Car Audio: Need advice on new set up

[razel]

YouTube is awesome lately. Check out Mirage Fix 5 | Watershield, Friction, Sound Deadening. That's pretty much what I did, except I kept my vapor wrap.

Don't spend too much on your speakers. I am running base-level Pioneer components that were $100 but I run them active crossover/time aligned/EQ-ed out the peaks and they blow away many speakers. Certainly put the most of your money into your fronts, but leave the rears alone. It's a waste.

If I knew what I knew now, I'd just stick with my stocks, but run them active/time aligned/EQ-ed and do the best I can to tweak it's 'enclosure'. Around the speaker itself, you'll want to seal it as good as you can. Stock speakers usually are. But for any gaps, I just use leftover Dynamat or in your case, or leftover neoprene to create a gasket. Otherwise you can fill small gaps with MoreTite or closed cell weather striping... again from Home Depot/Lowes.

Sound coming out of the rear speaker will cancel out what's coming from the front reducing volume and rear sound arriving later to crash the front creates distortion. Sealing those gaps and the neoprene further turns your door into a large enclosure, you'll tighten up the bass and keep more road noise out. If you want you can buy those open cell bass 'absorbers' off ebay and stick one directly behind the speaker. That will absorb/deflect the primary rear waves. It's not for everyone since in three cars I tried, there just wasn't enough room when you lower the windows. You'll also want to angle your speakers toward you. Nearly all door speakers are aimed at each other. Luckily your legs and lower center console is in the way, but still there's plenty of sound reinfocing each other. Slightly angling them correctly and structurally helps alot too bad that usually means fabrication of brackets which means $$$$.

Have fun...

 

[96Firebird]

What speakers did you go with? The CDTs?

The OFC wire is what I went with as well, but I am running a lot more wattage and wanted to stick with 0AWG and not have to go 2/0. You probably would have been OK with CCA 4AWG, but better wire doesn't hurt.

Hope you enjoy your PPI 900.4 as much as I do, it is a great amp. :thumbsup:

 

[z1ggy]

YouTube is awesome lately. Check out Mirage Fix 5 | Watershield, Friction, Sound Deadening. That's pretty much what I did, except I kept my vapor wrap.

Don't spend too much on your speakers. I am running base-level Pioneer components that were $100 but I run them active crossover/time aligned/EQ-ed out the peaks and they blow away many speakers. Certainly put the most of your money into your fronts, but leave the rears alone. It's a waste.

If I knew what I knew now, I'd just stick with my stocks, but run them active/time aligned/EQ-ed and do the best I can to tweak it's 'enclosure'. Around the speaker itself, you'll want to seal it as good as you can. Stock speakers usually are. But for any gaps, I just use leftover Dynamat or in your case, or leftover neoprene to create a gasket. Otherwise you can fill small gaps with MoreTite or closed cell weather striping... again from Home Depot/Lowes.

Sound coming out of the rear speaker will cancel out what's coming from the front reducing volume and rear sound arriving later to crash the front creates distortion. Sealing those gaps and the neoprene further turns your door into a large enclosure, you'll tighten up the bass and keep more road noise out. If you want you can buy those open cell bass 'absorbers' off ebay and stick one directly behind the speaker. That will absorb/deflect the primary rear waves. It's not for everyone since in three cars I tried, there just wasn't enough room when you lower the windows. You'll also want to angle your speakers toward you. Nearly all door speakers are aimed at each other. Luckily your legs and lower center console is in the way, but still there's plenty of sound reinfocing each other. Slightly angling them correctly and structurally helps alot too bad that usually means fabrication of brackets which means $$$$.

Have fun...

It's funny you mention this, I JUST watched a video on doing this. It seemed like a ton of work the guy used some plastic to cover up holes, then went nuts with neoprene and MLV.

I don't think my mazda3 has any large holes in the door but I have to look again. Just holes big enough to fit a hand into I guess is what I mean. My plan is to CLD the outer sheet metal of the door about 50% coverage, then CLD the inner skin 50% and then layer as much neoprene and MLV as I can over that. I found a hybrid product called Luxury Liner, which is an MLV sheet already glued onto a CCF. For the floors, I will probably just put down the Luxury Liner, or a CCF and glued on MLV, whichever ends up being cheaper.

