cal16v's WIP

[cal16v]

Ok I've not updated this thread for a little while. After deciding I needed to replace the engine mounts I thought I'd hold off a bit and do a clutch at the same time. Neither have been done up to now.
I still haven't got around to having the front seats recovered either for that matter. All that aside it leaves me with adjustable strut mounts and front caliper rebuilds left to do.

Away from the cali I've been spending time building some bluetooth speakers to listen to tunes and podcasts etc

Some pics;

cheers

[cal16v]

Ok returned to working on the cali again...

Christmas was very kind to my car

This...

and 2 of these...

g113KAC5207-F.jpg (24.58 KiB) Viewed 17881 times

and this...

which of course leaves me to remove the headlining again to run handsfree mic & wiring, then fix the sunroof rattle while I'm there, modify the dash to take the HU, run the cables & wiring to 2 x amplifiers located in the boot.
PS - Front seats WILL BE RECOVERED early in the new year.

cheers

[Cliff]

Ok returned to working on the cali again...

Christmas was very kind to my car

This...

kenwood-ddx-4017bt-bluetooth-head-unit-frankies.jpg

and 2 of these...

g113KAC5207-F.jpg

and this...

rgb_kpt-820_front_left_render_edited_1.jpg

which of course leaves me to remove the headlining again to run handsfree mic & wiring, then fix the sunroof rattle while I'm there, modify the dash to take the HU, run the cables & wiring to 2 x amplifiers located in the boot.
PS - Front seats WILL BE RECOVERED early in the new year.

cheers

Very nice, look forward to the next updates as always!

[cal16v]

Made a start today. Location of amps changed... happy with how this turned out

[cal16v]

Series wired the front speakers and tweeters today and ran some power from the battery w/. inline fuses to the centre console. Plan is to run the fronts as mid range + tweeter and cross the rears @ 250Hz via the HU software... only I don't think the rear units are up to this task tbh. If not, I can just swap the rears out for some descent FR mid-woofers at a later date. Not planning a sub so mid base freq will be as low as it goes... I can live with that in a car

cheers

[cal16v]

I had a close listen to both the front and rear speakers separately today and tbh I'm wasn't too impressed with either pair. The fronts were absolutely horrible so I've already replaced those with some FR units but these were 5 1/4" and the previous pair were 6 1/2" so had to make some mounting rings up for the smaller drivers...

Just trial fitting atm but look ok, solid and don't foul anything and still lets me use a mid-woofer in the rear and some delicate tweeters up front to compliment this pair.

cheers

[cal16v]

Wired up the fronts today with the new FR speakers and listened with the existing rear speaker units. First thing I noticed is the rears suffer from trying to do too much. The top end becomes shrill at louder volumes so I'll try to tame the rears a little with a Zobel network and try again. I was blown away by how good the oem tweeters are in the doors The oem units made a $60 Vifa tweeter sound like a budget unit which is very very surprising. Needless to say I'll be sticking with the originals in the new setup and returning the Vifa's for a refund.

So far I'm very happy with the progress. Mids are very clean and the oem tweeters compliment them nicely. Fronts have more than enough bass but their tight thumpy bass is being let down by the muddy sounding rear units and the shrill.

[Cliff]

Many years back in my “original” Cally I used the factory stock front and rears with a headunit filtering out bass and an active sub similar to what you’re describing. Took a while to get it balanced but actually pretty impressive sound UNTIL I drove it... exhaust and road noise killed the bass leaving it sounding a little too high. Will be interested to hear how you get on, ice a set of Alpine replacements waiting for me to get around to it together with an active sub. Might need a bit of soundproofing too...

[cal16v]

Hi Cliff,

I don't have a lot of experience with car audio but have dabbled in home audio for quite a while so that's the default approach I'm using here. It's probably awhy I have little interest in augmenting with a sub...

From my perspective the application is the same but with a few curve balls thrown in... external noise being the main one as you point out and then cabin reflections/dispersion/vibrations being the others. But realistically there's only so much you can do in a vehicle anyway. For example the rear speaker location in the sides is not bad but the mountings themselves are just unsupported metal from the inner shell... vibrations and flex abound

But the question is how far are you prepared to go to better the final sound?

I'll chase the sound I'm after only to a certain point via damping material, time alignment, mounts etc. In my case the FR drivers in the front have already provided the vocal clarity I was looking for. The fact that these drivers are capable of delivering 60Hz in a ported cabinet is a bonus... so I'll gladly take the 200Hz odd I'm getting in the doors happily. As luck would have it the rear speakers (JBL GTO-627 2-ways) sound bright in comparison... 68 - 21000Hz Seriously no speaker driver, let alone car speaker can deliver that sort of freq band.

In replying here the way forward seems clear with respect to the rear setup. Rather than muck about tweaking an ordinary sounding unit, the better option remains a mid-woofer capable of extending the sound stage further and predominately adding a little more bass to the whole equation.

cheers