Car Audio Heads up

[jkhuri44]

Hey guys,

figured since the topic has been brought up a few times before, i'd chime in here and give you a bit of a run down on an informal listening test i did today @ the Lifestyle Store in North Parramatta. If you know me, im sure you know im not into hocking and sales and all that shit....i ijust wanted to share my experience since quite a few of us do like to listen to good audio while we drive.

Rigged up 2 component speakers, 2 x 6x9s and 2 x 12" subs in a box (rockford fosgate)

Wil start off saying it was pretty incredible hearing how bad 90 percent of all speakers, both very expensive, and averagely priced were. Good thing absout this store was they only seem to stock the good stuff.

The best brand, which i heard, actually 2 of them, were "German Maestro" and an italian company which i found came out on top called "Hertz"...one specific model, and funnily enough only in the middle range of their range, was the best pair of car sperakers i've heard...their top of the range was like 800 or so for a pazir. The ones both me, and the sales guy liked were only 350..so was quite interesting.

I tried listening to a few amps, interestingly enough, most totally sucked, and were quite audibly muffly when compared to a better amp...i found Clarion, Audison, Digital Designs, all were pretty muffled and shitty....best of the bunch was Rockford Fosgate, and once again Hertz

I didnt get to hear alpine or a few other brands side by side. i really wanted to. but alas.

Bottom line if anyones looking to get some aftermarket speakers, definately check out the Hertz, it's night and day good stuff.

*** let me add again, this was not a formal test in any way...i was listening to very very bass heavy rap...as the car audio install im doing for myself is a very bass heavy system. said, the good speakers i heard from the bunch were making rap, sound very natural/neutral, i would guess that would make acoustic stuff sound even nicer. Hertz had a very nice clear top end/crisp sort of sound, where as the German Maestro sounded audibly dark, but quite a nice contrast and i liked both in some songs...interchangably. i endhed up deciding on a combo of Hertz and German Maestro for the fronts, and rears. Component speakers for clarity in front, and darker speakers for the back.

[The Tasmanian]

Thanks Jamil - good info.
I find it so hard to get info about car speakers.
The car enthusiasts all talk hyped shit...

[jkhuri44]

As mentioned, by all means NOT a conclusive listening test..

Australia is just not the place for car audio...Alpine have apparebtly pulled out of having a distro here....which is a sign of....well, us having no market.

Im gonna try to make it out to as few more fully featured shops, will add my finding here.

Also worth adding that my ears are particularly pretty senstitive...and also that as we know, diferent people like different sounds.

[Chinagraf]

What are you doing for subs?
I really want to add an aftermarket one to my car. I have a stock one in the rear parcel shelf, but in reality it's a woofer rather than a true sub. If anything it just adds cloudiness to the lower mids instead of that invisible bottom end I actually want. I've looked at a few enclosures but they would have to go in my boot and I do like to have the space in there for transporting gear. I do have a separate amp in the boot lining that is stock, but it's only small. No room under the seats for anything like those tube sub thingys either..

[jkhuri44]

I'm pretty much writing off my whole boot, and putting a 3 cu ft enclosure in there.

The sub is a kicker L7 15" , which has more surface area than a 15" so its more like a 16 or 17 really. (it is one of the square sub designs.

Its being powered by an MB quart (yes, now a shitty company sub) but since im low passing the sub at 60hz, i dont really care for quality, just brute force. The amp is rated @ 1000w rms/2000w peak....measured it with no load, and it does put out 1025 w rms. no idea what that measurement is with the speaker plugged in.

the enclosure is built from 1 inch MDF, with braces all throughout. it will weigh 50kg without the sub. the sub itself is 15kg....i hope i dont get a flat tire any time soon...i do not recommend any sealed boxes or even any preboxed speakers, and or fibreglass enclosures, like all speakers imo, if its light, and makes loud sounds when you tap it, its not going to be great. Unfortunately an ugly box is still the best for sound quality.

The boot will need to be double lined with dynamat to get rid of the horrid amounts of lebbo trunk rattle that will ensue from this much SPL...at such low frequencies. This speakers ideal box tuning frequency is 19hz, however i could not fit a 6 cu ft enclosure in my boot! unfortunately it didnt clear my boot by 1 inch!

Photos of speaker and enclosure below. (enclosure was just cut last weekend, still buildint it)

[Chinagraf]

Haaaa! Well that's gonna keep you regular for sure..

[jkhuri44]

yeah, im looking forward to the gross impracticality which is going to be ...this system, i also pray my car doesnt get crushed by the cops, rofl.

