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I just finished doing the front speakers (Polk Audio EX602A) and Brown Bread sound insulation.

I dug up those sedan rear deck speaker DIY and it sounds like a real pain. My question is, how important are the rear speakers acoustically? Will I really hear much of a difference from the factory speakers if I've already upgraded my front speakers?

 
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oh yeah most of the music you hear will be from the back 6x9's. If u dont have subwoofers those will put out the bass. i know i can barely hear the lower panel speakers, all i can hear are the tweeters. put the rear speakers in and it will be nicer.

 
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Well rear speakers really serve one purpose, which is rear fill. You don't want to be able to hear the rears over your fronts anyway, screws up the staging. I still have my stock 6x9s and i have to set the fader to significantly to the front so i can't hear em. (and they don't sound nearly as good as my components). The 6x9s do make more bass in stock form, but your in a sedan so you don't have 6x9s. I say leave em stock.

 
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the rear speakers act as fillers. they can create the perfect soundstage by surrounding you with sound, but if they are overpowering your front speakers, they can also hamper a quality system.

in the end, it's really personally preference.

 
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they're right but i have my speakers faded more to the back so i can hear more bass, plus it sounds more like surround sound with the hi's in the front and the bass in the back.

 
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youve got it right on the money. There are reasons why you should and should not want rearfill.

All the reasons for ditching rearfill involve having a subwoofer in your trunk. If you dont have one, there is no reason to lose the rear speakers.

that leaves only one more question..... to upgrade or not? To determine this, we should look at what kind of stereo you want, and what kind of listening you do.

In high quality systems, where imaging and staging is important, oftentimes speakers in kickpanels by teh feet can leave the stage sitting very low. The human ear is VERY good at differentiating left/right, but not so good up/down. running rear speakers on low power will not produce enough sound to mess up staging and imaging, but jsut enough to provide fantastic ambiance and to raise the stage to eye level.

Now, in most stereo's built by people who basically want a cd player in their car, no worries about quality, staging, imaging, anything like this, you will often find that people will run their best speakers in back, and stock or nothing in teh front. I will personally never understand why they do this! But if I were to venture a guess, you can still play loud music and have a conversation with the passenger. Of course, anyone in the backseat gets screwed completely, but how often do you have rear passengers? It drives me nuts for sure, But, in the end, its not my car, and if they dont care what their stereo sounds like, why should I?

Some of teh best SQ systems I have listened to actually ran STOCK speakers in the back! of course, the owner had invested hundreds of dollars of equipment and hundreds of hours in tuning.

I will assume that you have your fronts in doors. imaging is not especially great in such a configuration, so I will spare you precedures and expenses of setting up rearfill properly (SQcivic could probably do a better job of explaining it than me anyways) but I can give you a couple of small tips to ensure the staging you have does not get ruined by your rear speakers.

deck power is more than enough power for rearfill, and stock speakers put out more midbass than many 6.5's out there. You might end up even fading a bit to the front becasue deck power could be a bit much for the stock speakers. If your deck has a lowpass setting, you want to set this on and as high as possible, as higher frequencies are what destroys your stage. No higher than 400 Hz from the rear is a good rule of thumb. If you have a pioneer, this setting is called "FIE" (Front Image Enhancer) and will have three settings, you will want this setting as high as possible (250 for the pioneer) and this will limit the highs. If your deck does not come with this, then any stereo shop should have inductors you can use to limit higher frequencies, you will want something around 300Hz or so, for a 4 ohm speaker. Should be about $5-$10 per inductor, maybe less or more, depending on how much of a rip teh shop is. remmeber using this procedure will be for teh purppose of rasiing the stage to eye level, and to provide ambiance, not to have source music back there!

NOW, if you are like my old roomate, my band friend from HS, the kind of person who wants all your sound form teh back for whatever reason, Then you will probably want not only an aftermarket speaker back there, but an amp to power them. even if your fronts are off deck power, youll want an amp first for your rears. You will want something with a crisp tweet, even bright, because bouncing highs off teh rear window can muddy the sound sometimes. You will also want to look for something that has alot of midbass, stock speakers are designed to have a good range, you will want something that can go as low as stock at least (easier said than done!) realize if you do this, your stage will be destroyed, but electronic music (techno, dance, club, trance, house) will sound BETTER with this setup than with only fronts! It is the grand sacrifice of yoru stereo. electronica at teh cost of everything else.

If you have any questions about rearfill, feel free to PM me or any of the guru's here, and let us know exactly what music you listen to, what you like, and yoru current equipment, and we can getter taylor an answer to your question.

hopefully i got it just about covered here tho. *whew* thats a long post!

 
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Thanks for the ton of information!

I currently have Polk EX602A 2-way speakers in the front doors and Brown Bread sound insulation on the doors. I'm not into bass thumping, but would like really great sound.

I'm going to have to search around on the Web for more info, because a lot of the stuff you mentioned sorta makes sense but is beyond my novice knowledge on car stereos!

 
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http://www.teamcaf.org/geolemon/Phasing/Multiple.htm

http://www.elitecaraudio.com/home/ht...talcutoff=6211

http://www.caraudioforum.com/vbb2/sh...5&pagenumber=1

http://www.caraudioforum.com/vbb2/sh...light=rearfill

http://www.caraudioforum.com/vbb2/sh...light=rearfill

http://www.caraudioforum.com/vbb2/sh...light=rearfill