speaker placements

[24SEVEN]

so I've upgraded the standard speakers and put in a sub. now I want to know if it's work getting a centre speaker, or some of those under-seat-sub thngs for a bt more sound, or even if there's any other places I can cinsider putting speakers for a bit more surround to my sound. the back seats can't hear the front speakers, and so everything sounds a bit rubbish from there, everything seems to work at its best from the drivers seat, which is great if I'm the only person in the car. any of you ICE big boys got any ideas? Wouldn't mind hearing from Naylor here, since he's got the trophies to back what he says .

 

[Darren198712]

so I've upgraded the standard speakers and put in a sub. now I want to know if it's work getting a centre speaker, or some of those under-seat-sub thngs for a bt more sound, or even if there's any other places I can cinsider putting speakers for a bit more surround to my sound. the back seats can't hear the front speakers, and so everything sounds a bit rubbish from there, everything seems to work at its best from the drivers seat, which is great if I'm the only person in the car. any of you ICE big boys got any ideas? Wouldn't mind hearing from Naylor here, since he's got the trophies to back what he says .

you need to try and get the sound even for the driver (you)

I think thats normal that you can't here the front speakers from the back seat

 

[NaylorGTS]

the best sound you can get from your car without spending thousands, and having to learn a whole load of shit to get the right set up is a simple install

which means a set of comps, mids and tweeters and a sub, and a amp of course

in both my almera and runabout I run the system like this, in both you can hear the music in the back, although the sub or subs tend to be very over powering
the only way around this if your that intent on supplying your rear passengers with a better sound is by installing rear speakers, but by doing this you will mess up your sound stage, and you end up hearing the rears slightly after the fronts because of the distance between your ears and the speakers

when you start putting a centre speaker in, or running 3 way comps things just get even more complicated with getting the sound right

one of the lads who I competed with won his league every year for about 5 years running a set of 2 way comps, all different systems but same basic idea, he then went and ran a set of 3 ways active, and his sound scores went drastically down, he just couldnt get it right, and this is with the other lads on the team helping out too(all league winners in their own league), and between their knowledge couldnt help either
he went back to the 2 way comps and won the euro championship league


the best solution for you would be to install some rear speakers in the oem placements and run them off the headunit, and use the fader on the headunit to fade them out when theres no one in the back, and fade them in when people are in the back
but by using the fader on the headunit this can also mess up the sound a bit, and if your pre-outs thats running the subs are rear pre-outs you cant fade the rear speakers out without fading the sub out too, so another solution would be to physically disconnect the speakers when theres no one in the back
when i used to have a screen in the rear I installed 6x9's and ran them off an amp, I used a switch on the tailgate to operate the remote wire on the amp that powered the 6x9's so when the boot was open the 6x9's would work and I would have a good and loud sound coming out of the car so people could hear whatever dvd I had on, you could do a similar idea to this and just have the switch in the front of your car

 

[24SEVEN]

Thanks Naylor. At the mo I've got some 2way comps in the front, 3 way 6x9s in the back both running of the head unit (though I'm about to hook the 6x9s up to a maystar QXA250 amp and set the x-over to high pass), and a 12" sub running off designated sub preouts and a Maystar QXT200 amp. At the moment without the amp on the 6x9s, the bass in the back is quite overpowering, even when the volume isn't that high in the front. I'm thinking maybe it's the combination of the bass in the 6x9s and the sub that's doing that which is why when they're amped I'll run them on high pass only.

My HU also has a set of front and rear preouts which are on all the time, and an internal 50W x 4 amp which I can disable. Maybe I could amp all my 'everyday' speakers on the preouts, and when there are people in the back I could turn the internal amp on to power a 2nd set of components in the rear passenger doors? Or would this cause a phase difference like you said?

 

[24SEVEN]

Forgot to ask, is there any advantage over having a ported sub enclosure compared to a sealed one? I always understood that ported was louder, but sealed was clearer sounding, so I kept mine sealed, but a friend told me ported is both clouder and clearer

 

[NaylorGTS]

you shouldnt have a problem in the rear if you already have a set of 6x9's, you r sound quality is already degraded, adding more speakers you might aswell do what you want, theres no point giving you anymore advice as you either dont have good hearing, or you like lots of speakers
a sealed sub is more musical than a ported one

 

[24SEVEN]

I'd like to have less speakers if I could. I'm too skint to buy anything else really. It's just at the moment everything only sounds as good as the money I've spent from the front. I'll see how these 6x9s are on the amp then rethink.

Don't mean to irritate you with basic questions. Thought it better to ask people who actually know what they're doing rather than be a hothead and 'give it a bash myself'. Thanks for what you've told me already. I'll tell my mate he's talking through his arse bout the sub .