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Inexpensive audio upgrade info

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#41
Great thread guys, but do we really have to gripe about how bad the factory system is!?! How great a system did most of you expect? This is a budget car at its core and thus we should be ecstatic at what we got. After tearing into my system and replacing all of the speakers and adding a sub the system actually sounds decent. Not audiophile by any means but decent.

Upon close inspection of the factory speakers, we should be happy they came with stamped steel baskets, poly woofers, and silk / soft dome tweeters. You typically only get this with upgraded audio systems costing much more than ours. The main issue is the speakers can barely handle the ~20 watts (rated at 25 watts, and 86DB @ 1Watt) the factory amp puts out and the source audio settings which we cannot control. If you upgrade to speakers that are more efficient (91DB @ 1Watt in my case) and add some low end bass, you will make huge improvements that can be heard. That, I think, was the basic premise, plus low cost of $500, of the posters post!!!
 


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jmrtsus

jmrtsus

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Thread Starter #42
Great thread guys, but do we really have to gripe about how bad the factory system is!?! How great a system did most of you expect? This is a budget car at its core and thus we should be ecstatic at what we got. After tearing into my system and replacing all of the speakers and adding a sub the system actually sounds decent. Not audiophile by any means but decent.

Upon close inspection of the factory speakers, we should be happy they came with stamped steel baskets, poly woofers, and silk / soft dome tweeters. You typically only get this with upgraded audio systems costing much more than ours. The main issue is the speakers can barely handle the ~20 watts (rated at 25 watts, and 86DB @ 1Watt) the factory amp puts out and the source audio settings which we cannot control. If you upgrade to speakers that are more efficient (91DB @ 1Watt in my case) and add some low end bass, you will make huge improvements that can be heard. That, I think, was the basic premise, plus low cost of $500, of the posters post!!!
Exactly correct....the sub frees up clean power and more efficient speakers need less power. The purpose to me of better efficiency is it usually brings a lighter stiffer cone with improved mid range. And for those that want more volume they can do that too. So all in all the best low cost upgrade. On an earlier post I said if I had to I could be perfectly happy as I was this weekend on a long trip with our system. I will be happier when I make the move. However the FRPP(Borla) exhaust is on sale........hmmmmmm.
 


M-Sport fan

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#43
If it weren't for the (perceived by my destroyed cilia) 'raspiness' of the factory tweeters (for whatever reason they sound like this to me), I would be perfectly fine with the stock system, and would not even consider ever changing anything.

I really should NOT be looking for any more volume, as that is what KILLED my hearing up to this point, and I need to preserve what little I have left, since I CANNOT afford the $7K-$10 AN EAR cost of top line hearing aids!!!! [nono]
 


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#44
Very nice info....I was curious about the efficiency of your speakers. Looked it up and they are rated at 88dB. I wanted to see because I believe the current drivers are not very efficient as they are the only source of bass so the cone is stiff and the mids muddy. It takes about a 3 dB increase to the ear to discern a very noticeable increase in volume levels. So that would imply about 85 to 86 dB for the factory drivers. As to tweeters I would love to find a good place for a planar tweeter in the FiST. Not terribly expensive just large for a car.

The Tang Band drivers they have been a leader in high Xmax small reasonably priced drivers for years, love them, they will produce mucho clean bass if placed in a proper enclosure and fed lots of clean power. For those that do not know, Xmax is the measurement of how much a speaker cone can move linearly without being physically overdriven to distortion. The amount of movement determines how much air is moved......and the more air moved the stronger the bass. It is usually stated in millimeters such as xmax= 8 mm (1/3 ") I think two high Xmax 6 1/2" subs tuned to about 40 Hz would make me very happy in my FiST.
I would guess the increase in volume besides efficiency has a lot to do with power handling as well. I'm assuming the factory HU is around 12wrms per channel or so? Now just the front speakers are getting an underrated 50rms. It might also be that now not only is their more power but, it is only going to the speakers up front and not wasted by the rears blasting into the backs of seats. My "prefered eq curve" is much different than most people I know. I tend to be very sensitive to highs and all of my audio is setup in the order of Vocal, midbass, bass, highs. I agree though the mid range is the main reason I even replaced the speakers. I do like bass clean, smooth and responsive. It doesn't have to be loud and to my taste can even lag a bit behind mids as long as it's clean. I know for sure if a judged hopped in one of my cars they would says "wtf is this" but, my car will never be in a competition and I have to drive it every day so I matter most.

