J187

If I remember the pics, what's impressive is the size of them. You posted them somewhere else in here before, right?

WhiteRabbit

yeah, over .3 cubes each, using a home audio 3" mounting plate tweeter and a midrange over 3 inches deep, my clutch nearly rubbed the carpet off on the drivers side, and the tweeters stuck out so far that rain got on them just from the act of opening the door to get into the car and put me out 60 bucks per side. >.<

and I played with putting a 10 in the passenger side footwell for awhile. another failure, but damn did rage agasint the machine sound really cool....

J187

^^^^^Must be refering to "Take the power back" midbass mania

What do you have there now, you rebuild the kicks?

WhiteRabbit

yeah, I never talk about them, they are completely impractical for th average civic enthusiast. the midwoofers are in a fireman-said-this-was-a-bad-idea box carved out of the kick panels to sink the speakers inside the kick area. without tweeters, takes up about one inch of space more than stock, and volume is a non issue, they hook into the main frame rails that support the door sills so air goes all the way back.

but it would be rediculous to suggest other enthusiasts should be cutting up their kick areas for many obvious reasons!

I modeled the new kicks from this page:

http://www.sounddomain.com/memberpage/321753/7

pages 7 and 8

J187

I always loved that install. And I know it's sponsorship, but I hated the addition of the PG to the kicks, and I did not like the deadpedal added later.

WhiteRabbit

definitely. poor attention to detail, combining the aluminum plate in a car with no other silver.

same with the luminescent logo.

MegaHurtz

iTrader: (6)

awesome sounding car though, I've heard it

J187

Was the metal uglier in person?

MegaHurtz

iTrader: (6)

not sure I noticed it

point it out to me on the install page

ex_03

I dont know if its becuase im behind a firewall? but I got red XXXXXX's I try at home tonight the red X's look good though!

MegaHurtz

iTrader: (6)

the pics arent up anymore, I am working on getting them back

J187

FUUUUUU GLY!

ncirom2003

iTrader: (7)

pic intensive is nice, when you can see them! lol, this is a good idea though cus i could pull the 5-1/8th inch speakers from my door and put them in the kicks and put some 6.5's in the door to get more mids and mid/lows up front cus i got the same 5-1/8ths in the rear deck and subs in trunk! fix the pics this is def a useful diy

paradoxblue

iTrader: (1)

FIXX IT

email me all the pics at paradoxblue@gmail.com and ill host em for ya's

WhiteRabbit

you guys are gonna regret this...

J187

WhiteRabbit

refer to my recent post explaining why I think the pictures are awful and the stage poor.

if it will help, as soon as I can actually get the pics out to mega, I'll post back in here suggesting what I didnt like about the kicks, what I would have done to make them better, perhaps a cliffs notes on entry level positioning, and the things I wish I could have done to make them better but have absolutely no idea how to accomplish and ask for input fomr the rest of you.

no promises. and mega is been off the ball as Ive been trying ot get ahold of him.

J187

OH, I saw your post about awful pictures, I didn't realize we were trying to revive the pics! I've got some pics that I would like to just let die too. There really isn't a lot of kick panel stuff on this forum. I may be making kicks in the next couple weeks. If I do, I'll chronical the install.

ncirom2003

iTrader: (7)

why make kick panels if they are already speakers like 4 inches from where your going to mount them? i understand you can get better angling toward the ears but most people leave the door speakers in, wont they mess with each others waves? jw i dont think so but i thought i saw something about this. you guys should mount some in the rear panels

WhiteRabbit

speakers in the rear harm the soundstage, ncirom. The potential benefit I hear in width is taken fully by the detriment to depth and distance the stage sits from the ear. I am only so good an installer, and would rather have a stage that sits miles in front of me and a bit narrow than a stage that sounds wonderfully distributed, but sounds like I am wearing headphones!

but the benefit to making kickpanels, even if speakers are four inches from your head, is the potential benefit to stage positioning. I agree with you, I like the door speaker positions in our cars. unfortunately, I dont like the stage height at the far ends of the stage in the doors, nor do I like the other problems of mounting the midrange spekaers VERY far off axis on one side, and only slightly off axis on the other side.

remember, its not angling "towards" the ears thats important, its angling them in such a way that puts drivers side and passenger side phase inline and make the frequency response of both sides equal! and on top of all this, making it do so while having a uniform well distributed stage from left to right, at the same height, over the dash, extending from mirror to mirror, while being able to discern whether an object is front stage or in the back of the stage! Thats a tall order. and is there more? probably, but ill be darned if I know what it is!

edit: then mega goes to bed for the night, before we have a chance to exchange some photo's....

ex_03

I disagree with how some of you have chosen to remove the rears. I did a small study on ambient sound in sound Q winners, like steve brown of alpine, and mark aldridge from way back. And I wandered what the big deal was, why are all these guys doing rears, and I did mine in a old car with 30 band equilization and the difference was amazing, costly but amazing.

