Front speakers sound terrible

[markfleet]

Hi

I have a 98 ibiza cupra which I got with infinity door speakers in it but I find the tweeters in the dash are way too harsh and I can barely hear to speakers with the tweeters doing there thing right in my face

As a tempory solution, im just sending most of the sound to the back speakers but I really want all of them working properly so is there a solution without going to the expense of components?

Ive been doing a search and found some info

if you get aftermarket speakers in the front doors - they will not sound like the originals. Why ??

Because in the dash are the tweeters, and bloody good ones i must say
The doors are single cone types with some sort of capacitor type cross-over on the one connector. I just went and installed a set of 3-way JBLs and sounded crap, why, because i left the capacitor type crossover on the old speakers which as result only played the high treble notes.

Would anyone like to confirm this??

What have other people done and got good results with?

Thanks

 

[jcs356]

Suggest you bypass the filter which is hard wired into the original cabling, and sends the high frequency stuff to the dash tweeters and the low frequency stuff to the door speakers. Running speaker cable directly from your head unit (or amp) either straight to the door speaker, or to the connector in the footwell if you don't want visible wires at the door.

 

[markfleet]

yeah might have to do that but would obviously like to have tweeters of some sort in the dash.

What if I were to just replace the original in dash tweeters with infinity ones leaving the wiring and the infinity door speakers as they are? would they still be ash harsh and overpower the speakers?

 

[hopkinsgm]

Possibly a daft suggestion but I suppose you have wired the door speakers in phase? If out of phase, you'll get a lot of low frequency cancellation, which will make the tweeters seem to overpower the door speakers.

 

[markfleet]

Never thought of that!

I bought the car with the speakers already fitted and when I had 1 of the door panels off, it looked like the bloke had cut the old connectors off and crimped new ones on so i guess he could have got them the wrong way round.

I have to try changing them tomorrow but can the speakers come out from the front wihtout having to take the door panels off? (I find that the door handle surround is really easy to mark)

 

[hopkinsgm]

...can the speakers come out from the front wihtout having to take the door panels off...

Assuming it's a Cupra Sport or GTi model, then the speaker can be removed by removing a small screw at the bottom of the front edge of the door trim to allow the speaker grille to be removed. Once the grille is removed, you should be able to access the heads of the four screws that hold the speaker to the door card.

As standard, the wiring comes from the head unit to the dash mounted tweeter and then in parallel to the door mounted speaker so swapping the wires as they come off the tweeter or onto the door speaker would be quite an easy mistake to make leaving you with a set of speakers that have only the door speaker out of phase. It's possible that the whole shooting match is out of phase, but due to the nature of phase cancellation, you'd be less likely to notice if the tweeters were out of phase.

 

[markfleet]

Thanks for you help

I checked and they were the wrong way round on both sides. Changed them round and im sure they sound much better now I still find theres not much bass from the front compared to the back but I gues thats just the speakers.

 

[hopkinsgm]

Front speakers are a tricky one - ideally, you want bass and treble frequencies coming from the same place, but it's a tad impractical in practice. You need a big(ish) speaker to shift plenty of air for the bass end which limits where you can mount it. Treble frequencies are far more directional than bass frequencies, so it's a lot more important that the high frequency speaker is directed at the listener. Mounting tweeters horizontally in the dash pointing upwards at the screen is a bit of a fiddle as glass reflects sound quite efficiently. But it does tend to make the spund a touch brittle.

I used to have a mk2 Golf which had co-ax speakers in the doors - as much bass as you could reasonably expect out of a speaker of that size, but all the treble was lost in the footwells. Growing ears on my ankles wasn't a practical proposition, so I bought a set of tweeters and left them with long flying leads and tried them in umpteen different places around the interior for a few days at a time, mounted using big chunks of blutack. Eventually settled on a spot at the top of the A pillars, not a conventional location but it provided what I considered (remember that a lot of this is subjective and depends an awful lot on what kind of music you listen to) to be a pleasant and balanced sound, that worked for that paticular combination of car, speakers and head unit. If you do get a set of separate tweeters, then it's worth playing about a bit with location, as it really can make a huge difference to the way the whole package sounds together.

 

[markfleet]

Just found out the other main reason why the tweeters were sounding so overpowering. I just found the instruction manual for my HU on the net and was reading through it when I found a feature called "dynamic soundstage organizer (DSO)" which says:

"If your speakers are installed into the lower part of the doors, the sound will come from below and may not be clear. The DSO function creates a more ambient sound ans if there were speakers in the dashboard (virtual speakers)."

Abviously I wouldnt need this feature because of the tweeters in the dash. went and checked and the function was on . Turned it off and the difference is MASSIVE. sounds how it should now


Am I am a complete noob when it comes to car audio could you give me some advice on amps? Im going to leave the front as is now and concentrate on the back. I dont want to spend much so I am just going to put some infinity speakers into my stealth shelf amd power them from an infinity amp.
Im guessing putting the amp upside down under the shelf would be a bad idea for heat so would putting it on the back of the rear seats be alright?
I may want to add a sub at some point so would I be best of getting a 4 channel amp to power a couple of 6x9s and bridge the other 2 to power a sub?
To power the amp will I need to route loads of extra power wires like to the battery or can I just get the power from elsewhere?
Anything else I need to know?

lol sorry about all the questions