any car audio experts here?

Tahoebrian5

Tahoebrian5

Fractal Fanatic
Hey, I just bought a new truck and looking for help picking out speakers and an amp. i figure anyone passionate enough to buy an axe fx will also be passionate about high quality sound in a car, right?

Anyway I'm looking for high sound quality. Not so much into loud thumpy system. I'm planning to stick with the stock head unit, buy a 5 channel amp and change out the speakers. I'll probably do a little bit of dynamat.. Whatever I can get away with without tearing the whole truck apart.

Here's the amp I've got picked out so far. I was hoping to find something a bit cheaper in the $200 range so let me know if you have any suggestions. I want to have hi and lo pass for each channel and one dedicated sub channel
https://www.crutchfield.com/p_109CL4505/JBL-Club-4505.html

As far as speakers I'm completely lost with too many options. I want to try without a true sub woofer to start with. Tang band makes a 6x9 sub which I believe will fit in the factory rear door locations. Btw, this is a 2017 ram 1500 crew cab. 6x9 in the front and back doors, and 3.5" speakers in the dash. I'm considering going with 6.5 component speakers for the front and install the tweets in the dash locations. That's about it.. Oh ya, the front speaker locations can only take about 2.75" depth. The rears have more depth , 4 or 5" I've been told.

Okay let me know if anyone has suggestions. Thx!
 
Hmmm, good to know about XM. The stock system sounds awful, literally zero redeeming qualities to mention.

I've been reading up on the tang band small subs. They work really well for the size but the deal breaker for wha I gathe is mounting a sub in a door just does not work because it just rattles and you really need a tuned enclosure. I've decided I'm going to build a small enclosed box with a single 8" or 10" sub for under the back seat. Now to pick out one in the $150 range that works well with a low volume enclosure.
 
IMO, you really should consider replacing the factory HU as well. Feeding the signal from it to a quality amp and speaker setup is a perfect example of “garbage in, garbage out”. I have an O-scope, a Steve Meade Designs DD-1 Distortion Detector and a CC-1 Crossover Calibrator that I use to do car stereo installs for friends and family. With these tools I find it amazing how early a factory HU begins to clip it’s output as you turn it up. I’ve been active in car audio for over 40 years and if there is one thing I’ve learned it’s that a factory HU should NEVER be the signal source for a high quality stereo installation.
 
Stephen13 said:
IMO, you really should consider replacing the factory HU as well.
Click to expand...
By "HU", you are referring to head unit or the factory installed stereo system (e.g. AM/FM/CD/Tape/XM/DVD/MP3 etc.), correct? I just want to be sure I am understanding this thread, so apologies for my newbie question on this topic.
 
Yes I realize it's only so much I can do with the stock hu. It's not feasible to replace it as its a uconnect system and controls the entire truck.. Suspension settings, etc, etc.

After many many hours of research I ended up buying a set of Morel tempo 6.5" component speakers for the front, a pioneer gm 5 channel class d 2000 watt amp, and some dynamat for the doors. I'm going to see how that sounds and then decide on a sub from there. I will try inserting some quality signal directly into the amp to see if I can hear the sound quality difference with the head unit once I get it installed. If the hu sounds like crap I'll just play MP3.
 
I've got 6.5" Morel "Hybrid" components in the front of my Silverado and Morel mid-woofers in the back. Your components should sound noticeably better with more power driving them. In my experience that's pretty much the case whenever you have component speakers with passive crossovers that typically have 2nd order (12dB/octave) or higher crossover slopes.

That's a shame about the truck's stereo being multi-tasking like that. Car/truck manufacturers have been making it harder and harder to replace their stereos for a few years now. I've seen some people just mount their new HUs beneath the driver's seat so that they don't have to deal with the factory stereo. Not something I would care to do in my own vehicles but to each their own I guess.

If I could make a suggestion I would try placing your tweets as close to the mid-woofers as possible. My Silverado has A-pillar mounted factory tweet locations that IMO don't sound nearly as good as having the tweets next to their mid-woofers. Whenever I demo my setup for others they are always surprised at how well the stereo image seems to go across the entire dash with the tweets mounted near the mid-woofers like that. This is especially true for HUs (or a separate signal processor) that use time alignment (delay) for the left side speakers. Time alignment doesn't work nearly as well when the woofer and tweeter are separated too far apart. I use the Kicker "Front Row" signal processor in my truck for time alignment and it makes a world of difference in the sound.
 
My 2 options for the tweet mount are either in the dash corners (factory location) or I could mount them on the 6x9 conversion plate so almost like a coaxial setup. You think the plate is the way to go assuming I'm not doing time alignment processing?
 
Ya the hu unit thing is frustrating. Also there are no line outs so I made sure to get an amp that has speaker level inputs.

So back to hooking up the tweets. Should I run them off their own amp channel or just hook them up with the crossovers on the same amp channel?

I'm just going to be unhooking the rear door speakers for now, or maybe just feed them a touch of power to fill up the space.
 
I might be looking for an eq recommendation also. The hu as bass, mid, and treble. Fairly inadequate. I'm considering getting a multichannel and mount it below the seat with the amp.
 
Going active with the tweet amplification is up to you. I've done both active and passive crossover setups in the past and to be perfectly honest I don't have a preference either way. As for where to place the tweets that seems to be a personal preference kind of thing. Personally I think the imaging is better (more like listening to a home stereo system) when the tweets and mids are located close to each other. IMO imaging suffers when music around the crossover frequency is being produced in two different locations. One up high on the dash and the other down around your knees or ankles depending on the vehicle. You'll never see a home stereo speaker with it's drivers separated in such a way. Also, placing the tweets and mids close together is a closer simulation to an "ideal" speaker where all the sound is radiated from a point source.

As for an EQ (and depending on your budget) I'd recommend looking into something from Audio Control. Their EQL equalizer is an excellent unit that I've used on several installations over the years. I like to set it up initially using an RTA to get a fairly flat frequency response and then tweaking the final settings to taste by ear.
 
I've dabbled in car audio a little over the years, having always driven older (bought used) vehicles with typically crappy sound systems. The best system I had in a truck involved having kick panels fabricated for the front speakers (6.5 " with the tweeter mounted in the same enclosure) and placed in the floor board front left and right. Single 12" sub in a none-too-fancy enclosure placed under the seat in the extended cab. No other speakers used.. this was back in the 90's and the enclosures were way more affordable back then than anything I've seen in more recent years. I wouldn't spend the money on them at the prices I've sen more recently. The head unit was a Nakamichi CD player that I still have- still sounds fantastic at almost 20 years old (installed in my wife's car now). I had a friend at a car audio shop, so I got some of this stuff at cost, or near it.

This kept the sound stage up front and I was able to just run 3 channels (maybe bridge 4 channels down to two for the front speakers on a 5-channel amp, or use 3-channel amp, or a separate 2-channel amp and mono amp for the sub, etc.). I found this to sound better than running 5 channels, but I never tried a really high wattage 5-channel amp nor did I ever attempt to replace the rear speakers with something high end. I'm sure you can get better sound with more speakers, more wattage and a well tuned system, but that always added up to too much $$ for me. 2 killer channels up front and a single sub with plenty of clean power worked really well for me.

I'm not up on the latest, so not sure what brands or models to consider.

I'd like to not deal with this stuff again in the future if I get to buy another vehicle- I'd rather find a ride that has a good enough stock stereo system. They seem to be a lot better in many vehicles these days, compared to what they were for years and years.
 
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