The tang bands are great. These 6.5" woofers have an 11.5 mm xmax. Port routing can be tricking but, the more drivers you add the easier it is. Single ported looks like a squirrel cage lol. At first I was going to toss in a never installed first gen Polk Momo I had but, I didn't want to add the weight or give up the room. I think I'll just invert mount that beauty and make it a garage sub. It's been sitting for to long. The best thing is you can try and get your friends to guess what size sub you have and then tell them you have to 6.5's :)
 


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#45
At this point in the game I pretty much know where I will receive diminishing returns based on the initial quality of the base source.
Garbage in garbage out. This car gets some usb mp3, aux in mp3, and Bluetooth streaming. No need to go high end, nor do I want to, or
am I against it. Everyone's setup is their own. I'm certainly not going to fool myself by installing a sick 3way component setup and then
run Pandora over Bluetooth.

I sold my truck a while back and when I decide to get a new one that will be my real audio project.
 


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jmrtsus

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Thread Starter #46
I would guess the increase in volume besides efficiency has a lot to do with power handling as well. I'm assuming the factory HU is around 12wrms per channel or so? Now just the front speakers are getting an underrated 50rms. It might also be that now not only is their more power but, it is only going to the speakers up front and not wasted by the rears blasting into the backs of seats. My "prefered eq curve" is much different than most people I know. I tend to be very sensitive to highs and all of my audio is setup in the order of Vocal, midbass, bass, highs. I agree though the mid range is the main reason I even replaced the speakers. I do like bass clean, smooth and responsive. It doesn't have to be loud and to my taste can even lag a bit behind mids as long as it's clean. I know for sure if a judged hopped in one of my cars they would says "wtf is this" but, my car will never be in a competition and I have to drive it every day so I matter most.

The tang bands are great. These 6.5" woofers have an 11.5 mm xmax. Port routing can be tricking but, the more drivers you add the easier it is. Single ported looks like a squirrel cage lol. At first I was going to toss in a never installed first gen Polk Momo I had but, I didn't want to add the weight or give up the room. I think I'll just invert mount that beauty and make it a garage sub. It's been sitting for to long. The best thing is you can try and get your friends to guess what size sub you have and then tell them you have to 6.5's :)
My point about audio is lost on some as they cannot perceive why anyone would not like the sound they do. I don't tell people what tastes good nor what sounds good, we and our ears are all unique. Just how does one becomes an expert in what people should like? I like White cars, my wife likes Black cars. My son likes drag racing I like sports car racing. I like sizzling highs my son hates it. I like a full range sub others prefer a band pass thump machine. Kinda like telling you which bands you should like isn't it? I hate Country music others hate Rock. If all I had to listen to was fake accents and twang I would go nuts.
 


antarctica24

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#47
View attachment 14422

I am reposting this chart to illustrate why what we hear is so objective. And explain a little about the term we hear often in audio, Decibels. This chart shows the NORMAL hearing range of the male human ear based on age. As you can see at 20 years old you have pretty good hearing across the audio range. By the age of 40 years old hearing of the high frequencies above 8 kHz is 20 dB lower. A -20dB is a drop in hearing to 1/4 of what it was at 20 years old. Or to put it in the opposite direction a 20 year old hears the high frequencies 4 times as loud as a 40 year old.

The term Decibels or dB is a measuring unit that must be referenced to what is being measured, for example in power measurements a 3 dB increase is a doubling of power. A 3 dB increase of an 100 Watt audio amp is 200 watts. When dB is used in relation to human hearing a 3 dB increase in sound is barely discernable to your ears. Because dB is a non linear measurement, the math is a little funky. A doubling of your power amp (+3dB) from 300 to 600 Watts will not double what you hear, it will just be a noticeable increase. A +10dB is needed for yours ears to discern "twice as loud". In a nutshell after the age of 20 for men you lose about 1 dB per year above 8 kHz until age 40 then about 2dB a year thereafter.

