The cables have been laying dormant under the carpet for months now but I finally got around to hooking them up to run an active setup.

Before I did though I took some readings with the stock Focal crossovers which may be of interest to some people. I used "My Disc" and a Dick Smiths digital sound level meter

First are readings with all speakers running together
Click to view attachment

then with speakers running separately. This gives some indication of the stock crossover points of the K3P Focals. The crossovers are set 2 1/2-way (full) There is no crossover point between the bass and midrange
Click to view attachment


I hope with the active setup that I can deal with those peaks. I haven't tried anything yet but if anyone wants to give some advice, please do!


Thanks

Something there doesnt seem entirely accurate...
If your midbass was really 20db down on the tweeters, it would sound horrible.

I'd highly doubt Focal would make a crossover that would do this.

Midbass looks very flat, i'd say just bring the level up though.

Definetely looks off. Those tweeters would be ripping your head off if that was true. What dB curve you have it set at??

I havn't heard the system with the K3P's but how that looks is how it sounded with his K2P's to be honest.

Juls

Something very wrong there! VERY WRONG
hmmmm

Ha Ha Story of my life!

Yeah it looks shocking doesn't it? this is why I wanted a HU with EQ. The Highs are quite unbearable at times but the bass is pretty good really. I got similar readings with the Alpine HU and while running the HX-D2 active (see graphs) , so it's not the Focal crossovers. My guess is it's the accoustics in the vehicle...?

So far I have done no EQ-ing, just tried to match the Focal crossover points (just a starting point). If my readings are accurate and you do some maths the tweeters have a -24dB slope. I can't get that with the HX-D2 so I've been having fun trying to get close to it, amongst other things.

At the end of today I cranked it up a bit and the sound was "jittery" so I ejected the CD and the radio was the same! I thought "Something very wrong there! VERY WRONG" I thought I had killed the Clarion but when I went to go out later - flat battery! Ah... thank goodness for that

Something I learnt from all the readings I took is that running the mid "through" at the bottom cancels-out the bass drivers right on the bottom. The Focal crossovers go well this way because it's 2ohms which gets the power you need out of the amp (Boston GT-42 bridged) I've crossed them over at 250hz -18dB now and I'll play around with that but I'm mostly concerned with the peaks on the mids and tweeters.

Apart from adding another amp for the active setup I've moved the tweeters back into the doors to fill the gaping holes (Now that I have TA) - see Photo. The readings are still the same and it sounds the same to me. Next thing I have to do there is get the wave-guides around the right way or take them off like Juls has done.

Morel Supremos are a bit out of reach for me atm so I'm relying on my investment in this Clarion to reduce Misty's sibilance (Yeah I listen to that crap as well) Not that I think Morels would fix it anyway. The equaliser doesn't work how I thought it would so any help from HX-D2 owners would be greatly appreciated.

I've written a lot of info on the graphs and the photos might be helpful so can anyone suggest why my graphs look like the Himalayas?

I don't go online every day and it could even be a week before I get back but thanks in advance for any input.

I would not be too confident in the ability of the dick smith measuring device.

I have one and they are great, very handy, but no where near accurate enought to make those sort of comparisons.

have you considered just running it semi active, ie the tweeter on their own and the midbass and midrange off the stock xover??? works pretty damn well for me

-20db is like being put in mute right? so almost no midbass at all?

Pretty much, man if they actually were -20dB I would definatly NOT want to have to listen to them!

I couldn't think of anything worse! A metal dome tweeter ripping your head off and zero midbass...

Please tell me that you don't think that it sounds good or are tone deaf or possible profoundly deaf... otherwise there HAS to be something wrong with the measurements you are taking.

Do you get heaps of dogs cringeing in pain when you crank up your front stage?

Are you sure something isn't out of phase? If those measurements are a true reflection then something major is wrong.

Leigh

Ha Ha I like the one about the crying dogs. Well this might answer a few questions. What I'm doing is from advice given to someone a few months ago by Shiny Car. read on




So that might explain the lack in bass in the readings because believe me those K3P drivers put it out very nicely. That doesn't explain the peaks though unless the Dick Smith meter is even less accurate than the Jaycar one.

I tried turning the volume down 10dB in case something is resonating in the vehicle but the graph is a mirror image just 10dB lower.

Here's something else someone said to take note of

Thats the sort of thing I am suspecting but in particular I think the cargo barrier might be the culprit, reflecting sound waves. The picture shows where I put my first 6x9s and thats where this all began
Click to view attachment

And something else - when I tried pulling those peaks down with the EQ really weird things happen, like the readings increase and create more peaks and troughs

I might try using the stock passive crossovers in various ways but I really want to use the TA. Anyway I will soldier-on and try all sorts of things. It'll keep me busy for the next few months I'm sure and I'll let you all know if I have any success

The KBE Crossover has 2 settings for 3 way and 2.5 way settings,

you have to make sure when you run the 2.5 way setting,
that you reverse the polarity coming out of the KBE Crossover system,
to maintain overall correct polarity.

I think we need to wire up your system actively, bring it over and I'll tune it by ear,
then you can go away and use the metre to set it up again, and see what kind of results we are getting.

It's possible the Dick smith metre may not be useful under 300hz.

Check that the DB Metre you are using, is sensitive 20hz to 20khz, +/- 1db.
otherwise it's not really that useful.

as for your sibilance, upgrading anything won't help dick, I have basically no sibilance, and I can tell you the issue is not caused by the tweeters.

Maybe wire up Semi Active, (mid/tweeter Passive, midbass active)
and we can try that, thats how I run with great success.
give me a call one day, and we can sort out some options to see what your issues are.

Juls

I'm already fully active but you can be sure that when I wired up the K3 crossovers I did it correctly. I'm making great progress using the Dick Smith meter and as Shiny Car stated it's not totally accurate but it's still helpful.

The way I got some success is listening to a tune that sounded like ice picks in my ears, one of Mistys songs, "Don't Ever" The part is 1 minute into the song where the cello and piano play in unison. I listened to the note and hummed it, ran inside and found it on the piano then calculated the frequency. Then I went out and adjusted the EQ down at that frequency and I nailed it.

I looked at the graphs and it is confirmed to be a peak around 1khz. I also adjusted the EQ at 6.3khz and the difference is amazing. Even I can tell the difference! There's still a lot to go but I'm really happy to see some.... I mean HEAR some advance in sound quality.

To calculate the frequency I used the same principle as calculating fret spacings on a guitar. The number is 1.05946309436. "A" above middle "C" is 440hz and you take it from there.

440 x 1.05946309436 = A#
440 / 1.05946309436 = G#

and so on. To get octaves you know you just multiply by 2 or divide by 2

Battery going flat, gotta go