demoninvictus

Ok, i've spend little money on my system and so far i'm definately pleased. it turns heads, didn't burn my wallet, and sounds great...cept for one thing.. i was sounding off to a couple friends in a parking lot and someone said... where are your mid's? i don't know what i'm missing, i have the pioneers upfront with kenwood crossovers and kenwood tweeters, 6 1/2 boston acoustics in the rear flush mounted on the dash backing and the two rockfords in the trunk. now i don't know what i can do to get some mids... or better at that. i've messed with the settings alot on the head unit and i can see my bostons flex decently without distorting, cept i get very little bass out of them... i think i need to fix something with the mounting, but i'm unsure. the fronts, i'm clueless about them as well, they're 6 1/2's and fit snuggly with out having depth or vibration problems, the bass reflex just sucks, but not as bad as my rears.

basically, if i flush mount my rear speakers under the cardboard on the back dash, what can i do about covering up the ugly trim thats going to be left... are there aftermarket 6 1/2 inch grills out there that i can use and mount to the back dash?

2, for the fronts, will just dynamatting around the speaker suffice, or should i do a full door kit on both sides?

also, what about speaker baffles? i've had a mixed blessing on those, what do you guys recommend?

peace

hiredgoon

More than likely they are out of phase.

Reverse the + and - connections on one of the speakers

MisterT

What else do you have in your car? The reason I ask is that I had a friend back in high school who used a high powered head unit to run his speakers in a Toyo Truck, and one amp running 2 kicker 10s. The thing thumped, but he had the bass so high and not enough power to his front speakers that it tended to drown out his mids (and highs practically too)! Also, do you have a crossover? If so, what are your crossover slopes for your satellites (front and rear spkrs.)? There could be a number of things, ie out of phase problem, crossover slope set too high, or the bass may be so high, that it is drowning out your mids to name a few. As far as dynamating is concerned, I have heard that it helps out by absorbing the resonance behind the speakers. HH mentioned in one post (regarding baffles), that they seemed to act like an enclosure (which can out the most in a speaker). Good luck and let us know what you find out.

Mister T

demoninvictus

i turned my subs off and determined that i have no mid bass, i set the High pass filter on my alpine head unit to flat, allowing all frequencies to the surrounds. i turned my bass to about +4 out of 7, my treble all the way up to 7, and i've done nothing with time correction. judging by that, i should have all the mid bass i want because the head unit is just feeding a straight signal with more treble than bass. as far as cross wiring, it's very possible, all of my speakers are hard wired and have no harnesses, leaving the guess of what is positive and what is negative a very big guess. can out the most in a speaker means what dude, i'm tired, explain. i had baffles before, the speakers hit fairly well, but the ****** things rattled like crazy. well, i'm off to preppyboys to pick up some baffles and just try the damn things out again, hopefully they won't rattle with proper install, we'll see... plus i'm going to mess with the cross over in the head unit and see what happens. as far as an external crossover is concerned, i'm contemplating an old Cadence QX6?? cross over my buddy has, not sure what it's gonna do for me, but we'll see. thanks a bunch, i'll post later tonight on results.
peace

MisterT

If your head unit has cutoff points for your speakers, it may be set too high. That is what it sounds like it could be judging from what you wrote. Also, you have your treble all the way up? That may be anther reason. Maybe you can turn it down some. Still though, it shouldn't affect your mids all that much. 6 1/2's should be okay if crossed over to 80 Hz or so. If you listen to really heavy bass (like bass CD's), then you could cross over higher just in case. Let me know what you find out.

Mister T

DeaDLy93PRoTeGe

I can say one thing. Get a Kenwood HU. They have a control for Mids.


Crossing the + and - in a 93 doesn't matter, sounds the same no matter what to me....... But you have a 94, so it may be a little different. I have also hardwired mine.

Do you ever have a problem with hard exceleration, your deck come flying out? LOL. Maybe I'm a dumbass, and didn't install it right..... It doesn't happen often, only when RICED out Civics pull up beside me and rev their 1.6 **** engines. I love making a preppy little honda guy's look bad with my 93 Pro in front of their girlfriend.