What this shows is we all hear differently, this chart is for men, women suffer much lower losses with age. So women hear different from men. My wife can even hear what I am thinking at a rock concert. How can a 40 or 50 year old man judge sounds they can barely hear? I cannot tell you how the highs sound in a speaker until they are adjusted for my ears, once that is done I can then judge the entire frequency range and give an opinion of the overall balance. We as humans can only testify to how something sounds to OUR own ears. If everyone listened to music the same way with the same ears we would not have had various types of tone controls on audio equipment for over a century to compensate. The effect we are talking about can be compensated with the built in EQ. Although the adjustment is highly technical I will attempt to explain. If the music is too bright sounding to you turn the highs down......not bright enough, turn them up. And keep in mind that the source of the music you are playing may also require adjustments to your ears.
My thoughts on stats is that statistics are very overrated and extremely over used. When you can take a sample size of 625 people make that a representation of 6 billion, I don't think that works and there are thousands of reasons why it doesn't work but we dont need that have that conversation here. Yes, we all loose hearing as we get older. Some more than others depending on how well they took care of their hearing and there are probably some genetic issues there as well, but sound is not objective. It is a very personal and subjective thing. The real difference in subjective vs. objective is that objective situations can be observed independent of personal biases and experience (i.e. data), whereas subjective situations can usually only be viewed by one person, filtered through their unique lens of personal experience, taste, emotion, and bias (Websters). While you have presented data, that data does not accurately represent the total population. If we all believed statistics like the press did, Hilary would have been president (And no, I did not want her to ever be president). Tone controls have single handily destroyed music because people A. were never taught how to use them, and B. Never used them correctly. Your definition of tone controls is like you have tool box, and inside the toolbox you have a hammer and nails. Your door knob is broken, so instead of going to the store and buying a door knob to correctly fix the problem, you take that hammer out, you hammer a nail in the door almost all the way in, then hang the hammer upside down on the forks to use a a pull for the door.

There is no disagreement on your comments "what we all hear is different" that is abundantly clear. You get that from the gear people put in their car, and you are I are two glowing examples of that. Hell, even how some people are ok with the factory system and some are not. Tone controls were never designed to allow you, the consumer, to correct for your hearing. That's like that mess in the 70's when the EQ came about and everyone just set it to a smiley face by raising the highs, raising the lows, and sinking the mids. You even still see this in brand new cars when I get in to test drive and some yahoo has been in the car, and adjusted the radio by turning up the treble and bass, and turning down the mids when the factory radio is equipped. I am able to detect it every time. Why? Because the factory system was tuned for its environment to bring the system back in alignment with the acoustics of the car, and everything in the car that effects the acoustics.

So with that said, lets take the question of what DOES and DOES not sound correct? Who am I at age 49, based on your chart to say what sounds correct and doesn't? What sounds correct is the intention of the artist who recorded the music. That is the only reference you can use. Be it John Williams when he conducted for the Star Wars, or Jaws, or Indiana Jones movies, or Stevie Ray Vaughn when he recorded his interpretation of Voodoo Child. When the 8-track, album, Cassette, DCC, CD, DAT, MD was laid down on the media, that master tape had what the artist intended and over time the quality of that original recording has improved with technology. Now, while I will admit my method for getting to what sounds right is of my own concoction it has been tested in many cars against many good sets of ears and it works every time and does not require your hearing to get right, it does require an Real Time Analyzer.

But before I get into that, your chart and what your talking about are two different things and for those interested I think needs clarification. Doubling your power, gains you 3db in amplitude not frequency independently, they work together. Amplitude is measured by your ears in pressure and unless you ear drums have been blown out, you can discern the difference at age 49 between 100 watts of power behind a speaker and 200 watts of power behind a speaker for a multitude of reasons that I will discuss below. At age 49, I can come real close to even telling you what the problem frequency is while its playing. Is it guessing? I don't think so, experience more likely. Your chart explains how over time your ability to discern higher frequencies diminishes. I agree with that assessment 10000% percent. But that a person cannot tell the difference between a car horn and a train horn would be complete nonsense. An average car horn is 94 db. In the United States trains are required to play their horns at least 96db, and a maximum of 110. I don't know about you but I can not only hear that but feel that. Most people can discern the difference between clarinet and a flute or a flute and an piccolo. Lots of us old people going to classical concerts and there are a lot of frequencies being played from the orchestra. So just want to clarify.

I have said in my "How to tune a car audio system" post, that I could tune the car and be deaf and get it right. I do that with an RTA. The only subjective piece here is what I am saying is the correct acoustical curve for any given environment. There is not one perfect curve, but there is only one perfect curve for every car, house, boat, plain, concert arena, arena, etc. I come to that by making sure there are only smooth transitions from frequency to frequency in a car, and by not adding anything that was not there. It is so accurate, that it can be printed out and used over and over again in the same vehicle with the same equipment. No adjustments are necessary. That curve gets you back to what the artist originally intended for how their music should be heard. Which is what the competition scene is all about. Now, granted, back to your tone controls, there are those like yourself, you want to adjust the sound to accommodate their hearing and to each their own. Some like a lot more bass than treble(I don't know whats about), but I do find it odd that most bass heavy systems are just like the old smiley face EQ setups, all bass, all treble no mid. Some guys will even load up a pair of 15's, and tweeters in the front and call it a day. I know what causes this, but I don't want to get in to it.

