Tweeter upgrade?

[ryan s]

I thought I was the only one



Also I have noticed that the stock locations in an Accord/TL type car are not as bad as you would think. The secret seems to be either you are listening to ALL reflected or as much direct as possible. Having both will murderize your image and cause all kinds of comb filtering.

Ryan ... if you mounted your tweets in the sail panels of a 6gth Gen, how did you avoid the huge reflection off of the jutting dash on the pasengers side ? When I tried it, I got 2 center images - one in the middle and the other right above the latch for the glove box.

i didn't pursue putting another tweeter in the stock locations after hearing the stock ones for a week IMO, the windshield is kind of like putting them on axis--your first response is to turn down the treble. fitting a 2 or 3" midranger up there...that would be decent. cant remember if mike lashlee used a tweeter or mid in the stock tweeter locations...

my tweeters are actually mounted to the mids for the time being. i've been thinking about moving them to the sail panels, but the path lengths are just so far apart. the coaxial mounting only brings the stage height to about the sail panels...the only downside.

i never messed with the sail panels since i'm going to play with the A-pillars and 3" mids, full range

Ryan,

Thanks for all the info, you really know your car audio!
Is it overall worth upgrading the tweeters in your opinion? (do you really HEAR a difference)?

also when you say "reverse the polarity of the tweeters on the 6.5 in the door" what exactly do you mean?


The main reason why i was considering the upgrade is that well, its only like $50 for some rockford ones with crossovers, and it will allow that ugly cover that sits there now more clean with a new tweeter there. I was thinking i could mount it in the same location with the cover showing to make it appear clean and nice....

Thoughts?

one thing to be careful of is mixing and matching components while using the passive crossover. the crossover was designed to use midbass X with tweeter Y.

you can tell tweeters apart, yes. depends on your reason for changing them. the rockfords might be worse then the IDs, i don't know.

reversing the polarity of the driver's tweeter means the speaker will be "pulling in" instead of "pushing out." you just hook the + speaker wire to the - on the crossover and vise versa for the - speaker wire. you do this to attenuate the closest speaker.

if you mount them in the sail panels, think about how close that would be to your head on the driver's side, and how far away it is on the passenger side. the passenger side needs to "play louder" for the sound waves to hit your ears the same time as the driver's side. inversely, make the driver's side quieter.

what cover are your speaking of?

 

[hotaccord243]

Well the stock tweeters have a fabric style cover over the physical speaker. In replacing them most tweeters seem to have a typically black cover which would be exposed in lieu of the ugly fabric style cover that is OEM.

Is that a little better explanation?

 

[ryan s]

aha...that cover...

the tweeter attaches to the underside of it. you could probably drill out the top, if you wanted to.

 

[Namboyz]

how do your components sound with the tweeter mounted on the mid? is it still as good as mounting them separate? ^^

 

[ryan s]

the sound isn't as high as i'd like it. it really sounds like there are speakers in the sail panels, but if i'd actually put the speakers in the sail panels, the sound would be at eye level like it should be.

the other negative is that my left leg blocks some sound from the tweeter.

otherwise, not too bad. there is some pull to the right but thats fixed via the headunit adjustments.

 

[Namboyz]

what speakers are you running ryan?

 

[ryan s]

MB Quart RCE 216 component set

will be coming out of the car in the next month or so or whenever its warm enough. in place, i'll be installing usher 8945P 7" midbasses and tang band w3-1364SA 3" midranges, run full range, up on the dash.

 

[PaulD]

my tweeters are actually mounted to the mids for the time being. i've been thinking about moving them to the sail panels, but the path lengths are just so far apart. the coaxial mounting only brings the stage height to about the sail panels...the only downside.

reversing the polarity of the driver's tweeter means the speaker will be "pulling in" instead of "pushing out." you just hook the + speaker wire to the - on the crossover and vise versa for the - speaker wire. you do this to attenuate the closest speaker.

if you mount them in the sail panels, think about how close that would be to your head on the driver's side, and how far away it is on the passenger side. the passenger side needs to "play louder" for the sound waves to hit your ears the same time as the driver's side. inversely, make the driver's side quieter.

Andy (Wheymeyer) was talking about this some time ago on another forum. He siad that wasn't a problem, what you want to do is locate your tweeters as far apart as possible - which gives you the widest stage. Then just use level to balance them out. It also usually requires far less equalization (kinda like the Bateman tweeter balls).

As for reverse polarity, I don't think that changes the actual level of the speaker it just changes the relative phase in relation to the other speakers. That can REALLY help blend two speakers at the crossover point when they are physically seperated by more than a few inches.

 

[ryan s]

Andy (Wheymeyer) was talking about this some time ago on another forum. He siad that wasn't a problem, what you want to do is locate your tweeters as far apart as possible - which gives you the widest stage. Then just use level to balance them out. It also usually requires far less equalization (kinda like the Bateman tweeter balls).

As for reverse polarity, I don't think that changes the actual level of the speaker it just changes the relative phase in relation to the other speakers. That can REALLY help blend two speakers at the crossover point when they are physically seperated by more than a few inches.

for ease of mounting, the only other spots would be the A-pillars or the kicks panels i think...going with a midrange, i'm hoping to mitigate some of the reflections caused by the tweeter's wide dispersion. i realllllly dont want to deal with the windshield. bateman balls...

reversing the polarity (flipping the wave) should cause some cancellation, if its at 180 degrees to the other speaker...i think...

 

[Soundmanred]

I have my tweeters in the door above the mids aimed up a little and it sounds great. Excellent soundstage and very clear.
I'll take some pics soon and show my install.