Posted 07 October 2007 - 12:06 PM
Well I just reading this on another forum, I believe it was from Rick @ Raamaudio,
Off axis is normally the best thing to go for and use the vehicle as a tool as much as possibly instead of fighting it.
If not going to compete or carry around a passenger it may be your best bet to go for one seat imaging but once used to a good two seat setup you can still be very pleased with the sound, I know I am.
This may help you out a bit.
" I learned this from one of the top installers in the world, a good buddy of mine.
1) Put your front seats where you intend to either drive the car or where you will have them if you plan to compete, this is very very important. I am talking about fore and aft, height, seat back tilt angle. If not competing then where you will drive the car at and the passenger side the same.
If you are competing in car audio comps, then all the way back and low but even with the passenger side for height, lean the seats back a bit but not real far to make them uncomfortable.
2) Sit in your seat as you would driving or listening as per above, make sure you are correctly placed, if you tend to drive leaning way forward like some do, you should adjust how you sit, better for your posture anyway, lol, lean back in the seat
(here is an additional hint, almost all will do better if the seats are lowered, leaned back quite a bit, etc. but in my Tacoma I had to raise the seats, go figure
3) Have somebody you trust to do this correctly, critically important. Roll the windows up, have them look very very carefully at where the entrance to your eardrum is on your window side ear, left ear, mark it on the window or on the pillar with a small spot of tape.
4) Move to the other front seat and do the same except of course on the right ear this time.
5) Ok to get out of the car now Measure 5" forward and 1.5" down from the spot marked for your ear entrance points on each side of the car, should be two marks on the car now, one for your ears and one forward and down as above.
6) Build some temp baffles for the speakers or the ones you will use, what I do. Have the tweeters mounted very low and to the door side of the baffle, the woofers go furthest forward and low as well.
7) Aim the woofers(midbasses) exactly at the forward and down spot on the glass you marked.
This is the sweet spot, instead of fighting the glass reflections you are using them to your advantage. The right speaker will reflect off the left glass into your left ear and help equalize the sound you hear from both speakers, seems odd but it works, exceptionally well. I beat a prior world champ twice in two months, two seperate installs in my truck and two totally seperate comp installs in his truck and a customers truck using these methods of alignment.
8)Take a kitchen towel and put it behind the baffels can cover the back of the speakers, then do some serious listening tests to see if you need to align them differently but this should be pretty darn accurate.
9) Be very carefull when glassing the kicks as the glass can pull them out of alignment when drying as tends to shrink so mount the baffles very well before glassing.
10) Wire the midbass on the passenger out of phase with the drivers side midbass, you may lose some midbass output but the sub can help make up for that quite well when tuned properly, better yet to have some midbasses in the doors. Try all the phasing setups you can, sometimes the drivers side is best, sometimes but not often, both in phase works)
For those not building kicks here is a simple install plan that works quite well, has been used alot in competion cars.
1) use the door locations for the midbasses, both in phase.
2) tweeters in the A pillars firing directly at each other, as wide apart as possible, both at the same exact height and about 2" above the highest point on the dash. Wire both tweeters out of phase(pos and neg wires reversed but this may have to be reconsideded depending on the midbass wiring, take your timem and try them all! Make sure to try many different aim points as well.
3) Use a dash mat, fugly but they work.
In fact, a dash mat will improve just about any install ever done, including kick panels, have one in my truck, been there for years "
There are other methods of course but these two are the easiest to implement well. The kick version is slightly off axis on purpose, the A pillar tweeter version is way off axis and very easy to get great results from.
Rick
Gives you somewhere to start from and something to think about at least.
"You can't polish a turd, but you can chrome it and put flames on it!" President of Audiobahn
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