So why would anyone buy an amp that makes 900 watts? 1500 watts over an amp that just has 50 x 4? As you have said based on efficiency if a speaker is 93db efficient, then theoretically I could buy a 4 watts amp. That is 1 watt by 4 channels, and power the front and rear speakers, and .5 would go to each tweeter, .5 would go to the midrange up front, and 1 watt would go to each speaker in the rear. DONE. I can help with this ill thought logic. Your 26 Watts factory system only gives you about 7 watts of clean usable power. Which based on our 1 watt by 4 channels should be enough. Right?

Well we have to take some inventory of some items to figure it out. 1 is called headroom, 1 is called noise floor, 1 is called clipping, and 1 is called distortion And one is called DB gain. I have said, listening to music is an audible experience as well as an emotional experience. You are not going to feel anything emotional at 1 watt. You can print all the graphs you want. Its not happening. Its all about headroom. Headroom is the 20db or so between the maximum volume you can play something before taking the amp into clipping. Clipping defined is Clipping is a form of waveform distortion that occurs when an amplifier is over driven and attempts to deliver an output voltage or current beyond its maximum capability. Driving an amplifier into clipping may cause it to output power in excess of its power rating(Webster). Headroom is the sweet spot of where you take the amp to its extreme before distortion comes into play. This is where the music comes to life or for that matter a system comes to life. The noise floor is the bottom limits where the music disappears and the noise of the amp is louder than than the music. Unwanted distortion is caused by a signal which is "too strong". If an audio signal level is too high for a particular component to cope with, then parts of the signal will be lost. This results in the rasping distorted sound (Websters). Most people even if they don't understand what distortion is and I say most, they get it doesn't sound good. So who gives a rats but about all of this. Anyone who cars about making their system sound as good as it can and not just getting by with hearing some background noise in their car while they drive down the road.

The amp in the factory radio having about 26 watts of total power, I said only about 7 was useful, what I mean by that is the noise floor with a zero information track on a CD, you can hear the radio way above volume 10, so as volume increases so does the system noise. Which means you are hearing the system noise, on top of your music. Then at the other end, the louder you get, you run into two problems, as volume increases, you start to reach clean portion of the amp, and start to reach the limitations of the speaker both of which increase the amount of distortion that is now audible to your ears. If people are curious that is what a noise gate is for. A noise gate watches the signal and when the signal goes to zero, the system cuts the output to remove the system noise created by the system.

You can hear system noise. It sounds like a average fan running in a quiet room. You can hear distortion. It sounds like listening to a clarinet playing but instead of it being sharp and clear, it now starts to break up. Let's take our theoretical 1 x 4 watt amp and apply this science to it. Your feeding the .5 to your tweeter. the first .2 is system noise, and back .2 is distortion. So you really are only getting .1 amp of clean signal to your speaker. So when you ask why spend all that money on a car system?

Here it is and no matter what anyone says, the science behind this cannot be disputed.

For an amp to sound its best, you need it to be played at a minimum of 75% of its rated capability and you have to do a lot to get it there. That is the sweet spot with every amp made no matter what its limitations are. All amps are not created equal, but each one has a sweet spot and it happens at 75% of its rated output. So the end goal here is the more you get the amp to perform within its rated power range the cleaner it will sound the louder you play it. And if you were not trying to play your sound system louder than a whisper, then just keep your factory system.

Someone asked a couple of days ago why I chose the amps I chose, and you have said what re-tuning?
This is all about getting the cleanest sound with the most headroom available. Being able to play it as loud as possible without clipping the amp and destroying the speakers. Clean volume never destroyed a speaker. Although putting 400 watts on a speaker that was rated at 35 watts will do it. That why a tangband speaker is a terrible choice for a car. Most everything they has a RMS rating in the 50 watts or less range. Not max, because max is only good for about 10ms. The system noise in an average car audio system with zero data can easily be 70db at half volume and you haven't even started playing music. You have used up 1/2 of the speakers playable range, and when you start cranking up the volume, now distortion starts to come into play unless you have done everything else necessary to clean up the signal.

