Door side speaker
12-24-2012 | 09:14 AM
#11
Joined: Jul 2009
Posts: 8,570
Likes: 9
From: Professor Touge Emeritus
I'm no baller like Casey! lol[/quote]
I believe it's worth it to spend the money on focal. I get the mid range ones not the baller ones. If you ever want a demo let me know and bring ear plugs.
12-24-2012 | 09:15 AM
#12
Joined: Jul 2009
Posts: 8,570
Likes: 9
From: Professor Touge Emeritus
12-24-2012 | 10:01 AM
#13
Registered User
Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 353
Likes: 0
From: Dublin, CA
Hello,
There is a wide variety of speakers out there in the market that are good. 100-200 dollar speakers will net you some very decent speakers. 300-350 is the next "stage" of speakers. You definitely want to get components. That's almost a must and no reason not to unless you have door panels without the tweeter hole and don't feel like fabricating or buying new door panels.
Things to look for when buying aftermarket speakers are:
1. Speaker size and depth. If I remember right the stock speakers are mounted in a basket. They are 5 1/4 in size but you can upgrade to 6 1/2's. You can either buy a new mounting adapter or alter the existing basket to fit a new speaker. Depending on the speaker you can skip the basket/adapter and mount the speaker on to the door but then you can run into depth issues and/or vibration. Depth issues will not allow you to fully close the window since the magnet will get in the way. You can easily mitigate this buy simply either by making an adapter, using or modifying the existing basket or buying new universal speaker adapters (20 bucks online).
2. Tweeter mounts.The mounts on the door panel that hold the tweeter can be modified to support your new tweeters. It's just good to know that it's not plug and play and some tweeters are trickier than others to fit. Majority of all of them fit, just takes some finagling and maybe minor altering/fabricating.
3. crossover location. majority off all components (decent quality ones) come with a stand alone crossover. Not the inline solid state type on the wire. There is a nice place on the inside bottom corner of the door panel where you can locate this.
4. While your there, think about dynamiting. Helps a lot imho and adds little weight. Some will argue that its not worth it, it adds weight and costs money. Imo, you can find decent priced matting and the weight added is minimal...extremely minimal relatively speaking. It's worth the better sound quality. The only negative is that it's time consuming to properly install. I did inside (back of the outter shell) and outside (where all the holes are and where everything mounts to).
5. If you wanna go a step further, can replace the stock wiring from the speakers to the head unit or amp. I wouldnt do this until you install a stand alone amp if you choose to. The stock wiring is good enough if your not planning to get an amp.
With all that said, I have to refer to a comment up above. You can get the best speaker in the market but without a decent head unit, it means nothing. Post above is correct when advised to start with the head unit. The head unit is the single best upgrade you can do. Over the years the prices on head units significantly went down. You can get a really great head unit for a couple hundred dollars. If you need some help installing let me know.
v/r
James
There is a wide variety of speakers out there in the market that are good. 100-200 dollar speakers will net you some very decent speakers. 300-350 is the next "stage" of speakers. You definitely want to get components. That's almost a must and no reason not to unless you have door panels without the tweeter hole and don't feel like fabricating or buying new door panels.
Things to look for when buying aftermarket speakers are:
1. Speaker size and depth. If I remember right the stock speakers are mounted in a basket. They are 5 1/4 in size but you can upgrade to 6 1/2's. You can either buy a new mounting adapter or alter the existing basket to fit a new speaker. Depending on the speaker you can skip the basket/adapter and mount the speaker on to the door but then you can run into depth issues and/or vibration. Depth issues will not allow you to fully close the window since the magnet will get in the way. You can easily mitigate this buy simply either by making an adapter, using or modifying the existing basket or buying new universal speaker adapters (20 bucks online).
2. Tweeter mounts.The mounts on the door panel that hold the tweeter can be modified to support your new tweeters. It's just good to know that it's not plug and play and some tweeters are trickier than others to fit. Majority of all of them fit, just takes some finagling and maybe minor altering/fabricating.
3. crossover location. majority off all components (decent quality ones) come with a stand alone crossover. Not the inline solid state type on the wire. There is a nice place on the inside bottom corner of the door panel where you can locate this.
