subwoofer....To cut or not to cut

[Armond]

Finaly put in my sound system. I wanted a soft bass using a 8" free air sub but opted out because I did not want to cut any holes on the back panel. Let it stay a "Virgin". So, I decided to use a 10" powered sub mounted inside the trunk. This thing thumps. I think I just pimped my ride. You can hear my Tii a block away. I don't think this will stay in the car long. I have 6X9's mounted on the rear kick panel but it's not enough. Should I cut holes? any drawbacks? Re-sale value,Gas fumes,originality? Thanks

[chrome68]

I say cut. From subwoofer experience. If you go sub, I'd keep em as small as you can and still feel the sound you want. even if your 02 is freshly rebuilt from the ground up and fully stuffed with dynomat, a big sub will rattle it to pieces in a few months. believe me I've rattled trim and dashboards apart with stereos. in my 1602 I have 2 6x9s in the kick pannel under the backseat at 120 rms ea, and 5" rounds under the dash at 100 rms ea and mines plenty loud. I can even drown out the sound of the wind and my cherrybomb on the freeway... I know the critics will jump in about the cherry bomb on an 02, but I'm a broke young guy, it's 20$ and it fits the stock location. acualy has a good tone, just too loud. Anyhow, if it's not loud enough, I say invest in a quality head unit, and some matched speakers with plenty of power, or run an amp and more powerfull 6x9s and whatever you use up front.

[winstontj]

Spend your hard earned money on something you will really enjoy. Take a look at MB Quart. They sell a QUALITY product and for around $1,400 you can get yourself a set of Q's that will have you grinning ear to ear. A set of Q's will fit nicely in the rear deck lid or in the panel next to the floor under the rear seat. You can mount the tweeters up higher and the woofers low and it's a very nice combination. Also you can build enclosures under the seats and everything stays out of sight. ALSO.... if you mount them down low you get the added out of sight out of mind factor (your car won't get broken into as much).....

6X9's make excellent gravy dishes, paperweights, magnets to hold up your grocery list on the fridge... but have no place in your car.

What sub are you running? What size and brand amps do you have and what's your price range? Why did you go with a 10" sub?

Do you know it takes 38 1/2 FEET (yes thrity eight and one half feet) for a 12" subwoofer's mid range base frequency to be heard correctly? Shoving a 10" sub in your trunk just rattles your license plates and your eyeballs....

[BLUNT]

it depends on your car. im not cutting into mine. im going to run a front stage only and fabricate a fiberglass enclosure that fits in the rear footwell on 1 side with a single 8 or 10. that way i can yank it out and carry passengers if need be or remove it for track

[H_Krix]

Agreed on the issue of 6x9 speakers. I worked as a stereo installer for aboiut 4 1/2 years, and put all sorts of moronic nonsense into cars... I remember a particular Galant with 9 TVs in it once... Oh, the atrocities I preformed in the name of a steady paycheck.

My '75 has 6x9" holes in the back shelf that are getting plates rivited over them at the earliest convenience. Acoustically speaking, sound coming at you from behind (and with 6x9s, more sound than from up front) ruins your soundstage. The best combination you can have is a 6" midbass, 4" mid-high, and a 1" tweeter ahead of you in the kickpanel and door. There's only so much you can do in a car, unfortunately.

After that, you dont need a sub any bigger than a 10" unless you're trying to loosen your fillings. my 325i has a set-up nearly identical to that listed above, and it is pure perfection to listen to. Leave the shelf alone.

Also, in the coming weeks, I'm going to be fabricating my own plastic vacuum-forming machine. If things work out well, look for custom designed kickpanel enclosures soon!

[winstontj]

So H_Krix I know you said 325i but where would you put speakers in the 02? The door is limited because of the window. I guess you could put it forward and all the way down??? OR if you did it right you could put it below the hood lever but that's not always waterproof. What brand do you swear by? I've got a set of 5.5" Q's that I was going to put in custom fiberglass enclosures in the lower panel (yes it's a bad spot but these cabins are small) behind your feet if you were sitting in the back seat. I know i'd be better in the doors but there's not enough room and the sound quality will be crap in composite doors.....