Why would anyone care about playing their system as clean and loud as possible? Have you ever gone to a rock concert, and when you left, you felt exhausted and your ears were ringing? You felt like you had been partying since 1999. The reason is so very simple and so overlooked by so many. It is the difference between a clean sounding system and not clean sounding system. At a concert, the volume is over the top, but that is not the problem, the environment, and the distortion and the noise floor is causing that fatigue. If you were in an arena, and Van Halen was on stage, and you were the only person there except for the band and sound system, You could listen to it all day, and it would be the greatest experience of your life. but at a full blown concert the band has to overcome the noise floor, which means they have to turn up the volume to accommodate for the crowd. Then they have to tune the system to accommodate for the acoustics of the bad location with the crowd.

In a properly tuned system in a car, with 2000 watts, at full volume for 3 hours, two people, including myself sat in my vehicle, and got out with no ear fatigue, no ringing, and could walk into a coffee house and have a normal volume conversation with someone sitting across the table and have no problem hearing them. NONE. It is true and it happens with any car audio system that is setup properly and any audio system in any location setup properly.

You don't stick a turbo capable of making 1000hp on a engine only capable of making a max of 200hp.

I also like how people put that amp in their car, and then don't like that its not loud enough and then they go to that volume knob on the amp called a gain control. That is not what that is for.

So what does all of this BS mean?

It means to get a system in your car, that accurately reproduces the sound the way the artist intended(WHICH IS THE POINT) otherwise, why listen to a specific artist when you could just listen to elevator music, it requires some effort beyond just slapping 4 new speakers and sub in the car. The whole reason people say a system sounds better when they replace the factory speakers is because its louder at lower volumes, aka more efficient, and the reason the adding of a sub sounds better, is because those frequencies at a louder volume were missing from the system. Sure the 6.5" sony's play 40hertz, but its down 30db. When you add the sub, your brought the volume of those frequencies to the fore front, and now you can not only hear then but feel them. Volume does not mean better. It means louder. Replacing factory speakers with more efficient speakers does not make the system sound better, it makes it sound louder.

All of the equipment I have recommended is to that purpose of making your system sound better and I am not going to make any apologizes for that. Taking advantage of a better noise floor, louder volumes without clipping and distortion and reproducing the music as the artist intended. That means making the amp play at its rated output by sending the amp the minimum required power voltage. That means sending enough signal voltage to the amp so that the gain can be turned completely off, thus almost 100 percent removing any noise created by the amp making the amp very quiet so that I am hearing the music and not the system. Adding acoustical dampening to the car which includes rubber sheets to reduce vibrations and reduce overall interior temperatures because heat will effect the environment as well, thick closed cell foam to put a layer between the car and the Mass Loaded Vinyl sheets which lay on top of the closed cell foam to remove up to 3db of external noise, which in effect reduces outside noise by double and increase the systems ability to play louder by the same amount and selecting speakers that are capable of handing more power than what I am sending to them so that they never ever break up no matter how much volume I send it. All of which allows this system to generate as much headroom as possible without clipping and without distortion, and finally the processor which is necessary to undo all of the bs in the car that is interfering with me listening to the music the way the artist intended.

You dont need any of anything I have listed here and in any of the other post I have recommended if you just want background music in your car. But if you want to hear and feel the emotion in the music, and for it to be an experience. Listening to music in the car has been around since the 30's. THE 1930's! It is part of American Culture. You will spend $2000.00 to get 75 hp usable out of this car, and cant spend less than 800.00 to make a sound system worth listening to?

I do really appreciate your knowledge and background. I do, but this is way over your head either because you have never experienced a good sounding system in a car or you just don't care, i'm not sure, but telling these people to just buy more efficient speakers and add a sub, sure, it will sound louder than the factory system, but because you are not re-tuning the system to match the acoustics, you might as well just not do it at all. It's a waste of money. "Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well." - Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield 22 September 1694 ā€“ 24 March 1773. My guess the first person to say it probably was grog who came up with the round wheel, but no one was around to document it.
 


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#48
If one was to replace the 4 factory door speakers for something with better efficiency... what would you guys recommend?
Obviously keeping it on the budget tho
 


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jmrtsus

jmrtsus

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"I do really appreciate your knowledge and background. I do, but this is way over your head either because you have never experienced a good sounding system in a car or you just don't care, i'm not sure, but telling these people to just buy more efficient speakers and add a sub, sure, it will sound louder than the factory system, but because you are not re-tuning the system to match the acoustics, you might as well just not do it at all. It's a waste of money. "Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well." - Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield 22 September 1694 ā€“ 24 March 1773. My guess the first person to say it probably was grog who came up with the round wheel, but no one was around to document it."

