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Will your top fit in the back with your sub box? I’ve just finished mine and built the box for the sub to sit right under the top when it’s stored. Very displeased with the bass, the rest sounds fantastic but the sub is very underwhelming. Was thinking of trying something a little different....
Will your top fit in the back with your sub box? I’ve just finished mine and built the box for the sub to sit right under the top when it’s stored. Very displeased with the bass, the rest sounds fantastic but the sub is very underwhelming. Was thinking of trying something a little different....
After trying several different sub layouts in my car, I found that the further back the sub was mounted, the more cancellation I got from the body. It's a standing wave/physics problem, not the sub itself because the amp is delivering full power and the cone is moving a lot. The best solutions I found were ones where the subwoofer itself is located more toward the B-pillar with volume both in front AND behind the sub. Your layout is partly there, but with the large box volume, there's no rear cavity and it probably behaves the same as a sub tucked in the back corner.
I think I’ll build another, smaller box and just try moving it around until I find that sweet spot. I’ve always done ported boxes before and this one’s sealed so may end up going that route too. Both of you have given me some things to think about. The box really isn’t as big as it looks, the volume is 1.48ish, the sub likes between .75 and 1.75z I was wanting some deeper bass so thought I’d go larger.
The rest of the space is hiding the crossovers for the mids and all the wiring.
Maybe try rotating it 180* so that the sub is toward the front of the car and see if you notice a change. That's much easier than a whole new enclosure.
So, I have finally reached a point where I can say that I'm done buying speakers and parts. The final round of refresh consisted of removing the M25 tweeters, and the Dayton DC-160-4 6.5" woofers. I installed the Focal ES 165 KX2's in tweeter pods (the same as the M25's) and then put in the 6.5" woofers. I added some FAST rings around the cone of the woofers and used speaker gasket on the tweets before tightening down in the pods. Once the amp was rewired to run individual channels again, I removed the Focal Integration 5.25s and installed 5.25" K2Ps (again from Focal). Decision time. I had initially wanted to run the passive crossovers with the KX2's, but my friend insisting not to as well as not being able to find a place to mount them where I could actually use them (they're HUGE!) made me reconsider. Boy am I glad he talked me out of it. I now run a full active 8-way setup. Each speaker has it's own individual channel. Before you put me on blast for running rear speakers, they sound great, thanks to the tuning.
The tuning, OMG the tuning. This is easily where a system is made or broken, not to mention the single biggest source of my frustrations thus far. A HUGE thanks to my friend Forrest who came through in a late night thrash to dial this mamma jamma in. I spent easily 12 hours on completing the install (taking a break every 2 hours or so since it was 100* in my garage). I will admit, tuning has always eluded me...at least with any expertise. What Forrest showed me was without a doubt the most impressive display of professional tuning I've ever seen. He easily has more in tuning gear than my whole audio system is worth. Just the software he used was well north of $1K. So no mic and RTA was used...lol. Naw man...try 5 microphones in an array (damn mic stand weighed like 35 pounds) all connected to a multi-screen setup displaying the sound measuring software, a laptop for the DSP software, and full integration of the two. It took about 30 minutes just to set everything up. After it was setup, within 2 hours Forrest had her screaming boy! We (hey, I was there for moral support) dialed each driver in individually using the "JBL curve." This is where JL's new software really shines. Each driver has a fully individualized 10 band EQ. My attempts at tuning had me only using 1 of the available EQ bands. Forrest used all 10. We played "Pulsed Pink noise" not standard pink noise and that made quite a big difference when measuring real time playback. We started with the tweeters set on a 4500 Hz 24 db BW and no high limit set. Each of those only used about 5 points to dial in (after lowering the db about 12.5 points.) Then we did the 4” mids from 1750 Hz – 4500 Hz also on a 24 db BW. Same deal, about 5 points needed to smooth the curve. Then to the 6.5” woofers. Set these to 80 Hz – 1750 Hz on 24 db BW. We needed to drop these about 10 db to get them “on the curve.” Man do those damn things rip! We set the rear speakers to play from 200 Hz – 2000 Hz (well within their freq range) and mirrored the woofer curve. Now…the subwoofer. That beautiful W7AE…you know the one I almost sold. Let me tell you, the curve on thing was spiked at 40 Hz. The rear glass in the vette brings a TON of gain with it. We turned it down like 18 db and then had to drop 3-4 low “Q” points at 40 Hz just to get the 20-80 Hz plateau curve lined up. But once that happened, we give manually give the gain back. Satisfied with the curves, polarities and crossovers, we moved on to time alignment.
Watching this software do time alignment was AWESOME! Think we used a measuring tape? Haha, hell no! His software plotted out the frequency plot from the furthest speaker (passenger woof in my case) and he pulsed each driver and aligned the sine wave over one another. By altering the delay, we could literally align each driver PERFECTLY within thousandths of milliseconds. It took all of five minutes. Satisfied that we were there, we gave the first music a listen. OH MY GOD! I had no idea my car could sound that impressive. It was clean, crisp, and detailed. Pure bliss. I’m so glad I let him tune my rig man because I would’ve chased my tail for MONTHS trying to get it to sound half as good as it does now. We jammed out to Killswitch, Petey Pablo, Poison, Novelists and it all sounded amazing. And that W7…my god that thing absolutely HAMMERS in a small corvette. Honestly, I’m bummed I didn’t take any pics of the setup because that would’ve made this post so much better, and I’m going to see if he has any of his setup that he is willing to share, so look for a future update. I will take some pics of the finished stuff later today…so happy y’all. Thanks for reading!
