racebum

hertz is better than focal overall. hertz is just a klipsch sound. if you listen to a lot of rock the mid level and up aren't bad. there are worse speakers. with a good dsp tune the better ones are alright. they just aren't the best choice for what i listen to

of the sets of focal i have heard they require enclosures and a good dsp to tame them down. if you just eq them off a deck and amp the tweeter is just terrible. these things get LOUD and that's really what they are good at

morel is the brand i have a love affair with. dynaudio is the other but they haven't been making much and what is left goes for a lot. a guy ebayed a set of their 6.5 mids the other day and got 700. no tweets, no crossovers. the morel sets that really stand out are the entry maximus for deck power. the tempo ultra for moderate budgets, the hybrid which can take fairly obscene amounts of power and is more refined than the tempo and my personal favorite. the elate. the elate has a more airy tweeter than the hybrid but you seriously pay for it. drawbacks? depends on the car and install. in the air the speakers are really good. in the car you may have some frequencies that need help. tweeter is pretty flat and sounds like it rolls off early so 12 and 16k are likely to go up. they are not pre eq'd speakers but they respond well to eq work to get your favorite sound. i have a pair of b&w 602s3 speakers on my desk right now and they are a bit better sound than the car..however...factory tuned enclosures. rear tube on the tweeter. no auto interior problems. not completely a fair fight even though the hybrid and this 602s3 are similar money. if morel built boxes for these and they were in the room they might well compete just fine. car interiors change things so much and the lack of enclosure is yet another issue with car mids

best deals i have found / can get are $259 for the tempo ultra components, $499 for the hybrid and the elates i have never tried to deal on yet. the 2 way is $1349 online. 3 way is 2 grand. i know what they hybrid dealer cost is 375, 749 retail. cost on the elate might be 675-750 if i had to guess. probably going to wind up at 999 on the elate for a negotiated sale

i will say if you blindly buy a hybrid or elate you will likely love them. both are easy to tune and perform very well. they also do REALLY well with power and maintain their sound from mild to wild.

02BlownZ06

Elates up front, Hybrids in the back?

Homer3D

Having Hertz Hi-Energy in my corvette now for a week I can tell you it took me a while to “tune out” the harshness in the mid range. But now that I think I have it just right, they sound amazing. I listen to wide range of music. Pop, classic rock, R&B, country (for the wife), rap, hip hop, etc. So getting the right speaker is sometimes a little difficult. What sounds good for one style of music might not sound as good with another. Where I have my EQ set at seems to work really well for all the music I am currently listening to. I do have a 13 band EQ so I can do a decent amount of fine tuning. If I happen to have a more basic head unit with maybe a 3 band (low/mid/high) EQ, it might not work out too well.

I can tell you (once properly tuned) the sound is crisp and clean. It is a little hard to describe but it audio sounds “satisfying”. I feel like I am hearing more of the audio, notes that I might have missed hearing before. I am happy with the speakers. I think the negative I have in my system is the amp. The speakers have a RMS of 125w. I felt the amp suggested by the shop was not enough power at 75w. I decided to trust the shop as I have been out of the game for about a decade but I feel like I can push these speakers more. At the amp’s power rating, I think the JL Audio C5-650 would have been a better fit. But I think I will stick with the amp for now until I come across a good deal on a better/stronger amp. Overall, no regrets.

racebum

im not sure what would fit in a c5z. when i had a c5z the rear was thin. like i put a tempo ultra 5.25 coax there and had to rig up plates to seal it. speaker was too thick and i had to get creative to make it work

if you can afford the elate they are magic. they are 98% of the $5000 supremo set and have a similar sound.

however, they require a good amplifier and install to really do what they do

racebum

under powering isn't an issue provided you don't push the amp to clipping. people ALWAYS under power home audio and it's not an issue. the reason there is this idea that you want the same or more than rated power in car audio is how people operate car audio..usually it's LOUD. clipping amps destroy speakers

75w rms is 17.3 volts ac at 1khz. set your amp gains there and if it's a good amp it will probably do 20-21v no problem but that's it. don't push it harder.

sound quality of the amp is a different story. amps have an ENORMOUS impact on SQ. anyone that has heard an audison thesis vs practically anything can attest to this.

my favorite reasonable costing amplifiers are the JL slash series. the old guy who designed the PPI power class amps is the brain behind them. good SQ. dynamic. some older amplifiers like the phoenix gold ZPA amps also sound amazing but get awful large and need to be refurbished at this age

i don't like any class D or G amps for mids and tweets. JL HD and ARC are probably the best. class A and class A/B just sound better to me

on subs D is fine, again if it's decent.

Homer3D

I am think that's where I am at. My head unit (Kenwood DMX7704S) volume range is from 0 to I think 40. At 27-28 it sounds really good when sitting in my garage or in a parking lot. However, driving I want to turn it up to overcome the exhaust. While sitting in my garage, I turned the sub off and fader to the front. I play some music and begin to turn it up. When I hit 32 I can tell it is going to start clipping and I back it off.

The amp I am running is the JL RD900/5 but I feel I should have went with my first choice, the Arc Audio XDi1100.5

I think I am going to try to bridged the amp which will make 200 W RMS x 2 @ 4Ω and see if I can get the speakers louder to but with no clipping.

racebum

unless you have a scope the easiest way to set amp gains is with AC voltage on your multimeter. turn your deck up about 2/3rds to 3/4 of max, no speakers connected. play a 1khz wave for mids tweets, set gain till the voltage = wattage

formula is watts * ohms then find the square root of that number. for example 200w at 2 ohms is 1000, square root is 31.6v if it's 4 ohms the voltage number is 44.7v

this is insanely useful with multi channel amps and multiple amps where it's hard to get ALL the gains right by ear

https://www.mtx.com/testtones

mtx has test tones you can download for just this reason via mp3 file

Homer3D

I do have a multimeter but don't really need it. The JL RD amps have a clipping LED so you can set the gain correctly. You just download the test tone from JL's website, have it play while you turn up the gain until the LED turns on. Then back it off just a bit.

racebum

oh that's cool. i've seen home gear setup the same way. in fact my old adcom 5300 in the back room has this feature

the curiosity would be reading voltage when the clip light comes on and seeing what the wattage is. if you know voltage you can calculate wattage