Ok, I have a 1990 coupe and I'm doing away with the Blows system. I'm putting 6.5s up front and 6x9s in the back. I'm going to be fabricating my own speaker adapters. I've noticed some people are concerned about "sealing" the speaker enclosures. What does this do for the sound?

Also, what materials are good for making enclosures/adapters with? I'm going to design adapters to make everything fit behind stock grilles, for a clean, stock look.

My system so far is a Kenwood MP3 compatible CD deck, a Sony Xplode 50wx4 channel amp, Pioneer 6x9s for the back. I still need to get front speakers and wires.

I finished removing all the speakers last night, and started working on getting the head unit out. It's been a fun project, and i'm looking forward to getting it finished...can't wait to hear how it sounds... :cheers:

thanks for the help...

chris

 

The easiest material is MDF to make speaker enclosures with. You can use 1/2" for your needs, 3/4-1" is necessary for sub boxes. Its basically very fine particle particle board. Fiberglass is also doable but more involved.
You want to seal the front of the speaker from the back of the speaker. Since speakers are mounted in a sub boxes for example, this means a sealed box. Sealing can also mean mounting them in a door. This is sealed from the interior cabin by the door panel. If you have a speaker with the rear exposed in the same air space, this is called free-air. You can also tune free air with ported enclosures. These are generally only used for subwoofer applications. If you don't seal a non-free air speaker from the cabin, you will loose most of your bass. So for your speaker sizes, make sealed enclosures. You can also put some polyfill into the sealed boxes. This will trick the speaker into thinking its in a bigger box and give you some more bass. Fill the enclosures about half way with polyfill. This is the stuff you use to put in stuffed dolls and can be bought in a pillow size bag at craft stores for $5.
The real output of the amp is about 25x4. The deck is OK. The speakers aren't very good. Look at the RX series on http://www.bostonacoustics.com for some good speakers front and rear. Skip the seperates, the amp doesn't make enough juice to power any. Use 8 gauge power and ground wire, ground to the frame in the rear. Get a 30 amp fuse, fuse holder, and GM battery tap for the power and put the fuse in the engine compartment. Run 12 gauge wires to all the speakers from the amp. Use good RCAs like Phoenix gold or Monster.
Hope this helps
:cheers:


[Modified by 92TripleBlack, 1:02 PM 12/19/2001]


[Modified by 92TripleBlack, 1:04 PM 12/19/2001]

 

thanks for the info... :cheers:

chris

 

Anything I didn't cover you need help with?

 

you hit the points, and gave me some freebie stuff, too. I know the Pioneer speakers aren't the best out there, but I've seen the prices on some of the stuff y'all recommend around here, and it's just more than I'm willing to pay. Surely my setup will be better than the Bose, though.

It would be interesting to compare some of the high end/low end stuff, and see how much difference there is, and if it is worth the price.

thanks again for the info! :cheers:

 

No problem. BTW, the Boston RX series are not very expensive. $150-200 a set. They definitely bury pioneers, sonys, and the like. Basically, they are the best sounding coax/triax I have ever heard. Definitely great bang for the buck. The only way to beat them would be to spend over $400+ on seperates. Maybe you can dump the pioneers on a Ricer and pick them up. Definitely worth it.

 

Well...i try not to have anything to do with ricers, but I'll consider it... :D

 

Try cruising the parking lots of Chucky Cheese and any theatre playing the recent comedy Fast and the Furious. You should find a gaggle or two. Just tell them that the volume not only goes up to 10, they go to 11! :cheers:

 

I'll go cruise Noland Road in Independence this weekend...there's always teen rice clowns there. I was thoroughly surprised how much rice I've seen in the Kansas City suburbs lately. Usually it is pretty sparse, but lately...Rice-a-Roni!

Oh...on my amp, you said it was probably more like 25w per channel. Why would a manufacturer overrate their equipment by 2 or 3 times the wattage? How many watts per channel is really necessary? I don't need a lot of volume, but do more watts make better sound somehow?

chris

 

Every maker rates their amps with different rating systems. Continuous, max, different OHM, etc. Deck ratings for example are rated with the decks max rating. A 50x4 deck is really a 12x4 deck. Pyramid as another example once rated an eq 2000 watts by plugging it in the wall and when it blew up it crated a 2000w power spike.
Watts don't make anything sound better, they allow speakers to be played louder without distorting. Speakers are usually rated with two figures. Continuous and max power. You'll see for example 50w continuous, 100w max. They will run perfectly fine with 10w but will start to distort probably not much above speaking level. And distortion is what causes speakers to blow up or fry. If you start to notice your speakers do not sound just as clear at higher volumes as speaking level, this is distortion. Flapping and clipping are the most severe forms of distortion and can destroy a speaker on the spot.
Lastly, speakers have efficiency ratings. Efficiency is how efficiently the speaker translates power into noise. Most seperates need more power to make the same amount of noise as they are more inefficient. Most cheap speakers are very efficient but not accurate in their sound reproduction. The good speakers use the power to get accuracy and clarity. So a pair of inefficient speakers with 75w of power will make the same amount of noise as a pair of efficient speakers with 25w of power but they will sound much clearer.
Hope this "clears things up"

 

If I remember correctly, Pyramid was one of the "run, don't walk, away from this brand" brands...

I'll have to look over my amp's specs to see how it is rated.