Last edited by Pb82 Ronin; Aug 1, 2019 at 01:59 PM.
Wow! That system is top notch! I am running the older Focal KRX2's. I am running them passive as I don't have the knowledge or experience to go active, but I have been happy with my system after adding a DSP and tuning, so no plans to tinker with anything anytime soon. Your friend hooked you up big time! Having a knowledgeable tuner is a great find and key to a great sounding set up.
Pics (and hopefully some video) coming on Monday since we're going to do another tuning session. It was so much fun, we just have to do another one...plus, I feel like my thread is suffering without pics and video of the whole process...
So, as I mentioned, I took some pics this time. I'm also uploading a YouTube from the go pro about how we did the time alignment.
[img] New Focal TN-53 tweets..."M-dome" Passenger side tweet and mid. Passenger side Focal KRX2 woofer Drivers side woofer Drivers side mid-range (Dayton RS100-4)
More pics:
So in the second picture, we're setting the time alignment. I have a YouTube coming showing this in real time. In the 3rd picture, the target is the dark blue line. For those of you that know tuning, that picture is taken in 1/6th Octave, so that's really remarkable. The main 6.5" woofer curves actually looked like saw teeth when we started. For those of you who are new to tuning, the colors displayed are as follows:
Light blue: Subwoofer
Dark blue: 6.5 mid
Pink: Rear speakers
Orange: Mid-range
Green: Tweeter
Here's the microphone rig...(the 5th microphone is hidden in the shadow of the flash) Pretty impressive... Here you can see both software's next to each other. JL's VXi DSP software is on the right and the crown jewel Systune by AFMG on the left. Here's my final curve when we were all done. We used a Mike Hall curve (he's a SQL competitor) because I mostly listen to rock and metal.
Last edited by Pb82 Ronin; Jun 2, 2019 at 05:15 PM.
The camera flash really shows that stuff...but you can't see anything while sitting in the car. I did trim the fast ring on the drivers side, so it fits better. But I didn't know the door car would bend it. The door cards have to come off one more time either way because I need to install the VB2. But out of curiosity...what/how would you do it differently?
Last edited by Pb82 Ronin; Jun 2, 2019 at 08:30 PM.
The camera flash really shows that stuff...but you can't see anything while sitting in the car. I did trim the fast ring on the drivers side, so it fits better. But I didn't know the door car would bend it. The door cards have to come off one more time either way because I need to install the VB2. But out of curiosity...what/how would you do it differently?
So paint the adapters black and trim the fast rings? That's originally what I had planned to do.
Exactly that. My suggestion would be either paint the adapters black or go over them with some nicely trimmed black sound deadening mat to cover up as much as possible. I also considered fast rings but passed on them. I didn't want to see them or hide the look of the speaker. I also used the Metra speaker plates which were black to begin with rather than make my own. Just my opinion though, but I don't like for anyone to look at my work and it be obvious that I did it myself. You want it to look as good as it sounds, but like I said, just my opinion.
Exactly that. My suggestion would be either paint the adapters black or go over them with some nicely trimmed black sound deadening mat to cover up as much as possible. I also considered fast rings but passed on them. I didn't want to see them or hide the look of the speaker. I also used the Metra speaker plates which were black to begin with rather than make my own. Just my opinion though, but I don't like for anyone to look at my work and it be obvious that I did it myself. You want it to look as good as it sounds, but like I said, just my opinion.
An opinion which I value. My update post, like many others, was to show progress, but not the final product. I know the speaker install would be re-visited when I did the "final" touches, but I wanted to tune the system first, make sure I was happy with the parts and output before I made it pretty. Now that I'm beyond happy (bro...this setup absolutely RIPS!!!) I can get the nit-picky details handled in my down time. Unfortunately, that makes for boring viewing. LOL! Either way, I don't think many folks visit Corvette audio, which is a pity. You got to admit, those curves are sexy as hell huh?
Last edited by Pb82 Ronin; Jun 2, 2019 at 09:56 PM.