Thoughts??? Also was going to run my JL-W3 8" out of the trunk but in a bandpass box.... thoughts on that? I have a Fosgate 400a2 and a fosgate 800a4 going to push the JL8-W3 with the 400 and the 5.5" Q's with the 800.....

[TMK-001]

I find it more enjoyable to wind down my windows and listen to the induction noise and the howl of the exhaust.

I plan on mounting speakers in custom front kick panels as I dont want to put holes in the doors like I used to have (6.5" Earthquake splits in the lower doors with tweaters near vent window regulator)

We will see what else I do... I have 5" holes in the rear parcel shelf currently, thanks to a PPO.

Todd

[Armond]

I was trying to save dough and are using all my equipment stored in my garage. Here is the list.

Pioneer head unit 35X4 Decent unit I think

Pioneer 8" free air sub

10" powered bazooka sub

Rockford Fostgate Amp...Punch

Sony Pre-amp..Dont make them anymore.

Blaupunkt 6X9's

JVC 10 disc CD changer

I think I'll just tweak the pre-amp to suttle out the Bazooka. I will probably go with separates down the road. H-Krix Idea makes sense to me. Where do you mount the 6"

[H_Krix]

if you're going the route of splitting the soundrange into 4 sections (10" bass, 6" mid-low, 4" mid-high, and 1" high) then you're going to have to get creative with your mounting. the forwardmost portion of the door will handle a 6" speaker of moderate size rather easily, without the complication of worrying about the window hitting it. You can get great sound with just a 6" and a 1" by playing with crossover settings a bit. You can also fit both of these in your doors or kickpanels also. I'm planning on doing a 6" in the kickpanel, with a 4" in the door, and 1" on the dash.

Make sure to put some sort of waterproofing behind the speaker though. A quick and dirty way is this: go to your local grocery store and buy some of those disposable plastic tupperware bowls, make sure they're the proper diameter and depth to hold one of your speakers. Mount the speaker to the door metal with the tupperware bowl behind it (use some foam or Dynamat as a gasket to avoid vibration) and mount the grille to the doorpanel. Screwing the speaker to the panel will just make things distort and look like crap. Also, since aftermarket speaker grilles look kind of corny nowadays, buy some factory-replacements on eBay. I bought some Ford grilles with no markings that sit perfectly flush, and have bent tabs that hold them in place.

You'll have to go with shallower speakers if you're putting 6" in the doors. Something with a huge magnet like an MB Quart will get really close to the other side of the doorskin, and the resulting magnetic interference (it will pull the voice coil out towards the door) is going to give you crummy bass response.

The best place you can mount the 1" (acounstically speaking) is on the parcel tray in the dash. To the left of the gauge cluster, there's a small "Pocket" - mounting the tweeter on the vertical face of this part of the dash will give you the best soundstage, with the passenger's tweeter on the opposite side. Now, a lot of people are going to cry bloody murder at the thought of drilling into your dash, but I already have a three-gauge pod up there, so I wasn't too concerned. If that place isnt for you, look at the illustration below for the next-best locations. Keep in mind that a tweeter should be at least 6" away from another speaker to avoid interference (huge magnets vs. small ones) but most people won't be able to tell the difference anyways.

On the diagram below - surface-mount means you use the elevated adapter the tweeters come with. They'll stick out of their mounting surface about 3/4" Flush mounting looks better, but you need about a 2" diameter hole behind the speaker for clearance. (if you surface-mount, mount the tweeter to the doorpanel. They're not heavy enough to distort the board)

Pioneer makes the best speakers for the money, but they're ugly as hell. Do yourself a favour and hide them behind a "factory" looking grille. Infinity makes beautiful mid-dollar audiophile stuff, but its a tad overpriced. Find "Hot" specials on eBay. JL for subs, hands down and forever. Old Cerwin-Vegas, if you can find them, work wonders for everything. I'm planning on all CV in Phoenix once I get to that stage.

Lastly, on the topic of Subwoofers: 10" is the most you'll ever need for your car. If you get a free-air, mount it to a board, NOT to the wall behind the rear seat. Free-air subs always sound weak, and they're very ineffecient. Make sure there is 6" of airspace in front of and behind one, if you plan on using one. Bandpass boxes, in my opinion, sound nasty as well. A lot of punch, but they dont sound "real" if that makes any sense. Personally, give me a single-chamber vented box anyday.

