Need comments on my system

I am getting close to redoing the stereo in my 1990 Porsche 944 Cabrio (very tough car to set up a good system). This is what I have right now (because I did not alter the interior yet...).

Blaupunkt San Francisco (really sucks because it does not have a removable face and it is in a convertible)

Blaupunkt in dash 5 CD changer

JL 300/4 and Concept CC-D2400

Lanzar MWS65 (6.5 mids) and Diamond Audio alum tweeters up front and Clarion Pro Audio 4x6 plates in the rear

subs are 2 Audiomobile Mass 2012 in sealed box in the trunk in 1 Ohm.

I am very unhappy with the sound so I came up with a little upgrade:

replacement HU is Premier P920R with PD6 in dash 6CD changer

2 JL 300/4
keeping Concept CC-D2400 and adding Concept CC752 (2x75w)

Front door panels are getting custom fiberglass enclosures to house Lanzar MWS6.5 6.5 midbass, Lanzar DC4.4 midranges and Diamond Audio alum tweeters.

The rear sail panels are being replaced by custom fabricated panels with built in enclosures and will house Lanzar DC6.4 midbass and Lanzar 4.4 midranges.

I will feed the 0 gauge from the battery (with 140amp circuit breaker) to the trunk and then using gauge 4 from the distribution block to the amps. Using 0 gauge ground to distribution block and to the amps.

The signal from the deck will go directly to the D2400 (sub output) and to the MASS subs (they are in fiberglass spare tire enclosure and they stay).

The main 4 channels will go to 2 Audiocontrol EQX and process the signal for the front 3 way setup and 2 way (midbass and midrange only) and all drivers will get power from separate amp channels (6 JL amps channels for the front and 2 JL and 2 Concept for the rear).

Crossovers will be a combination of Audio Control crossovers and deck and amp crossovers.

Any comments on my design? Am I making any mistakes? What should I consider changing?

 

Very little if any mid and upper bass, poor imaging, sub bass clearly heard from the rear.

 

K... no usable kickpanels to speak of... The doors and the rear panels are the only game... I actually had the rears out for quite a while because I blew one of the drivers, LOL... and it felt kinda weird with all music straight ahead...

With the subs it is a really screwy deal too... if they are turned down, the exhaust drawns them completely.... so it is either too much bass or the exhaust sound... (real weird how the exhaust can completely cancel out the bass... )

I tried before with just one 12 and it sounded really like crap.. With the 2 MASS, I can actually forget I have the exhaust.. I figured that instead of turning everything down, I would do the opposite instead... However, the sub lows got loud, the upper midrange got loud, the lower highs got loud... but... the mid and upper bass went bye bye and so did the lower midrange and the highest highs... I would like to put 8s in the doors but I doubt there is room... I figured that with proper enclosures and properly fed and crossed over, the MWS would really pound...

Are you suggesting that the rear should conist strictly of 8s? what about 6.5 and 8s? Maybe it would be ok to put the 6.5 and 4s in the rear and then low pass rear very low and see if they can be faded out just enough to provide a little ambiance and nothing else? Won't the 6.5 give enough midbass?

BTW, the interior is very very small...

 

Wow, you guys are great... I am getting great input from everyone... Sorry for my original post being so long... I guess I did not explain clearly that my intention is to build the front door buildups with fully sealed enclosures for the drivers (one piece fiberglass structure with separate enclosures built in and taking up the entire lower half of the door from below the arm rest. The rear trim panels will be changed with fiberglass replacements that will have built in enclosures as well (at least this is what I have learnt from the car audio forums to keep them separate-do I understand this correctly?)

Right now the fronts are free air (mounted to surface baffles only) and the doors are double dynamatted from inside and outside (under the trim panels). I really do not like the passive crossovers that I have to use right now because I cannot control the level on the drivers, I have a feeling that with some driver level adjustment I could squeeze some more bass but I think if I switch to active and have the drivers enclosed, things should get better...

Now the way the panels will be made, the driver enclosures will have their own snap in grills, so if the drivers I have do not sound good, I can change them and even if the fit is not the same, you will not be able to see it (grills will be flush with the panels.

I am fully intending to double dynamat the floor (I figured the time when I route the new wires would be the best since the interior will be completely out. This should improve the sound but I am afraid it will not take care of the road noise (FYI I completely coated the car from underneath with the rubberized coating (3 coats) a while ago and I do not get much noise from underneath... It is the noise from behind (with top up or down not making any difference since the rear window is plastic) that causes my headaches... One thing that I have to do is to line the rear parcel shelf and the sides of the trunk, otherwise I really do not know what else to do...

The way I figured, since this is such a terrible environment (accoustically), maybe I should just crank up (selectively) the power and drawn any noises... I just do not see what else I can do...

 

Dude, I am as far as you can get from a ricer... LOL... I customize my cars the way I see them fit but you would be hard pressed to tell my mods from a factory option (if there was one)... The exhaust originally came with a resonator and I could see the factory point why they put one in... We are talking about a 3.0 4 banger that really puts out... I can stand the rumble if it serves purpose but the car was actually hard to drive because the low end disappeared with the exhaust wide open and the car was vibrating pretty bad... With some back pressure, the car is easier to drive... And the bass is all there...

The only reason I changed the exhaust (from the header, including the cat and the muffler) was that I needed a new cat and for the price of the cat, I could buy 2 custom made exhausts... I do not have a rice cooker sticking out either, LMFAO

Now you are giving me some ideas for my VR4 though, LOL, I gotta start looking for some R stickers and blue light bulbs.. I think that Borla exhaust I got on it gotta go... I want a couple of rice cookers instead....

