but there is a difference. if you don't mind the money the hybrid is a nice smooth sounding speaker

except if you like them you will be thinking about the 602 components which can be had for 499 and you could sell your focals to pay for them

 

Or return them to Crutchfield!

 

Yeah, that is one of my concerns, if I am going to like them too much that it makes me re-think the KRX2's in the front, lol. I'm real reluctant to pull the Focal's out and to go through the process again, but we'll see what happens.

 

Hey guys, is it worth replacing the rear speakers if the only thing I have done is replace the head unit(Kenwood)? My guess is I should not until I get an amp to drive them but I may be wrong? Sorry if I asked this earlier.

 

Yeah if you are still using the factory speakers with an aftermarket head unit, I would do the amp and speakers all at once. It should make a dramatic difference if you get the right stuff.

 

Key being the "right stuff". So may oppurtunities for me to screw it up! LOL:

 

I got my Morel’s today! It seems a little strange for little speakers to be in this price range. Now it’s just a matter of installing them and finding a place for the crossovers. Also, I’ll need to rerun the speaker wires for the rears now to the crossovers, then 2 sets from the crossovers to the speakers.

 

Sweet.

I found a pair of a/d/s amps a PQ20 and PH15 which if in great condition sound awesome.

 

Sir, that is some car audio **** right there. Please keep us updated on this sweet build you are doing. I am afraid Racebum has started a Morel revolution.

 

LOL, we will not steer you wrong. Car audio is a blast and a great hobby. I used to sell it for a living and relish the chance to help someone make their system sound better. So much misinformation out there!

 

and likely should be gone through. too old to run daily without a refurbish. if a cap leaks it can smoke a speaker

great amp design but they should be refreshed

 

dynaudio is my real love. it's just the cost of esotar gear vs morel which i also enjoy and can do so without breaking the bank.

hybrid is a really neat speaker. the entry level to made in isreal. this is the factory where the crazy speakers {like the fat lady} are made.

some of the best gear in the world traces back to a handful of hobbyists in the 70s who were at the top of their game. they gave up brands like dynaudio. scan speak, morel, threshold, zapco, phoenix gold, jl audio

all of these brands had guys working out of garages at some point

 

ADS had some nice sounding gear back in the day. I had kinda forgotten about them.

 

I got the Morels installed today. I put the crossovers in the rear cubby since I never use the cubby anyway. Ignore the green piece of wood I mounted them to, it was leftover scraps from a playhouse I built for my kids. I didn’t get much time to hear them though. I took the car for a 15 minute ride, but so far they sound good. This is the first time since my audio speaker upgrade that I can listen to the rears and they actually add something positive to the sound. They do have a different sound from the Focals. The Focals are definitely brighter in comparison and a little more lively (if that makes sense). I definitely need some more time to listen and mess with everything, but so far so good.

 

That's great! You got them installed fast! It's really kind of good that you have Morels in back and Focals up front as you can truly compare the difference in sound and decide what you like better. My guess is you will maybe want to do Morels up front also.

 

play them bassy and loudly off and on for 20-30 hours. the sound changes. tweeters are a bit confined when new. they get mildly more top endy after break in.

even after this they will be considerably more mellow than the focals. what drove me nuts about focal is with softer music the lively nature can be nice. you start playing fast rock / metal or electronic dance through them and they just sound harsh.

if what you listen to doesn't bring out the worst in focal you may have a great rear fit. that slightly more tame nature keeps the rear more of a fill and lets the front stage come to life

the morel elate is the really good one. more lively and a better top end than the hybrid without the harshness of the focal. with those it's just the cost. the elate start around 1000

 

Right now, everything sounds pretty good. Not perfect, but I am really getting tired of redoing my install, so I'm going to give it a little bit of time and listen to a bunch of different kind of music and then decide if I am going to do anything else. Right now I am hoping that I will like everything enough to leave it as is. Of course there are some things I want to upgrade down the road like my sub and box, and also I may invest in a DSP down the road also just to see if I can tune everything a little more to my liking. I feel like I need more control over the EQ than the 13 bands on the head unit. Doing the auto EQ on the Pioneer with a mic has definitely helped to get a more neutral and natural EQ setting. Prior to that, the RTA scale was all over the place and took extreme adjustments to line everything up.

 

Thanks Racebum. I know what you mean about the Focals and certain music. The original Auditors I had were super guilty of introducing harshness with certain songs. The KRX2’s are much better, but you can definitely tell they are related and made by the same company that makes the Auditors. They are much better but still a very similar sound.

 

companies all do this for their "signature sounds" some companies [like klipsch} are really pronounced. you either like it or you don't

as you noticed the hybrid is a fairly flat speaker. i tune them down in the 2-3khz range 1-2-3 db depending on the car and bring up 16khz 2 or 3db as the tweeter definitely does not ramp up in the higher frequencies by itself

this is a place you have to experiment as the eq settings for the hybrid are likely different than the krx2 so you have to find a middle ground that works well with both

i've heard the high end beryllium dome home focals and they were really good. the k2 power i was able to demo in the 4runner however was terrible. that inverted yellow tweeter was a screamer, painful is a word that comes to mind. an afterthought i had was the tn53k in that set was wildly efficient and likely needed more resistor to pad it down to match the mid especially since it was a truck door with a tweeter high and the woofer low so it's very possible i have a skewed view of them since i didn't have the time to try different settings. -3db on the tweeter may have completely changed the sound. i like B&W home speakers which also ramp up the top and some consider "bright" it's just a different sound to my ears

one thing that really helped the midrange resonance was using foam where i could. eggshell foam or even a camping mattress type. anything that dampens reflective waves. i have strips of this along the bottom of my doors and inside rear enclosures. the hard E sound or ringing can be reflective waves. it's the same reason sealed subwoofers often sound more accurate when you either line the box with foam or stuff it with polyfill. you're breaking up reflective waves which resonate right back through the cone

 

Sounds like you have put together a pretty nice system! I would never worry about frankensteining a system. It's a necessary evil sometimes to get the right components for the best sound. For instance, I would almost always choose an Alpine head unit and signal processor as I feel they are one of them at the top of the heap and stand up against any other high end offering out there. I am not nearly as big of a fan of their amps and speakers, I mean they are OK, but not the very top end, IMO. So pick and choose to get the best of all worlds!