So I have debated this very issue with my civic as of now I have rear components matching the fronts, and at least too me when I removed them there seemed to be major loss at least ear wise, I am not really concerned with rta aspects as I plan on not competing any more but, just my two pennys on this subject.

Love to hear more on this!!

WhiteRabbit

yeah, its definitely not an RTA issue, its an issue of the stage being pulled back.

Unfortunately its not a matter of emulating top top SQ competitor's cars, they do some crazy things to their cars to enhance imaging and staging! they have access to tools we simply dont care to spend the money on to ensure putting extra tweeters up high, or rear speakers dont hurt more than they help.

remember the K.I.S.S. rule! a low tech car will probbaly have to expect to have the stage pulled back without fancy processing equipment to make the positioning more transparent.

However, I wouldnt doubt it for one second if you told me a couple top sq competitors ran rear speakers. But I would be curious what they ran in the signal path between those speakers and the radio? how did they decide to tune those rears?

as far as your car, I could definitely see there being a loss with the disconnect of the rears, the volume loss alone would make the difference night and day, however if your matching components refers to matching speaker lines and not identical sides, all too often the rear speakers adds more in the midbass department, creating a lack of the lower end and a greater disconnect between the stage and subwoofer upon removal of the rears.

or is it something else? can you elaborate on some of your experiences a/b-ing your car with and without rears?

J187

Personally I have found sometimes I am able to spread my stage with ambient sound, whereas occasionaly the stage winds up feeling like it's stuck to the back of my head. For me, it's a matter of experimentation. Usually I prefer to have rear fill but if I can't get my stage out over my dash, I abort the mission at once. We did Eclipse speakers in a 98 Audi A4 and when we tried ambient we had no luck. Stage was all over the place. The owner kept insisting on using them. Till finallly he gave in and let us take them out. The stage sat perfectly depth wise but It was definitely low. But I didn't say anything about the height, I was done dealing with the guy he was a pain in the ***. . . .

Anyway, I use 6.5" Quarts in the rear of my vehicle and I find my front stage doesn't move at all, it just expands. I love having rears in my car at the moment.

ex_03

See and thats where im at. What I was concidering is this. I use a 4 channel for all four 6"mids and tweets. This is how I have it wired:
2 6"mids on the left to one channel
2 6"mids on the right to one channel
2 tweets on the left to one channel
2 tweets on the right to one channel

I have the speakers ran directly to the amp and I have the amp crossed over with 2 modified 2xs(the chips inside). Your right whiterabbit I do have more midbass becuase I cant devide the front from the rear. What I am purposing is this:
home depot has lighting switches that are adjustable, each switch has two connections so I could adjust tweet volume and woofer volume, therefore being able to adjust abient sound, I know some pro's outthere that have done it no problems. Becuase of the rears just hanging in the trunk and using the trunk they have way more midbass than the fronts so I guessing thats where the problem lies, But if I can control them say turn them down some should be able to get what Im looking for.

WhiteRabbit

the audiocontrol ESP2 was designed to do exactly that. and many signal processors come with compressors designed to do the opposite. So whatever you need can be had within the realm of 12 volt appliances. I find the use of alternatove electrical means to have poor attention to detail, and looks as poor as, well, actually installing a home dimmer switch inside a car!

your own SQ will be highly subjective, and if you enjoy having four tweeters with a pair on a dimmer switch, more power to you! But it owuld be irresponsible to suggest that by adding the extra speakers you are enhancing your stage. never forget the KISS rule!

J187

Welcome to the new Sixoctave system by CDT Audio. 4" Front fill or Rear fill speakers which come with a dimmer style device to finely tune the fill in precisely.
This system has been out for about 5 days now.

WWW.CDTAUDIO.COM

WhiteRabbit

I believe it. something to go along with their additional tweets for the "stage enhancement kit". same idea, lower FR.

ex_03

Lol..O.K. anyway your saying that adding rear fill is garbage basically? And do you think I would mount a 120v dimmer switch say hot glued to the center of my dash? come on man people have been converting 31 band rane eq's to 12v for 20 years, they have also been using items such as dimmer switches for car audio, it in no way hurts the sound. Why do you think most passive crossovers have the ability to attenuate up to -3db for the tweet alone? for the front staging its for when you cant mount the tweeter's on the same plane as the mid woofer. A dimmer can be used in the same manner for the rears. I can't see K.I.S.S in cars like ours. But I guess if you only do a set of components and a sub in every car you have then thats just what your used to.

J187

I actually think the Sixoctave system sounds like a good idea, if for no better reason, the ability to add a 4" midrange to components without the need for additional amplification. I'm gonna check it out. I'll let everyone know how it is.

ex_03

I agree with you completely, but I thought bostons, diamond audio, dyne had 6"4"3" and tweet systems?