UPDATE:
So my sub began going intermittent again and then turning completely off. Turns our it was in fact the AMP this time. R.I.P. JL Slash V2 500/1. The pot solder on the gain had melted (or weakened) and was no longer able to complete circuit for the desired output. How did I figure it out? I'm glad you asked. I would turn the **** on the DRC (media control ****) all the way down, and the sub would come back on. Then I would slowly apply more gain, and it would cut off again. Did this a few times. It was consistent at like >5% gain turning off. With this consistency, I knew the gain pot in the amp was bad. So out with the old...in with the new. I replaced the injured 500/1 with a brand new JL XD 600/1 mono. http://www.jlaudio.com/xd600-1v2-car...plifiers-98604 I chose this amp because the power output is the optimal output for the W7 at 500W @ 3 ohms. Super quick to swap since the wires and everything were already in place. Drove back to Forrest's place to get everything dialed in...again. ZERO changes were made to the EQ of speakers as they sound fantastic. We did however, take JL's advice and turned the db up on ALL speakers (mirrored) until our strongest speaker (meaning the one with the highest db output as baseline which was 2.0 db gain in my case) was at 12 db gain (the amps max setting). So the gain was bumped 10.0 db on all channels. This made the amp perform at full output on all channels without affecting the tune, only the output. OMG freaking ridiculous output! 10 db is a TON! We also decided to hook up an oscilloscope to the HU, RCA's and amps to find where our clipping points would be since we didn't do that before. To both our surprise, the Pioneer 8200NEX DOES NOT CLIP anywhere, on any signal out! We turned the volume as high as it would go (setting 40) and ZERO clipping on the main, rear, and sub outputs. So we the tested the sub AMP output. How about with the amp gain at 100%, still NO CLIPPING! It's nice to know officially that there is no clipped signal anywhere in my setup...and here I was ready to ditch the Pioneer. LOL. So we spent the majority of the day tuning specifically the sub.
Background: I was getting weird sounds out of the sub. It would have kind of a "tinny pop" to it like it was getting a high frequency to it when being turned up. (Happened with the old amp too) Why? I don't have "Y" adaptors on my sub RCA output that convert a stereo signal output into a mono output. So essentially when installing both L/R signal from the source to the speaker, that introduces a stereo signal into a the single driver. This is not usually an issue in multiple subwoofer installs (read: 2 subs). Subwoofers (as well as any speaker) don't like stereo input. Lesson learned. The fix was to REMOVE the right channel input all together and just run a true MONO (left channel only) signal. The result? Much LESS output, however a MUCH cleaner sound from the sub. But I still want more, I mean come on, it's a W7! So I then remembered that I had turned up the gain on all the channels...EXCEPT the sub because we were tuning it. it was set at 0.0 gain. But remember, we had 10 db of gain to bring the sub up with the rest of the system. I couldn't believe how loud that W7 can get! I couldn't go much passed 6.0db gain because you couldn't hear yourself think...or breathe very well.
The verdict? I'm truly impressed with the VXi and the absolute control you're given. It can dial in any speaker to any curve you want (within reason obviously). And I'm even convinced you could get a Bose system to sound good with it (now THAT is a BOLD statement). Tuning is absolutely a MUST in these cars. Without it, I don't think you'll ever be happy. At least I know I wouldn't have been. Is a DSP "necessary" per se? For me it was. But I think for the average user on a budget, if you spend your money on a great head unit and good component sets (with adjustable crossovers), you can achieve a high quality sound WITH tuning. Tuning meaning a microphone with an RTA and the ability to adjust time alignment and as many EQ bands as you can afford from your HU. Without tuning, you're merely amplifying problems. Think about it this way. Playing frequencies through a speaker is the same in EVERY scenario whether it's a home theater setup, a shelf speaker, or in a car door. But how the speaker replays those frequencies (and how you hear them) is based solely on the enclosure its in, and it's surrounding environment. The output (what you hear) is what it is. Now if that output doesn't sound good to you, no amount of volume control or front/rear fader or L/R balancing act will fix it. It can make it less discernable or audible, but the inadequacy never goes away. Tuning allows you to measure the speaker AND the environment its playing in and then allows you to SHAPE the sound the way you want it. You can now "tune" the speaker FOR it's environment. This allows each and every driver to contribute it's individual ideal sound (frequency range) to the overall environment in which you hear every detail. After that happens, music sounds the way it was intended to be heard...only in your individual car and not a studio.
The best way to now explain it I think is, you can swap in all the parts you want, (HU's, speakers, amps, subs, deadening, etc) and reach a 90% percent solution. But adding a DSP programmed by a quality tuner is the difference between 90% and 100% happiness. Thanks for reading all this. I appreciate the ability to share what I've learned through this whole process. What's next for me? I'm going to ditch the sub box and design an entire enclosure for the rear of the car that incorporates the amps, capacitors, sub, and nitrous bottle all in one. Then I'm going to have an artist paint it. Then a final tune...and DONE (at least until something blows up LOL)!!
Wow, sick setup. Just seeing this thread for the first time.
Definitely going to read through all of the stuff on tuning. I put my mini oscilloscope to get the gain on the amps right, but the sub is out of balance and I was not getting anywhere with trying to get the frequency response flat. I need to go back through the entire system now that I have all the major stuff done and start working on details.
Also, I installed my woofer adapters without painting them at first too. I was just so damn tired of the project and wanted it done. Of COURSE I wound up taking the panels off and painting them...just couldn't stand it.
Yeah, I still have work to do with regards to "cleaning up" the install. I really want to remove the headliner and run some Focal BAM on the roof in addition to adding the VB2 to the doors. Deadening is crucial in these cars.