4. While your there, think about dynamiting. Helps a lot imho and adds little weight. Some will argue that its not worth it, it adds weight and costs money. Imo, you can find decent priced matting and the weight added is minimal...extremely minimal relatively speaking. It's worth the better sound quality. The only negative is that it's time consuming to properly install. I did inside (back of the outter shell) and outside (where all the holes are and where everything mounts to).
5. If you wanna go a step further, can replace the stock wiring from the speakers to the head unit or amp. I wouldnt do this until you install a stand alone amp if you choose to. The stock wiring is good enough if your not planning to get an amp.
With all that said, I have to refer to a comment up above. You can get the best speaker in the market but without a decent head unit, it means nothing. Post above is correct when advised to start with the head unit. The head unit is the single best upgrade you can do. Over the years the prices on head units significantly went down. You can get a really great head unit for a couple hundred dollars. If you need some help installing let me know.
v/r
James
12-24-2012 | 11:08 AM
#14
Thread Starter
Registered User
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 630
Likes: 1
Hello,
There is a wide variety of speakers out there in the market that are good. 100-200 dollar speakers will net you some very decent speakers. 300-350 is the next "stage" of speakers. You definitely want to get components. That's almost a must and no reason not to unless you have door panels without the tweeter hole and don't feel like fabricating or buying new door panels.
Things to look for when buying aftermarket speakers are:
1. Speaker size and depth. If I remember right the stock speakers are mounted in a basket. They are 5 1/4 in size but you can upgrade to 6 1/2's. You can either buy a new mounting adapter or alter the existing basket to fit a new speaker. Depending on the speaker you can skip the basket/adapter and mount the speaker on to the door but then you can run into depth issues and/or vibration. Depth issues will not allow you to fully close the window since the magnet will get in the way. You can easily mitigate this buy simply either by making an adapter, using or modifying the existing basket or buying new universal speaker adapters (20 bucks online).
2. Tweeter mounts.The mounts on the door panel that hold the tweeter can be modified to support your new tweeters. It's just good to know that it's not plug and play and some tweeters are trickier than others to fit. Majority of all of them fit, just takes some finagling and maybe minor altering/fabricating.
3. crossover location. majority off all components (decent quality ones) come with a stand alone crossover. Not the inline solid state type on the wire. There is a nice place on the inside bottom corner of the door panel where you can locate this.
4. While your there, think about dynamiting. Helps a lot imho and adds little weight. Some will argue that its not worth it, it adds weight and costs money. Imo, you can find decent priced matting and the weight added is minimal...extremely minimal relatively speaking. It's worth the better sound quality. The only negative is that it's time consuming to properly install. I did inside (back of the outter shell) and outside (where all the holes are and where everything mounts to).
5. If you wanna go a step further, can replace the stock wiring from the speakers to the head unit or amp. I wouldnt do this until you install a stand alone amp if you choose to. The stock wiring is good enough if your not planning to get an amp.
With all that said, I have to refer to a comment up above. You can get the best speaker in the market but without a decent head unit, it means nothing. Post above is correct when advised to start with the head unit. The head unit is the single best upgrade you can do. Over the years the prices on head units significantly went down. You can get a really great head unit for a couple hundred dollars. If you need some help installing let me know.
v/r
James
There is a wide variety of speakers out there in the market that are good. 100-200 dollar speakers will net you some very decent speakers. 300-350 is the next "stage" of speakers. You definitely want to get components. That's almost a must and no reason not to unless you have door panels without the tweeter hole and don't feel like fabricating or buying new door panels.
Things to look for when buying aftermarket speakers are:
1. Speaker size and depth. If I remember right the stock speakers are mounted in a basket. They are 5 1/4 in size but you can upgrade to 6 1/2's. You can either buy a new mounting adapter or alter the existing basket to fit a new speaker. Depending on the speaker you can skip the basket/adapter and mount the speaker on to the door but then you can run into depth issues and/or vibration. Depth issues will not allow you to fully close the window since the magnet will get in the way. You can easily mitigate this buy simply either by making an adapter, using or modifying the existing basket or buying new universal speaker adapters (20 bucks online).
2. Tweeter mounts.The mounts on the door panel that hold the tweeter can be modified to support your new tweeters. It's just good to know that it's not plug and play and some tweeters are trickier than others to fit. Majority of all of them fit, just takes some finagling and maybe minor altering/fabricating.
