Post 519235 by I want a T5 on 2012-07-01 09:51:05
Finally, after months of dodging rain, remodelling the house, working on Poland and the US, I have sounds again in the car!
Summary of equipment:
In the front doors, I have swapped out the factory fit 6.5" mid for a 3" sealed mid range and where the door pocket is, I have sacrificed the front half and built a custom fibre glass 'pod' to house a 6.5" mid bass.
In the A pillars, I have mounted tweeters in fibre glass angled pods so to aim to a centre pint just forward of the head rests.
The above speakers are from DLS and are the Iridium 6.3i model (eBay bargain!).
No rear speakers at the moment (and not likely to be either).
Currently I have various options for the bass. A recently made ported box housing two 8" Sundown Audio V1 subs, the box being tuned to 35Hz and showing the amp 1ohm. The other is a sealed box housing two 12" Hertz subs. Reason for 2 boxes is that I like a variety of music and the sealed box is a little tighter and flat with its response so suits most music and the twin 8" was an impulse buy as they are absolutely bonkers for an 8" with ridiculous cone movement possible as even more ridiculous sound pressure levels (a pair of these have been measured at over 150dB!).
Amp duties are currently carried out by a single amp, the fabulous DLS Ultimate A5 which is a dedicated 3 channel amp with stereo for the front and mono for the sub. Punching out aboy 700watts to the subs and 150 a side to the front.
I do have plans to increase the amping by swapping the A5 for an A6 sub amp (which will give the subs close to 1200watts and an A3 'dual mono' for the front.
1/0 awg cabling from the battery to the load area that then splits to 2/0 to feed the amps. 1/0 awg earth strap to the chassis which splits to 2/0 to the amps. Phoenix gold RCA leads from head unit to amps.
Alpine 7893R CD player plays the music. A great head unit that can be found on eBay every now and then for around £50 and has the benefit of internal crossovers, time allignment and EQ (I got 3 of them!).
I have ready to fire up, an AudioControl graphic EQ but am holding off installing this to see how much I can get out of the Alpine (less components in the system means less problems later!).
So how does it all sound I hear you say.......
Simply amazing and I have all the settings on flat and have not trimmed the EQ or time allignment in any way. I have an RTA coming tomorrow which I will use to identify the peaks and troughs in the frequency response as every car is different and have natural tendencies to either boost or cut certain frequencies (the front component passive crossovers are designed of course, to cater for most car situations, most of the time).
The treble is a little vicious at high volumes so I expect that this is where the Alpine's EQ will be most fiddle with.
The mid range where I hear the vocals is crystal clear and defined (the tweeter placement compliments these well and you can close your eyes and feel/hear the vocalist in front of you and even sense them move from left to right!).
The mid bass has an amazing level of punch and attack. Drum beats almost make you wince at high volumes (thats probably the tweeters accentuating this) as they are playing 80Hz upwards.
Subs.........O M G! For an 8" driver, these things are nothing short of incredible! Driving along while playing a bassy track off an Infected Mushroom CD (Israeli electronic trance musice! Hunt them out on YouTube if you are curious), particularly a track called Dancing with Gadaffi, felt like I was being physically punched in the lower back and as for looking out of the rear view mirror; forget it! The sound waves were making it impossible to see out of!
Hopefully, by next weekend, I will have spent a few hours trimming the EQ and time allignment (for those who are not show what TA is, it effectively delays to sound to a bank of speakers so that you can have left and right arriving at your head at the same time. Milli seconds of delays but you can hear the difference!).
Here are a few pics that show the progress. Still some tidying up to do such as recover the A pillars again (not as easy as it looks to stretch it nicely around 3 dimensional curves) and box in the amps (I won't do this until I have decided whether to stay with the single amp or change to the double amp set up).
Showing live feed from batter to fuse and then on through the bulkhead and aft. You can also see the earthing upgrade too.
Here, you can see the custom pod made to house the 6.5" mid bass that vents in to the door cavity. This is firmly screwed to the inner door panel with 3 hefty self-tappers and a good squeeze of waterproof 'no more nails' to help stop vibration and to also seal it up.
Hear you can see where I divided the door card pocket so that the front part now has the speaker grille that sits in front of the 6.5" driver.
Here, you can see where the 3" mid is fixed to an mdf baffle that is in turn, fixed to an eBay sourced speaker adaptor that replaces the OE driver that is an all in one speaker with legs affair!
Here, you can see a modified A pillar prior to trimming and one after (this is the one that needs a re trim!).
Here, you can see how the amp has been installed along with a bit of cabling detail:
An finally, the monster sub box! Its only 13" square by 30" long, all hand made by yours truly!
And here, you can see the twin 12" bruied under various eBay impulse buys!
I have learnt a lot about cable runs, earthing upgrades (I upgraded the battery to chassis, battery to engine and engine to chassis and it has by coincidence, eliminated the irritating 'chuntering' on initial start up so can recommend you look at this as an alternative to the usual 'its the coil packs' assumption!). I am more than happy to pass on my knowledge to help fellow members with upgrading their sounds and also have plent of spare copper cable and terminals to make up earth straps for anyone interested (PM me for details).
Hopefully, I will get along to some meets and show off the sounds. Remember though, this is not just a Halfords style boom and tiss set up, it is quality kit, carefully installed (as carefully as I could that is) so as to give a real improvement in quality but that said, it is feckin loud too! And also worth noting, especially for those unaware of the DLS brand, DLS are Swedish so kind of appropriate that they be installed in a Volvo!
I hope you enjoyed this somewhat long winded post and if anyone wants more pics of any of the install to help them work on something, let me know as I have plenty!