demoninvictus

ok, bottomline, i don't like kenwood products, don't like their head units, don't like their speakers... however, i would consider one of their amps, they sound pretty good. my pioneer had mids control and i had the same speaker setup, however with this alpine unit, there are more ways you can control your mids, i just haven't figured out just what sounds right to me, i'll have to fiddle with it for a while. now, only problem that i have is, when i have the crossover settings set up to give me good mids without distorting up to 22 about, i kick the subs on and my tweeters in the front chirp... so i end up toning the bass down a little more than i usually did, however i have mids now. my only concern is what is this chirping coming from? i remember a friend telling me that it's caused by the tweeters not being able to keep up with the subs, there for it chirps? kinda like a scratching sound or something that makes a crackling sound? anybody know what i'm talking about?
peace

Calibur

I hardwired all mine in my 97 also... what i did. I took the harness from the stock speakers. Took it inside. Took some wires. Made a little ciruit with a "D" battery and hooked it up to the speaker. Whichever way makes the speaker push out. You know that was is right. Then you take the corresponding wires going into the harness and you know which one is pos and which is neg.

MisterT

Looking at your setup, it sounds like you are running 6 speakers (the Bostons in the rear, the Pioneers up front, and the Kenwood tweeters) all on 4 channels of your head unit. I don't know that your head unit can handle that kind of load that you are putting on the built in amp. You may do better getting an amp to push the front speakers and tweeters and the deck power to push the rear. The tweeters should have passive crossovers to block out damaging frequencies that it can't produce. But I am thinking that the problem is with you running 6 4 ohm drivers off of 4 channels (2 ohms on the front and 4 ohms in the rear). That may be why you are having all of the problems if that is the case. Let us know something when you find out.

Mister T

demoninvictus

ok, bare with me. well i've given up on polarity of the speakers, i don't even have my original harnesses and i'll **** with it if i'm not happy. as far as the fronts are concerned, they are running on actual kenwood component crossovers that i got off someone here. i don't like kenwood hardware, but it does the job for now. i never thought about the fact that i was running a 2 ohm load on the fronts, but it's a very interesting point. the v-drive internal amp is a very powerful amp and it's super clean and has a lot of nice features. i'm not going to amp them in the near future cause it's just a whole lot of additional wires i'd have to buy, actually running 4 gauge off the battery to a distribution block to 3 seperate 8 gauge wires (1 for headunit, 1 for sub amp, and 1 for front amp). i run 8 and 10 both off the battery for now with no special terminal, and buying all new wiring and another amp isn't in my budget. for now, the fronts produce all the mid bass i want. even though they are regular pioneer coaxial cones in the front, they're now a dedicated mid-bass speaker with the kenwood crossover i'm running. not the ideal frequencies, but good enough for government work :P. as far as speaker chirp, i'm gonna ask around my local shops and see what they suggest. time correction doesn't solve the problem, so most likely it's got something to do with the fading or the frequencies i'm trying to push to get some mid bass out of these speakers... could be that i don't have the ideal setup (lol) for a component/seperate configuration in the front, i don't know, i'll ask around.

now today, i went on a quest, redo the rear dash and speakers . i decided that flush mounting to the sheet metal without baffles was the BEST solution to get all the bass i can out of my bostons. i went to the junkyard and got an old dash with the old factory speaker grilles still attatched and the fasteners off an SE model first gen. took it to my buddies garage and tore apart my back dash, removing the old dash piece (it vibrated when subs hit, was bent, had scratches all over it, screws in the sides to hold the dash backing in place, paper stuffed in the vents to stop all rattles and everything). basically, it was a piece of work, but we pulled out the old dash backing, cleaned the sheet metal down to the paint, dynamatted around the speaker openings, the holes in the sheet metal and every spot where rattle could occur. put some weather stripping on the underside of the speaker surround, then top mounted the speakers in with self-tapping #8 hex head 1/2 inch sheet metal screws, and taped up the back of the dash backing around the plastic vents to keep them intact and to stop rattling. gave it a test run with out the panel and bass response was doubled as compared to mounting the speakers on top of the back dash piece as i had it before. put the NEW dash panel back in and popped it in with all the factory clips and fasteners. let me tell you, i never knew it could sound so good. i have no idea if that kid is going to ask me where the hell my mids are anymore, but i know now for sure, doing it right the first time is the BEST WAY to do this **** man. the best part about it is now there is less visible **** to steal out of my car as it now retains a factory look in the rear dash, in the front door panels... aside from the flashy head unit and my RF stickers in the back window, you can't tell what i've done to this car. thanks for your help guys, my next step is going to be to get some new front components, or a more powerful sub amp and run my fronts off my amp or my rears off my amp, not sure yet. thats going to be 2 or 3 months down the line with the expenses i have now, so thanks for the help.
peace

ps. should i write a how to for the back dash speakers? maybe some pics? let me know