than the standard infinity's... (funny, I love the sound of their OEM speakers like in my cummins dodge 7 speaker infinity setup, I don't tend to like their higher $ aftermarket stuff). BA used to be fairly $$$

I picked up a scoshe adaptor harness and will solder up a nice adpater for the 3800 tonight so I can play with the rest easily... right now the car doesn't have any rear speakers and some mystery meat front ones (the rears were replaced with 4" sony's when I bought it, who knows what's in the dash)