The responses are great and thanks. But you can't aim standard vette speaker locations, they are at your knee, bouncing off your leg or behind your shoulder, aiming at either the other speaker (coupe) or the back of your seat (vert). The only thing I see so far that makes any sense is the pillar tweets that are at ear level and somewhat facing you, and of course the subs, which are omni-directional. Thus my thesis is that a car's speakers should be set up as on a super home system or concert ... level or above your ears. So how to do that? Use 2 speakers at your knees? -No. Use 2 speakers at your knees and 2 behind your seat? -No. So what are you all saying ?????? Again I have not been to a concert where they used just a couple of speakers on the R & L (they are always dozens on the extreme R & L and across the stage ... and with subs at the rear).

The point is raising the stage of sound ... by raising the imaging.

 

You have to consider the frequency. Lower frequencies find their way around things really easily. Over 3k in the doors though, and you start to have problems.

In some cars you can get a soundstage above your dash with all the speakers low - but not in a corvette. I have my tweeters in my a-pillars.

My tacoma had all the speakers down low using careful tweeter aiming. The sound was about face level.

 

Tweets in the A pillars, installed at least 3" above the highest point of the dash, aimed directly at each other (or across the dash) or slightly in towards the cabin. Mids in the stock door location, aimed slightly up via tapered mounting ring or similar in a similar fashion to the tweets (across or slightly in to the cabin).

Full EQ, time alignment control can get your stage above your dash. However, adding EQ and time alignment create other issues that can effect overall tonal quality, again a compromise. Ideally you have perfectly aimed speakers in your car, with matching path lengths, but unless you have a Mclaren, you don't sit in the middle

I have poorly located door pull tweets with a 3" DLS midrange and a 7" Focal Kevlar midbass in a custom mount in the factory location and my stage is on the dash, but lacks depth in my 01z (which I know could be a lot better via A pillar tweets). System is fully active, single 12" IDQ on 270 watts in the rear cubby. Sounds damn good, but the tune is not as polished as it should be, and the tweets should be done right but I lack the motivation to do it as the car is driven about 2k miles per year, mostly on an autocross course or track.

Again is it perfect? Nope it is still in a car, but it is pretty damn nice and 1000% better than stock. I may motivate and put a system together for my 06 Duramax CC, but at this point stock is good enough.

Again it is all about compromise. As Kale mentioned, more speakers = more path, arrival, reflection and cancellation issues.

To quote a guy on another forum, "If you can't get a 2 way (mid/tweet) to sound good, then a 3 way (midbass, midrange, tweet) will rape your mother".

Ideally everyone would have a single driver on each side, that would play flat from 20hz to 20khz with no dip in response and be 110db efficient. That speaker will never exist, can't be done. Physics wins heh

Fej

 

Man ... you guys are smart.

But all in all you are missing the point of "Staging," whereas you lift the bottom to the ear.

You cannot do that with speakers that are at your knees with legs blocking, and seats blocking from the rear.

Pillar tweets help as does a strong 3.5 mid at the upper door.

Ideally speakers should be set along the a-pillars as an array, that would be pretty cool and solve much of this. Or speakers in the forward corners of the windshield?

Word is that Apple is working on a proprietary car audio system, but will likely be just be a HU thing. Thanks dudes, this is a great thread ...

 

On stage height:

First: No rear speakers should be used.

And... Depends. In a car with a large center tunnel (like the corvette) you're right that you really have to have the tweeters in the a-pillar.

Crossover should be around 3-3.5k. No need for a 3" speaker (Unless your mids don't play that high, or your tweeters don't play that low.) I used to run a 3 way system with my dynaudio speakers using dome mids which are MUCH more versatile than cone mids. I still ended up going back to a 2 way system with tweeters in pillars.


In a car with a large footwell and small center hump, you can put all the speakers on the floor and have a high stage height. An old installers trick is to point the midrange at the glass in front of the driver's head. The audio reflections pick the stage up. As I mentioned, in my old Tacoma install I had my tweeters damn near on the floor. The sound all sounded like it came from mid-windshield level.


Soundwaves can actually travel around objects and continue on their path depending on their wavelength. High frequencies can be blocked by very, very small objects. Low frequencies can get around damn near anything.
Example: pass your hand in front of a tweeter a few inches away. Huge change in sound. Do it to a midrange - little to no change. Do it to a sub - absolutely no change.

Arrays are a mess and there are very few people that can properly set one up. They are a very interesting idea.

Tweeters near glass is nearly always a bad idea.


One of the reasons my system needs very little EQ is extremely careful speaker aiming. My tweeters took me months to get dialed in before I "froze them" in the a-pillars. My midranges are angled slightly up. not as much as I'd like, but they are 8" and are as much as they'll go.

The other reason is that I used the crossover to gap them. ~3k is a bad spot in the corvette. So I gapped around that.

 

Kale, I printed out what you said and will study it but dang , it's a lot to absorb, but MAN - I really appreciate it (and still feeling all the love here). Jeff said this and Mike said that, then Steve said the opposite, so I'll go with Kale - as he seems to know pretty much everything and posts in a friendly way, thanks Kale, I'll let you know howe it turns out ... unless Kirk says I should have done that!

 

You should try to listen to other peoples cars as well. That way you can get an idea of what you want it to sound like. Also, go listen to the speakers before you buy them. Don't just buy based on reviews. Good Luck

 

In my vette club there is not a single member of 90 or so that I've seen with ANY type of uber-custom audio install! That's why I'm depending on the forum, and currently about to go with the Hybrid Audio Unitys, but revisiting the CDTs and Boston Acoustics as well ...

 

I like what you said and I read about the Hybrids, so you are referring to Rick at RAA, correct? Thanks much ...

 

I decided to go with Focal Performance series PS130 and PS165 speakers from Double-D, he gave me a great price as well!