component speakers

[dealerjohn1]

anyone done component speakers in the front and also rear of the speed3? I am curious about the sound imaging and clarity if anyone can chime in I would appreciate it

[jv92red]

Putting separates in the back will pull your sound stage out from in front of you to the middle of the car. In general you'll want your sound stage out as far forward the center of your dash as possible.

[dealerjohn1]

thanks man I appreciate it

[dealerjohn1]

also what im thinking of doing is adding a sound processor to the factory system ( I dont want to get the caska just yet) so I can upgrade the factory speakers and adding dynamat as well as a 10 inch sub so im curious if the processor will combat the imaging problem that you mentioned let me know any other thoughts you might have

[6262ms3]

Just make sure your processor has some decent eq adjustability. I noticed these cars have a ton of resonance in the 200hz range, even after deadening the doors. I ended up cutting a good -5db at 200hz which cleaned the mud out of my components (h-audio ebony mids/polk ring radiator tweets running active). For the rear speakers I wouldn't bother with tweeters at all, just bandpass some decent midranges. I turn my rear speakers off completely (it's easy to do on my deck) unless I have passengers in the back.

[jv92red]

Originally Posted by dealerjohn1 also what im thinking of doing is adding a sound processor to the factory system ( I dont want to get the caska just yet) so I can upgrade the factory speakers and adding dynamat as well as a 10 inch sub so im curious if the processor will combat the imaging problem that you mentioned let me know any other thoughts you might have

Depends on how deep into tuning you want to go with the time to do it. From reading your posts it's hard to gauge your experience level. Processing can be a can of worms people open then find out it's much more than they realized. Proper imaging, clarity and what sounds good to you are so subjective that you can spend alot of money and mostly alot of time tuning and you may never get it right.

Question to ask yourself is: What do you want to get out of processing? How many channels will it need to control? Are you going 2 way active or will run passive front components? Do you need electronic crossover and slope control? Time alignment? How many bands of EQ do you want? EQ graphic or parametric? And most importantly: do you understand what all of that stuff means?

If so then you can shop for a processesor that meets your requirements then just run some RCA's off the line level outs from your head unit (assuming BOSE clean signal from HU - search this forum for more info on that)then tie in your processor then run your amps,speakers and you're set to start tuning.

If you've never adjusted a crossover frequency or slope, don't know what the difference is between a graphic and parametric EQ, or how to adjust EQ phase and Q width within a parametric EQ then I would suggest checking out a car audio forum and doing your homework before you start. I recommend checking out diymobileaudio.com While there are some knowledgeable people on this forum, this is a car performance site first and foremost, not a car audio forum.

Do you need to know all that for your system to sound good? Not necessarily. Just depends on how much processing you want to be able to do since you'll learn more as you go along so maybe buying a more capable processor now with your initial installation will give you what you need to dive in and learn on the fly. But buy a product packed with features and not use them and you'll be wasting your money compared to a unit which does just what you need.

We all start from the bottom - hell my first car when I was 16 had a 1/2 din 5 band graphic eq with a "Power booster - 500 watts" on board amp with 6x9's in the back that I thought was the shit! But when I was 16 these interwebz didn't exist so lot of info out there to learn. Good luck!

[dealerjohn1]

thanks a lot...I do have a friend who is a professional car audio installer so im sure he can help me out a bit with all of the technical stuff but I do have pretty good ears so ill definitely be curious to find out what I end up with at the conclusion of this build