 

I would definitely recommend against spending any money in the rear of your car... in fact, I would either ignore them and disconnect them - or at a minimum fade them completely off - or if it benefits you at all (I don't think it does in your car), remove them (with some cars this allows a nice open bass pass through to the trunk).

I have documented the reasons why you want to avoid rear fill in a car (really why you want to avoid any same-frequency-multi-speaker setup in an install) here:
http://www.teamcaf.org/geolemon
Click the first link (the second link is a continuation on the same topic)
I tried to write it more for the layman and less for the geek... although if you care this much about your sound quality to actually understand what affects it, you must be a geek! [/b][/quote]
A geek, huh... the compliments just keep pouring in... first the ricer and now the geek... Geo, I really need to post some pics so you can get an idea how this car is layed out... I drove for quite a while with my rears missing (they blew up) and I could really tell the difference... It is like there was a hole behind me... Too much sound behind me from the rears sounds like crap too... But very little volume in a relatively low band pass, it really made the music feel spacious and fuller sounding... BTW, the rear side panels are open on top (the frame goes through there), so if you think about using the existing rear speaker locations as conduits to the trunk, forget it... The rear speakers sit right now directly behind me (10in) in little metal frames that hang in open space behind the panel... Now, the way I am thinking, the new panels would have the drivers enclosed outward, so the space behind them would not be affected... so if the rear fill degrades the sound overall, then if I turn the rears off, the subs could still vent through there...

I have read your article on the problems related to rear speakers and cancellations and I understand what you are saying (great article BTW) but what you are also saying in it is that when properly crossed over, the rears will not make much of a difference either... (but will add to the overall volume...)

Do I have a way of posting pics here or would I have to put them on a separate page and include a link here? I really think you need to take a look at what is going on....

 

I'm 100% with you that you are observing what you are observing...
But does that mean that the problem when you hear the "void" was because you are missing rear speakers, or does it simply bring to light the real problem with your setup?

My guess is, it's not that your car's acoustics are mandating sound coming from the rear...
My guess is that your front stage is simply currently too weak, not solid enough to carry the full frequency range, and/or aren't aimed properly to create a realistic image.

You need to make sure your front speakers have the capability to play the entire frequency range needed, solidly..
And that might not mean getting speakers that are theoretically capable of playing those frequencies as much as it does ensuring that they are mounted in a location/enclosure that allows them to play those frequencies!
And then, to solidify the image up front, some angling work might need to be done.

I agree, it might be easier to put speakers back there again, if that makes you happy enough.. but it's not the road to utopia, that's all..

This is definitely just my opinion, but to me, it's like this:
Every weekend, you hang out in a club that has 15 ugly girls, 4 so-so ones, and 1 hot one. You don't think there's anything particularly fabulous about yourself.
You could just get drunk, take an ugly girl home, or no girl home every weekend, and not care.
Or, you could actually work on yourself, boost your self esteem, buy new clothes, cool haircut, socialize to the point that you are a social butterfly, and enter the joint with your sights on the 1 hot chick... and settle on one of the 4 so-so chicks if the hot one doesn't work out.

See, putting effort into it, and setting your standards higher has potentially higher benefits.
But it also has greater odds for failure, and frustration and disappointment when it doesn't work out the way you wanted.
So, you could play it safe, or you could set your sights higher.
And if you read my article and understood it, chances are you can run rear fill if you want to, without ruining your front image regardless!

So, I am not going to say "don't run them"...
But I would take your observations not as "I need rear fill" but rather as "my front stage might not be exactly what I thought it was.... maybe I need to fix something!", sort of a warning indicator light... [/b][/quote]
K, then let me ask you this... forget about the rear fill... 8in DEI 3084 inverted magnet drivers (2.5in mount depth), Lanzar DC44 midrange, Diamond Audio tweets... all in doors with plenty of power plus MASS2012 (2) with even more power... Will this be better than my original 6.5 Lanzar MWS65 little monsters with the same other drivers... Would 8 sound better or will there be enough with 6.5? Never heard DEI, know that Lanzars pound... what would you do?

 

Well, I do not really have a rear deck to speak of... it is more like the car has the split rear seat backs (in case you want to drive your skis to the snow?) and there is a piece of fiberglass? attached to bottom portion of the inside of the top in the rear... The way these cars were done was they started as hatchback 944 with the factory basically adding a trunk lid to the hatch... So the trunk is really enclosed by the rear seat backs and that funky deck lid that just kinda hangs there under the rear window... When the top is down, it rests on this deck. I already drilled the plywood seat back plates but do not see a point in drilling that deck because if the top is down, the deck is burried under the top anyway... I am trying to preserve the factory look and retain my rear seats (otherwise I would rip them out long time ago and just put the subs in their place...)

I need to figure out how to post some pics so I can just show what is going on... I think I am on the damn quest to get good sound in this freaking convertible and so far I have been failing... (the only high point is I got it loud...)

What Lanzar drivers are we talking about BTW, are we talking about the old school pro stuff or the recent junk? I was talking about the DC series drivers and the MWS midbasses... I was not even aware of these MWS 6.5 drivers until I saw them and got them on ebay... Has anybody heard these little monsters besides me?

I really do not want to invest in other 6.5 drivers because I have 2 pairs of DC64, 2 pairs of DC44 and one pair of MWS.65 collecting dust for the longest time... There was a time when these drivers showed up very often in competition installs... I had the 64 enclosed before and they were awesome in the midbass range...

My question was actually if I should go with the DEI 3084 8 in midbasses instead because they are way shallower and maybe they would be the way to go? So would I be able to tell the difference with 8s up front vs the 6.5 drivers instead? Which one would be a better bass maker? They take the same size enclosure BTW...

How do I make the pics accessible for this post?