Trunk floor will get the same treatment, and then the sheet metal over the wheel wells will get CLD.


And yes you're right, technically you want the tweeter and woofer both near each other, and both facing you. I've seen custom kick panel enclsure builds on crutchfield/youtube. I really don't have the time or interest for that right now. I think I will be happy with how this turns out. I can get into that later on if I want to step it up another level.

What speakers did you go with? The CDTs?

The OFC wire is what I went with as well, but I am running a lot more wattage and wanted to stick with 0AWG and not have to go 2/0. You probably would have been OK with CCA 4AWG, but better wire doesn't hurt.

Hope you enjoy your PPI 900.4 as much as I do, it is a great amp. :thumbsup:

No, I went with the Focals due to the aluminum construction. Yeah for this amount of power it might have been okay, but I think getting OFC is worth it in the long run.

Did that amp fit under your drivers seat?

 

[z1ggy]

Just ordered 36sqft of 80mil CLD (Noico) that I will put on the doors and maybe in the wheel whell and trunk area if there's left over.

The CCF & MLV will have to wait... it's just too expensive because it really doesn't make sense to only do a little bit of the car. I would need to make sure I cover as much metal as possible that I'd prob need to spend about $250 in CCF, MLV and adhesive to do that. $50 for 25 sqft of CCF and $120 for 40sqft of MLV on Amazon. If you guys find cheaper, let me know. The combo CCF/MLV that's already glued together is about $50 per 12sqft, so that ends up being a touch cheaper, but that that is only semi closed foam... the full CCF/MLV combo was $75/sqft.

 

[NutBucket]

The doors alone make a huge difference. Plus it also improves sound quality...a lot!

 

[96Firebird]

Did that amp fit under your drivers seat?

I don't think it could fit under the driver's seat in my Trans Am, as the power seat motor and lumbar support pump take up a lot of space under there. You should be able to find the height dimension fairly easy.

Edit - Manual says 50mm...

 

[z1ggy]

I don't think it could fit under the driver's seat in my Trans Am, as the power seat motor and lumbar support pump take up a lot of space under there. You should be able to find the height dimension fairly easy.

Edit - Manual says 50mm...

Well Lucky for me my seat controls are all manual! I'd rather not mount it to the sub in the back, but if it didn't fit under any of the seats, that would be my only option.

Most of my gear is in, just waiting for a few more things! I'm going to try and do the whole install this Thursday.. I'll update later if I get a chance. I'm moving to NJ from CT this Saturday.

 

[z1ggy]

So I'm starting the install later today, once my CLD gets here. I'm going to take my door panels off and CLD the outer door sheet metal to about 50% coverage, then cover the inner door skin for about 50%, as well. Whatever is left over will go on the flat metal pieces in my hatch area.

I ordered an 8 gauge amp wire kit, but Amazon sent me a 3F Cap instead. Oddly enough, I'm glad this happened because not only did they let me keep the cap, I got to order a 4 gauge OFC kit instead, for less money than I paid for the 8 gauge kit.

I'll be doing the full install Thursday once that amp kit gets here.

Any of you audio pros recommend a good article or youtuber who has good info on proper imaging?

 

[razel]

Proper imaging is a myth in a car. Unless you put your driving seat in the middle, then it's not proper. You can time delay/align, but at your budget since it sounds like you are putting new speakers in, if you end up having to make a bracket, then just slightly aim your speakers even a few degrees toward you is better than speakers aimed at each other.

 

[z1ggy]

I can probably aim the tweeters at me, but not the woofers.

 

[TechBoyJK]

If you ever look at how much power you actually use you'd see that realistically 20W rms is more than you'll likely ever use in practice. That holds true for home audio too.

no

 

[z1ggy]

So I was just out there for about 3 hours. I learned a few things:

1)I still hate who ever designed this car
2)There is no grommet near the battery for running aftermarket wire
3)The vapor barrier is some kind of pvc plastic and is BOLTED into the car
4)The window mechanism is also bolted into the vapor barrier and is literally impossible to screw back into it after you remove it.