[Lee Cardan]

I just went through a massive car audio build, I had a van I could go all out on with a good friend who is a carpenter, took us about 6 months of spare time (sparse I should say), but in the end I was pretty surprised how good it actually sounds. First thought was geez, these sound like, barefoots. The detail is there, the range is there, the robustness is certainly there. Dimension not so much but that's what you get inside a vehicle

Information was pretty hard to find, and decipher, and filter
When I did find a good resource it felt a little Gearslutz like, all these people talking about their opinion, conflicting, bitching, etc.. in the end I just went with my gut and selected:

Alpine headunit, touch screen, 24 bit burr brown converters
Boston 6.5" splits in the front and back
Rockford fostgate amps
JL Audio 12" subs
4 packs of dynamat < which now that I know, couldn't imagine doing even a semi decent car stereo without

[jkhuri44]

rockford amps are the business. for sure.
i still do want to hear bostons, and alpine and a few other brands, no idea where in sydney tho...hmm.

[Lee Cardan]

what build would be complete without pictures

1_head.JPG

2_splits.JPG

3_dynamat.JPG

5_almost.JPG

6_done.JPG

[mylesgm]

so why do you have the subs mounted like that?

[jkhuri44]

damn dude, thats awesome!!

unfortunately, dont have the room to do anything that cool looking....also i dont think my subs will mount in any cool way in such a small boot, lol.

next car definately needs to be a van

[Lee Cardan]

yeah vans are so much fun I don't think I'll ever go back (well, gimme a cl63 and I might)
but you can still do heaps with a car! You're certainly getting into it, are you doing the wood stuff yourself? looks nicely done

Myles, because they look more pimp that way

[mylesgm]

because they look more pimp that way

They do indeed... does it also reduce edge distortion?

[jkhuri44]

hey lee, the face cutouts were done by a joiner, i needed super stright/square edges, so wasnt gonna try that myself without a table saw.

I did everything else, hole cutouts, and all the braces, and battens (which arent really visible in the photo). The idea was to use an audio project as a way to motivate myself to learn about making stuff, i really love it, despite it being a seriously steep learning curve (to get something of quality anyway). Next up is making stuff with hand tools only. I read an awesome book which really inspired me to do it.

i also did the basic design of the box, ie. maximising the box size, shape for my boot, while getting it to fit as well!

EDIT: also, Lee...did you do dthe Dynamat job yourself?? interested to know what your thoughts are about the hype? it seems unanymous that there's no point trying anything but Dynamat....does it do a good job of killing all the car rattling which would come about by 2x12s??

[Lee Cardan]

Good work on the design then, but not much boot space left!
I see you went for ported, so you can go lower? Mine are non ported, I love the bottom end on any sealed speaker so much more personally. I did do the dynamat, epic job and I wasn't even being a perfectionist about it, but I can say it most definitely deadens the heck out of the body. Knock on a panel and very very tough, not a touch of resonance. This can go really loud (4000wrms, haha, but I'm not a volume nutt, I just love it to get the most out of the transients) - but even when really loud, from outside it's actually pretty quiet - and not a single rattle. And inside, at pretty silly volume (as in you'd never go there) it's just so tight, clear, defined. How much of this exactly is due to the dynamat I couldn't really tell you, but I'm pretty sure it makes all the difference. The system is good but you can tell straight away that the 'room' is also excellent. But i just went straight for it, you should put yours in and then dynamat and let us know

Myles, you'd probably be able to answer that question better than I certainly doesn't hurt the sound

[jkhuri44]

the speaker is about 30cm deep, so even if you used a spare tire well to put the speaker, you'd have no enclosure volume...so there's no real options with a regular boot...all installs i see use pretty looking moulded fiberglass enclosures, which have next to no volume, and because of the material, probably does awful things to the bass as well.

the freq response of the kicker is very very low. if i built it in a 6 cu ft enclosiure, the enclosure tuning would have been 19hz...which is the area the subs would hit, hardest, with that in mind, port will help the frequencies down low, its tuned to 30hz now. which is still damn low. Im the opposite Lee, dont like sealed box sounds, prefer deeper, and listen to lots of rap, so i want as low as i can get.

with dynamat, a friend of mine who has done lots of Dual 15" set ups reckons that rattle is inevitable...so im going to put my box in now, with no dynamat. listen to it, see how i go...interesting to know your experience, i've had trouble getting any details out of any installers from shops..they seem to be easily able to tell me the cost, but not much about their experience with results, which strikes me as dodgy