3. crossover location. majority off all components (decent quality ones) come with a stand alone crossover. Not the inline solid state type on the wire. There is a nice place on the inside bottom corner of the door panel where you can locate this.
4. While your there, think about dynamiting. Helps a lot imho and adds little weight. Some will argue that its not worth it, it adds weight and costs money. Imo, you can find decent priced matting and the weight added is minimal...extremely minimal relatively speaking. It's worth the better sound quality. The only negative is that it's time consuming to properly install. I did inside (back of the outter shell) and outside (where all the holes are and where everything mounts to).
5. If you wanna go a step further, can replace the stock wiring from the speakers to the head unit or amp. I wouldnt do this until you install a stand alone amp if you choose to. The stock wiring is good enough if your not planning to get an amp.
With all that said, I have to refer to a comment up above. You can get the best speaker in the market but without a decent head unit, it means nothing. Post above is correct when advised to start with the head unit. The head unit is the single best upgrade you can do. Over the years the prices on head units significantly went down. You can get a really great head unit for a couple hundred dollars. If you need some help installing let me know.
v/r
James
12-24-2012 | 02:56 PM
#16
Registered User
Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 353
Likes: 0
From: Dublin, CA
You mentioned you had two amps and a sub. I'm assuming one amp for the highs and one for the sub. Seems like you want a full system in your S. If that's the case your not really worried about weight and you want good sound. I want to encourage you to sound dampen some areas of the car and run aftermarket speaker wire from the amp to the components. "A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link". Stock wire will cause resistance and take away power (adds signal loss) and distortion. Make sure you run your speaker wire on one side of the car (drivers side) and the power wire on the other side (passenger) to prevent EMI and that "whine" you hear when you hit the gas. Also make sure your ground is as short as possible. Don't forget a cap and a good battery... Sorry for the run on info.. I'm not sure what your experience is with car audio.
v/r
James
12-24-2012 | 04:21 PM
#18
Registered User
Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 353
Likes: 0
From: Dublin, CA
v/r
James
12-24-2012 | 05:11 PM
#19
Registered User
Joined: Oct 2012
Posts: 55
Likes: 0
From: NorCal - Bay Area
I have a set of Morel Tempo 6 components with about 2 layers of dynamat in the door panels and I must say, it was well worth the upgrade for the super clear mids and highs. However, don't expect to get much bass out of component speakers. The mid range bass is definitely better than OEM speakers but if you've been in a car with a sub set up (even an OEM sub set up) you will not be happy with the lows unless you fork up a good chunk of money for a sub.
12-24-2012 | 05:24 PM
#20
Joined: Jul 2009
Posts: 8,570
Likes: 9
From: Professor Touge Emeritus
I have a basic alpine deck but my focal speakers are powered by a Precision Power amplifier (the old school quality one) running 5 1/4 inch Focal components. The tweeter, speaker, and crossover box fit fine with minor tweaks and plates. Ample dynamat is applied to interior portions of doors as well as throughout the trunk lid and trunk bottom. My impression was that a basic deck is ok as long as you aren't using it to power the speakers. If you want real sound let the amplifier and amp tuning knobs control the majority of the EQ type settings and use the deck for some very base functions like source control, volume, and subwoofer level.
My setup is more SQ focused than SPL focused. I just used a four channel amp with two channels for the speakers and two bridged into a 12" 12-year old infinity kappa perfect sub.
Also not yet mentioned is this thread is the need for a DCI. I used a PAC and it works perfect. I would probably get the modifry if I could do it all over again I would do modifry DCI because he is the man. There's no sense getting a special stereo and losing half the buttons on the dash. My "mute" button doesn't seem to work with the PAC DCI for whatever reason.
My setup is more SQ focused than SPL focused. I just used a four channel amp with two channels for the speakers and two bridged into a 12" 12-year old infinity kappa perfect sub.
Also not yet mentioned is this thread is the need for a DCI. I used a PAC and it works perfect. I would probably get the modifry if I could do it all over again I would do modifry DCI because he is the man. There's no sense getting a special stereo and losing half the buttons on the dash. My "mute" button doesn't seem to work with the PAC DCI for whatever reason.