I managed to CLD about 50% of my outside door skin and maybe 25% of the inner. However, my window is now f@#ked up because I can't get the lever that it's attached to bolt back into the vapor barrier. Srsly... is this a common thing? Can anybody here help me? Forget my audio build right now, I need to get my window to work properly again... Otherwise there's no way I'm going to take apart the other door.

 

[NutBucket]

Take a pic. I've yet to come across a door that has what you describe.

 

[z1ggy]

Take a pic. I've yet to come across a door that has what you describe.

First photo is the stock setup. The circled bolts are what I am talking about. Second photo shows you what I was looking at when I had everything taken off. It's seriously physically impossible to get those bolts back into the hole right now. When I place the VB (vapor barrier) back over and align it, it simply won't reach the bolts anymore. I've been scouring the internet but it seems like very few mazda3 owners out there are taking the VB off to slap in CLD. Not to mention there's 0% grommet action going on in the firewall, so I'm going to have to drill, paint and insert my own grommet. I also have to look at how people are pulling speaker wire through the door to cabin grommet too, because there's little to no space for anything in there.

But first thing....Need to get those bolts back into the VB and that nut secured back over them.

Edit: So seems like at least on the Speed3, there is a grommet near the steering column that you can access by going under the car and it feeds into the vehicle by the brake pedal. I will have to look for this.

 

[NutBucket]

Hmmm. So two things come to mind.

1. I'm guessing you already tried manipulating the glass to try to get the regulator lined up again.

2. Maybe unbolt the speaker and see if you can reach in and manipulate that way.

As for your speaker wire question: Any reason you don't want to use the stock wiring? Remember, they're not carrying DC power so you don't need huge conductors. For components you can usually stick the x-over between the door panel and the vapor barrier.

For the grommet; if your car is an automatic there's probably a grommet for the clutch you could cut into. Barring that you could use the one for the steering column too, or maybe one for a wiring harness or something. Sorry, not too familiar with the 3 to offer more specific suggestions.

 

[z1ggy]

1. Yup, but I did not try taking the speaker out yet, but when I put the new ones in, I will try that. I feel like I need another person though, one person to push the regulartor forward and another to catch the bolt with the nut.

2. Above..

And yes the forums tell me since I have an auto, I can go through the grommet near the steering column, so that's all set. Now I just need to figure out how to remove the panels over my wheel wells because I just started to take apart the trunk area. There's some metal rings there on the liner that seem to be preventing me from getting them off fully. I had no issues getting to the spare tire well at least...

More searching on figuring out how to get my center console and glove box out to run speaker wire, too.

 

[NutBucket]

The lazy way to do it is feed into the stock harness behind the headunit. Then the only wiring you need to do is a little in the doors.

 

[z1ggy]

The lazy way to do it is feed into the stock harness behind the headunit. Then the only wiring you need to do is a little in the doors.

Yeah that's kind of my plan. I'll be mounting my amp under the driver's seat, so I'll either run the speaker wire under the carpet then behind the dash, behind the glove box then into the passenger door, or under the center console, then under the door sill then up and over into the door.

Either way it does no look fun feeding wire through that molex conenction. Sigh. Time to try and go figure out how to get into my wheel wells... If I can't figure it out I might just pry the covers back and stick what I can in there. Really only need a few small pieces to have the CLD do it's job it seems. People going nuts with full coverage are wasting their times.

 

[z1ggy]

Here is what I did to the trunk:

Again, only going for 25-50% coverage here, any more is a waste. I also put one piece inside each of the wheel well areas. There wasn't a ton of flat non bent metal, so I feel like that was good enough.

I only did the inner skin of the passenger door, I'm not messing with that window thing again. The VB takes up so much room, I really didn't put a lot on. If I figure out an easy way to get it working properly, I will go ahead and do the outer skin of the other door.

I also just found out my battery is dead. I did turn it on a bunch of times yesterday to test the window but I never actually started the car. It was on it's last leg anyway, so I will have my roommate jump me later today and I'll h ave to drive down to Walmart and buy a new one...

Edit: Might have to drill hole in door to fit new tweeters. They are too big for the OEM location in sail panel.