Hi,

I am chasing a good sq system with good staging and balanced natural sound. I have the following gear currently installed:

Eclipse 8051 Head unit and in dash 6 disc changer.

Focal 165K2's running off Phoenix Gold Tantrum 500.2 using Fusion twisted pair proffessional RCA leads and focal speaker cable.
->6.5s are mounted in the lower front part of the door with no sound deadening yet on 10mm mdf spacers, tweeters are mounted in top rear part of the door but i am planning on moving them which brings about 1st question... should i move the tweeter to the front top part of the door or to the a pillar or somewhere else? I am also changing the phoenix gold amp for an audison vr404xr amp.

2X12" Orion XTR Pro DVC Subwoofers in sealed box running off an Orion XTR Pro 1000W Digital Monoblock I have been thinking about removing the box and making another one for better sq (the current one has 25mm?? plexiglass window in the front the subs are mounted on and is internally mirrored but was planning on making a smaller box with 25mm mdf and glassing and bitumening the inside and then stuffing it with dacron. Will this make it a lot better sq wise? The current box is a bit bigger then the recommended size and the subs fire rearward toward the back of the car.

The power side consists of an oddyssey 1000cca dry cell battery, 0/1 guage power cable to the boot. Distro block into 4 guage to both amps and adding brax 1F capacitor to the sub amp.

What suggestions does anyone have to make this system better? I have considered changing to JL subs and am wondering whether to run some 5" splits in the back doors or parcel shelf for rear fill?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated,

Cheers

given the quality gear you now have, installation is the thing to concentrate on as you suggest.

you're already 'on to' the things you should address:
*extensive sound deadening of doors
*sealing off major service holes: use 3mm mdf covered in sound deadener
*nice solid woofer baffles; consider rebuilding angled pods
*tweeter position: you need to experiment; use temporary long speaker wiring so you can place them up high or down low; use blu-tac or similar; i prefer tweets mounted down low in the kickpanel area, angled upwards and inwards (towards opposite seat headrest)
*optimise subbox for the subs

then tune it all carefully: xovers, gains. if you have an EQ then tune this carefully.

get yourself some SQ test discs to help criticise your system.

With the tweeter mounting though... wouldn't the fact that the passenger/ drivers legs are at some stage accross the tweeter give you poor sound from the opposite side of the car. Sorry for all the questions but trying to learn as much as i can.

Thanks/

it certainly can. i have my mids and tweeters in the kickpanel areas. when i carry a front passenger there IS some loss in SQ cos the music simply can't pass through their legs!

i personally drive alone 90% of the time, so it's not an issue most of the time.

but i do compete with this setup. i push the seats fully back to improve the situation.

the benefit of having the speakers down there is that they are physically close to the door woofers. this minimises 'separation' issues. separation occurs when you hear treble coming from one place and different frequencies from another; tweets mounted dashtop-high and woofers down low will exaggerate it. so imaging is upset.

but separation is typically not too bad and most people don't notice it unless it's pointed out to them. and there are advantages to mounting tweeters up high, like making it easier to achieve a 'high soundstage'.

all these difference means you do need to experiment to hear what sounds best in your car and suits your needs: ease of installation/practicality, soundstage height, imaging/transparency/coherence, etc.

unless you're highly critical, it may not matter too much.

sorry for hijacking,
but in terms of stage height and separation, would it b possible if say i had an active crossover and wiring up the mids and the tweets to separate front and rear channels and using time correction like in cda9815 to correct for separation??

It will fit phase/timing issues, but it will not fix the fact that you tweeter is a good 2-3 feet away from your woofer,.