Gee, I am glad you told me about this fictional "sweet spot" in amps. I have designed, built and sold them them for many years and never heard that one even from others that also do this! So you think an amp has a spot on it's power curve at 75% where it sounds better to you? Wow! Tell me again how many amps you have designed and built? I must tell all the others designer/builders about you new discovery, I guess we just waste many, many hours of design and testing to insuring the power and frequency response is linear from under 1 watt to what I use for rated power which allows for a +3 dB headroom. I don't know how this has been missed all these 90 years. Have you submitted your ground breaking data to any Electronics design journals? You may even get a Nobel Prize for advancing the understanding of the design of audio amps.

I am also glad you know the difference in frequency and amplitude, that is taught in basic electronics.....don't understand what is has to do with this conversation but I guess you do use it to impress someone. I am also impressed you can hear when an EQ has the smiley face, just proves my point that how what someone else likes, the sound is "a mess" to you. You just do not get it...... LOL! Let me try to explain it so you can understand. Some people think the way you like your sound is WRONG for them. Get over it, please. Why is it wrong to like a "west coast " sound of boosted bass and treble? JBL has made a fortune on it for over 60 years and many, many famous audio tracks have used JBL's as the studio monitors for the assembly of these recordings......again your whole "what the artist wanted thing" is in reality what the artist and the studio folks heard on a speaker system with the smiley face frequency response in the studio. Guess the artists and producers were wrong too. Wow.

As to your obsession with power and loud that is explained because you live in the 12V audio world. My thing with efficiency has always been in this car to reduce the load on the amp to clean it up some. I did explain to others that it would also make it louder if that was their goal. I spent many years spending tons of money on car audio. It did not take long for me to determine with the limited fidelity available in a normal car audio signals that goal was unattainable without spending way too much money for a system that is dependant on one configuration. That is the goal of the 12V audio crowd. Have fun with your hobby, but do not make the mistake of thinking everyone has that goal. FYI, a well designed 40 watt home system will rattle windows. We do not need thousands of watts for extremely low efficiency speakers and do not have a cars horrible acoustics to deal with. Who, reading a $500 audio upgrade thread is going to do these things, who wants to spend thousands on sound deadeners and tires according to what some 12V audio fans contend then thousands more for hardware and labor? Your problem is you have never ventured into true high quality audio and have little knowledge of electronics or audiology.....just your 12V audio toys. This is the wrong post to sell your BS. I have never read anywhere on this or other FiST Forums where the goal of buying a FiST was to tear it apart, spend many buckets of money to redesign the car and audio system to brag they finally spent enough money to win a contest. Just go buy a trophy if that is what you need. As to you driving for hours with 2000 watts of power amps full volume, if you speakers are 85 dB SPL @ 1 Watt, 2000 watts would be 118db, past the painful mode. Only you would drive around at the sound level of a Jet engine.....then bitch other people like loud music. Again my usual comment for you....Just, wow!
 


antarctica24

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#50
If one was to replace the 4 factory door speakers for something with better efficiency... what would you guys recommend?
Obviously keeping it on the budget tho
You can buy this midrange

https://www.parts-express.com/prv-audio-6mr500-ndy-4-6-1-2-neodymium-midrange-woofer-4-ohm--294-2706

96db efficient.

Pick any $30.00 tweeter on parts express will work, you just need a cap to cross it over.

You can get these pioneer speakers full retail for $130.00 they are 91 db efficient You can buy them on ebay for $62.00.

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Car/Speakers/A-Series/TS-A1606C
 


antarctica24

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#51
"I do really appreciate your knowledge and background. I do, but this is way over your head either because you have never experienced a good sounding system in a car or you just don't care, i'm not sure, but telling these people to just buy more efficient speakers and add a sub, sure, it will sound louder than the factory system, but because you are not re-tuning the system to match the acoustics, you might as well just not do it at all. It's a waste of money. "Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well." - Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield 22 September 1694 ā€“ 24 March 1773. My guess the first person to say it probably was grog who came up with the round wheel, but no one was around to document it."