[Lee Cardan]

the great thing about a Vito is it's very minimal designed. most panels are big and singular, cleverly put together with nothing unnecessary so it's quite easy to avoid things rattling (few things in the dash but even they can be gotten to easily enough). At usual listening levels (ie, loud enough to not hear any road noise) and you can barely hear it outside too. We build this tough as nails, but it's only metal panels > dynamat > carpet, except the floor which has body > dynamat > 3mm foam > 12mm chipboard > carpet, so dynamat is the only real thing that could be doing so much work. And, before I put any of this in it was all just bare metal and the ambience was completely different as soon as the dynamat went in. from very resonant to very dead, so I think it's worth it. But it takes tome, this was easy to work on and just preparing and dynamatting took about 4 full days

But in a car there are so many things that could end up rattling, it would be very hard to get away from (but probably doable). But I'm also not going as low as you are

Don't listen to much rap though, all just idm
this system definitely doesn't get the subs as looow as they can go, but it's super tight and punchy

[jkhuri44]

hey man, IDM's no slouch!
re. your mid woofers...besides the listening i explained up top in this thread, i havent done many other comparisons.... what was the model of the boston acoustic 6.5"s you settled on. your set up is probably in the ball park of what i'd like to do, so would like to check them out too. As i mentioned, a few other brands i wante dto hear werent stocked in that shop, so any other pointers would be great

[Lee Cardan]

Honestly I was lucky, I hadn't listened to any speakers so my advice is non existent. in the end price was the ultimate deciding factor. What was the greatest saving I could get. I don't like overly bright speakers and the general consensus about Boston is that they aren't super bright. There's an ebay store in the US that sells the Pro60SE for $340 or so, retails for a grand here so I got two sets of those and I'm just happy they worked out.

Similar with subs, whatever I could get the best saving on. JL Audio 12w6, around half price of retail. and again with the amps. Have you checked this place out? http://www.mobileelectronics.com.au/forums/

[jkhuri44]

hey Lee, yeah i saw mobile electronics, they are a wholesaler from what the site says. They have a reseller in Caringbah which i'm hoping to check out, thanks for the brand tho, im gonna check out a few more brands. Getting lucky with good speakers is awesome tho!

[Lee Cardan]

yeah but besides the retail side of it, the forum is a wealth of information and experience (and inexperience, you got to decipher, just like GS ha). But for experiences and comparisons, I'd be checking out what they have to say..

Good luck with it! Only bit of real advice I'd give is to try out your headunit before purchasing. I went for an Alpine ICS-X8, and while it's awesome and does everything it promises, the interface is sooo sludgy it would have been an automatic deal breaker had I known. I deal with it by making playlists, but for the size of the thing, surely they could get a nice slick interface going. Just waiting for the day Apple decide to make headunits i might be waiting a while

[jkhuri44]

yeah, car audio forums, lots of hits and misses. DIYmobile audio is pretty good forum...Steve Meade Designs has some ok info, very heavy on advertising and bias..BUT thats where i heard about the Hertz components, and checked em out based on the raves they get there, they seem to be pretty right so far, will report back soon.

[jkhuri44]

finished my install...new sub, sounds absolutely ridiculous.
after hearing it inside the car, i wont be bothering with dynamat....it sounds crystal clear without it
The outside of the car is another matter...i am surprised though that I cannot hear it....

[Lee Cardan]

Nice work mate
So, are you saying it rattles outside?

[jkhuri44]

well, i turned it up to a level i like to listen at....
and there's no rattle noises inside the car, and barely any rattle...(outside)

If i went to show off levels, im sure i could shake the shit out of the car, inside and out...

im going to head to a friends warehouse and test the enclosure at very very high levels, which is pointless in the car...i'd like to see if there's any flexing, and the same mate has a measurement device to take specs of the enclosure, which should be interesting.

[rightintheface]

Hey Jamil,
A bit off topic, but have you checked out the album "The Quakers"? It's a massive joint project with Katalyst and Fuzzface (Geoff Barrows - Portishead) and a whole bunch of known and unknown MC's. It's a bangin' record, would sound huge on your new system!

[jkhuri44]

cant say i have will do. i have to say though. nothing is getting the 15" moving like Southern rap, trap, and good old Bass Mekanik Car audio test cds. the later successfully did the hair shake trick....love it ! i find most bass is in the annoying too much mids territory..i like my subs as close to 30hz as possible!

[The Tasmanian]

That bass test CD would be good as a mix reference CD too?

[The Tasmanian]

Jamil - why don't you start a side business, parking your car outside studios ?
2nd control room on wheels...
sit in the car with producer and engineer and a Ipad running pro control to solo/eq refine the low stuff