Sorry for the rant, I'm rather opinionated about my audio.

[2002Targa]

You mentioned making an encosure form, any thoughts on building custom form fitting 8" enclosure that you could tuck under one the back seats?? I was thinking about doing one out of wood but I got some 6 series rear buckets for the rear and now there's not enough room.

But I was thinking that for the size of these cars, an 8" under the back seat would be totaly invisable and more than enough bass.

[H_Krix]

heh, an 8" woofer under the rear seat will certainly make things interesting for your passengers...

If you're going that route, look into doing someting like these:

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-HcDLkWwRvGr/cgi-bin/Prodview.asp?readmore=true&g=520&I=2064SSMB8#Tab

They're free-air 8" "mid-bass" speakers. They can't give you the same sort of low-end hammering that a 10" in a vented box will do, but its a good compromise, especially if you're running that 6-series rear seat. Plus, they're only 2.5" thick, so you dont have to worry about magnet interference. Make sure to dynamat the whole area unser the rear seat, and use 3/8" MDF for a baffle board when mounting them. I can see this sounding pretty good, provided it doesn't rattle the crap out of the seat frame. Also, make sure to ceck if the seat hits the speakers when someone sits in it. You don't want to have someone's ass pressing the voice coils in while you're listening to your music.

Here's another thought, for those of us with 2002-series rear seats:

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-HcDLkWwRvGr/cgi-bin/ProdView.asp?g=520&id=morephotosπ=1&i=130TSS2541&display=L#Tab

This is a 10" pioneer "Shallow-mount" subwoofer that only takes between .35 and .70 cubic feet of sealed airspace to operate. its also only 3" thick. Since thats about all we have back there anyways, this could be a nice way to keep your trunk clutter-free. Toss the speaker on one side, amp on the other, and nobody is the wiser! If you have a rear-mount battery, even better.

Again, this will be muffled by the seat, so the bass won't be anything earth-shattering, but its probably the best comprimise we have between a huge ugly box in the trunk, and having 6x9s poking out the rear shelf.

[ibjettin]

H_Krix, you seem to have the most knowledge so far about stereo installation! Thanks for all the info! I will be installing my stereo soon and found this to be very helpful. I have a system similar to Armonds, which is a lot of (older) stuff in a box stored in the garage. It sounds like the speakers are what I really need to focus on since they are the hardest to replace (by that I mean cutting into panels and such).

You have a lot of info you already provided, how about creating a writeup in the FAQ Articles Construction Zone? I'd hate to lose this info and would love to see it posted where we all can easily find it.

thanks!

[H_Krix]

Sure thing, I'd be happy to do it!

[winstontj]

hey have you ever used polar fleece and poly resin to make custom shaped enclosures? Saw that on TV recently and thought it was pretty trick.

Also what do you think about the door in terms of building an enclosure inside? Before I put the door skin on if I build an enclosure around the inner frame would that be as good as it gets? The MB Quart does have huge magnets but my doorskins won't be metal so no worries there.

I was wrong about the bandpass... I have a JL8-W3 that is mounted to a completely enclosed box. No ports/vents at all. I have a friend who is an acoustical sound guy at Berkley and he designed this box that's supposedly "better" - (it was free). I can't tell the difference but I thought vented/ported boxes were for noise and sealed boxes were for sound quality?

[oz_tom]

H_Krix, Thankyou very much for these informative posts! They are really excellent! Would love to see a "The 02 Stereo Guide" in the articles section :-) You sure have enough knowledge!

I (with alot of help from Beaner7102) just started installing my stereo on the weekend. Its running 6x9's up the back as the holes were already cut - so i find it interesting you say that 6x9's arent that great. I read alot of articles and found people were very happy with them (however that being said, they were not being put into 02's) - but i guess "to each there own". On the other hand im glad to hear your opinion in Pioneer speakers as they all are Pioneer with exception of the sub which is Soundstream.

Thanks again for the informative posts!

Tom