Gee, I am glad you told me about this fictional "sweet spot" in amps. I have designed, built and sold them them for many years and never heard that one even from others that also do this! So you think an amp has a spot on it's power curve at 75% where it sounds better to you? Wow! Tell me again how many amps you have designed and built? I must tell all the others designer/builders about you new discovery, I guess we just waste many, many hours of design and testing to insuring the power and frequency response is linear from under 1 watt to what I use for rated power which allows for a +3 dB headroom. I don't know how this has been missed all these 90 years. Have you submitted your ground breaking data to any Electronics design journals? You may even get a Nobel Prize for advancing the understanding of the design of audio amps.

I am also glad you know the difference in frequency and amplitude, that is taught in basic electronics.....don't understand what is has to do with this conversation but I guess you do use it to impress someone. I am also impressed you can hear when an EQ has the smiley face, just proves my point that how what someone else likes, the sound is "a mess" to you. You just do not get it...... LOL! Let me try to explain it so you can understand. Some people think the way you like your sound is WRONG for them. Get over it, please. Why is it wrong to like a "west coast " sound of boosted bass and treble? JBL has made a fortune on it for over 60 years and many, many famous audio tracks have used JBL's as the studio monitors for the assembly of these recordings......again your whole "what the artist wanted thing" is in reality what the artist and the studio folks heard on a speaker system with the smiley face frequency response in the studio. Guess the artists and producers were wrong too. Wow.

As to your obsession with power and loud that is explained because you live in the 12V audio world. My thing with efficiency has always been in this car to reduce the load on the amp to clean it up some. I did explain to others that it would also make it louder if that was their goal. I spent many years spending tons of money on car audio. It did not take long for me to determine with the limited fidelity available in a normal car audio signals that goal was unattainable without spending way too much money for a system that is dependant on one configuration. That is the goal of the 12V audio crowd. Have fun with your hobby, but do not make the mistake of thinking everyone has that goal. FYI, a well designed 40 watt home system will rattle windows. We do not need thousands of watts for extremely low efficiency speakers and do not have a cars horrible acoustics to deal with. Who, reading a $500 audio upgrade thread is going to do these things, who wants to spend thousands on sound deadeners and tires according to what some 12V audio fans contend then thousands more for hardware and labor? Your problem is you have never ventured into true high quality audio and have little knowledge of electronics or audiology.....just your 12V audio toys. This is the wrong post to sell your BS. I have never read anywhere on this or other FiST Forums where the goal of buying a FiST was to tear it apart, spend many buckets of money to redesign the car and audio system to brag they finally spent enough money to win a contest. Just go buy a trophy if that is what you need. As to you driving for hours with 2000 watts of power amps full volume, if you speakers are 85 dB SPL @ 1 Watt, 2000 watts would be 118db, past the painful mode. Only you would drive around at the sound level of a Jet engine.....then bitch other people like loud music. Again my usual comment for you....Just, wow!
If your that good at building amps, why dont you make one that will satisfy everyone here. You could make it so it had only 40 watts to rattle their windows, and you could sell it for $20.00 so it would be cheap enough for everyone and to remove the load you could make it so that it was only an 8 ohm amp, and everyone one could use 16 ohm speakers so they would only produce half the power aka no strain on the amp. I dont have a way that I like for my music to sound, other than the way the artist intended for tit to sound. I suppose in your amp building days you were able to but the cheapest caps, coils, and power transformers and the world bowed on their knees to hear it. I dont suppose you've ever heard that when audio components get hot, they sound better. Hmmm, tube amps ring a bell. Dont they sound better the warmer the tubes get. Integrated circuits and amps do the exact same thing. You can make all the volume you want but if your not pushing the amp to it limit without going over the deep end, your not getting all you can get out of the amp musically. You did say you had experience building amps right? Im pretty sure thats what you said. I what you said was true, I could take a 200 x 4 amp and put it on a set of speakers rated at 50 watts each, and it would sound awesome, but anyone who has any practical experience knows, that a 45 x 4 amp on the same 50 watts speakers would sound better than the 200 x 4 because the components are being driven hard in the amp, making the amp hot, and the sounds better every time. This is true will ALL Audio Electronics and has been for over 50 years. The hotter they get the better they sound. Spending all that time teaching audio and building amps, has taught you nothing about practical application. As for JBL, Chris Dragon and I are good friends and have been for some time. If you dont know who that is, you should look him up, among designing the dragon tape deck for Nakamichi, he designed a multitude of electronics for JBL along with Andy Wheitmeyer before he left to start up Audio Frog. Sure the "West Coast" sound has been around for a long time, but it doesnt make it right. It just means thats they way people want to hear their music because other tards are listening to their music the same way and no one has taken time to show them so they dont know anything different. 100% of the time of all of the customers than came to buy something that came in with subs and tweeters, would look at the cars we had, listen to them and say, how do I get that in my car. EVERYTIME. When people dont know any better or have been shown the difference, palmers chocolate still taste good. Right up until they have a piece of godiva.

