11 replies to this topic

[Rmyers]

I've made door pods to accomodate my focal three ways, problem is though I made them before reading up on optimum driver placement and the woofers are located behind the mids when the woofers should come first. I would like to redesign the pod to place the mid behind the woofer.... Question is whether it's worth it? What difference will I expect to hear and will it be a huge improvement or barely noticable???

Basically I'm asking whether it's worth the time and money to do this?

[Rmyers]

Can't anyone help me?

[roughcactus]

Hey Mate i don't know what you have been reading but in my experience midrange and tweeters are far more directional than the midbass. Most 3 way component sets that use a 6.5", 4" and tweeter usually run the midbass from roll off to 400hz, the mids from 400 - 3500 hz and the tweeters from 3500hz and up...sound is easier to localise at higher frequencies and because your mids and tweeters run from 400-20000hz they are the ones you need to pay the most attention to in terms of location and orientation if you want to get the best imaging and sound quality out of your system....because the midbass only handles a small amount of musical information that is not that critical to obtaining good imaging i wouldn't worry about it....if it was that much of a concern competitors and people serious about sound quality would be mounting their midbasses in their kick panels to minimise pathlength differences and putting their mids and tweeters in the doors....they don't because you don't need to.....

[Rmyers]

Cool thanx!

[roughcactus]

Rymers,

I'm in melbourne too mate so if you need any help just shoot me a pm...

[Rmyers]

Main reason I'm asking is that i've heard you need to place your woofers closer to you and any subsequent higher frequency speakers further away to equalize their pathlengths. I understand that woofers are a lot less directional than the mid and tweets, my question is not really about the angling, rather the distance each individual type of driver should be to the listener. I don't really think I'm going to bother for a while yet, but I will be redesigning the pods in the distant future so my question is what kind of differences should I expect from repositioning the drivers in the way I've described???

[Bassaholic]

Ideally you'd want the mid/tweeter/woofer all to be in exactly the same location.. In reality it is less critical..

With three way sets, people usually mount the mids/tweets further away in the kick panels, simply because you are more likely to notice any pathlength differences between the left and right sides with mids/tweeters more than the midbass drivers...

[shiny_car]

if any of the speakers (eg: woofer) is very close to you, you may get some adverse 'steering' of the soundstage towards that speaker.

hopefully your speakers are not too close to you on the doors. but have a listen and see what you find.

any pics?

[Rmyers]

Each side is angled to the opposite passenger, so the left side points to the driver and the right points to the passenger, the tweets are placed in the stock speaker locations....

[NUTTTR]

Placement in the exact same location is "ideal" lol, but in reality, it would be better to have the tweeter and mids further away from you than the midbass, low freq's travel slower, but over such a small difference, i seriously doubt you'd hear a difference.... Angling the focal's is very important, make sure the mids and midbass has lots of angle, you may (by looking at the pictures) want more angle than that on them... but listen first and see, some speakers sound better slightly off axis (dyn's) and some sound better on axis (IMO focals)
Aaron

[shiny_car]

your work looks really good.

i think the 'order' of your midrange and woofer will be fine, and that the high-mounted tweets will have more of a 'steering' effect.

my only suggestion would be to investigate mounting the tweets in the kickpanels.

should be good otherwise.

[Rmyers]

Thanx guys. Yeah I've been really contemplating changing the tweeter location to the kicks. I'll experiment with them next weekend and find an ideal spot. If anything I might be tempted to "modify" the existing pods to put the mids on a steeper angle. I also want to relocate the Xover somewere else as I can't help but think that they are slowly getting damaged whenevr I close the doors. I cringe whenever someone get's out and slams the door....

BTW thanx on the complements