Lets go back your hearing chart. So your fan of the metal dome tweeter. Right? I memory servers you have 4 tweeters in your car, right? Why? according to your chart you cant hear anything over 6K anyway your like 65 right? You can make your amps way more efficient by just getting rid of the tweeters and playing just your midrange, Get you a midrange with 96db efficiency from parts express for about $20.00. It will play well above 6K and it will remove the strain on your amp, and you will have everything you want.

Trust I am over it.

Same stuff different day, another expert with no practical experience.
 


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jmrtsus

jmrtsus

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Thread Starter #52
If one was to replace the 4 factory door speakers for something with better efficiency... what would you guys recommend?
Obviously keeping it on the budget tho
Do you have an idea what you want? If you are buying component speakers that will require overcoming mounting situations as I know of no tweeters that would easily replace the stock units. So this boils down to in door two way 6.5 inch speakers that are thin enough to fit as the easiest for a DIY install.

Crutchfield has a site feature that allows you to input your car and it will tell you which they sell that will fit. Choose your price range and from there look at the efficiency figures. You want 90dB or better efficiency. Stick with the major brands, read the reviews. Then ask if anyone is using them and their thoughts on the Forum. And last, shop the prices!

If you do not mind a stick-on tweeter on your door and drilling a hole you have the option of component separate tweeter and woofer-mids. Also if you are having it installed the cost will be higher for component install. The speakers on this post and several others are out there and will improve your sound.
 


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jmrtsus

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Thread Starter #53
Again tell me all the amps you have designed? And about your 2000 watt amp at full volume? Or maybe how many articles have you had published on speaker system design?s. Did you make a living teaching it?

You have never bought an audio transformer in your life and would not have a clue as to how they are used or that a good one costs hundreds of dollars. I use only NOS USA made tubes and USA made transformers some of which cost many hundreds of dollars each in all my amps including guitar amps. I have an inventory of NOS Audio tubes insured for $10K, I do not build junk cheap amps, stereo amps starts at $2K for a 10 watt class A and ends at how much do you want to spend. You have a little knowledge in car audio amps, I have worked with amps covering audio to microwave frequencies. I was responsible for maintenance for a liquid cooled 1 megawatt amp. I have built many AF and RF amps in my career. Your experience and knowledge is enough to impress other 12V guys. Real electronics folks see what you do as a simple electronics hobby venture. And as far as thermionic applications heat is important to tubes but even tubes have dissipation limits that must be addressed but I am sure you think red hot is a good thing for audio. If you had any formal electronics training you would know that heat is NOT a good thing for solid state devices, but again you demonstrate your lack of education in electronics by declaring another new Nobel Prize statement that solid state devices like heat! That is a double WOW,WOW! You have again turned the electronics world upside down. Are you going to publish this amazing new development also? You have single handedly destroyed what I learned and have taught to thousands of techs as being all wrong! Damn, do you realize how many millions of textbooks will now have to be rewritten? Sad, lookup thermal runaway in any transistor course to start your education in solid state. EE's spend millions of man hours trying to cool solid state devices to keep them from dying by heat, by your theory we should just dump all heat sinks! How do you not know digital amps exist to NOT generate heat due to their efficiency, not to make great sound when they DO. You guessed it, another WOW!

Why would you want to argue with someone that has done this including teaching it and writing training courses on it for almost 50 years. You have never built a 1 transistor amp and you need some actual knowledge of electronics other than what someone has told you. Your childish rant on cheap amps was just silly and pointed to your lack of knowledge on how electronics actually work, I guess you really think that Tube amps can be made as cheaply as digital amps. Will not waste a wow on this one. Another subject you know zero about. You act like 12V audio is some major new thing.........only to newbies like you. What do you not understand about digital audio being around since the 60's? Just because you can get lots of cheap chinese audio equipment now does not in any way addresses the sound is bad compared to true high quality analog circuits. How do you spout "audiophile" when not one digital amp is listed in the top 10 over $10K amps? How can a system that only uses an "approximation" of 50% of the original signal ever be considered "audiophile" except by the 12V crowd.

Glad you are finally done with it.

BTW, thanks for the helpful reply to the post asking for driver suggestions. I have said before your knowledge would be of great help for those that just want an inexpensive upgrades.
 




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