Made some decent progress today.Going to look so much cleaner due to it not being so stuffed. Hopefully just a couple hours of wiring left. Then some tuning. The false floor will come last.
Sound deadening the car. And a few audio upgrades.
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Worked all day so only able to get a couple of hours of wiring in. Bloody hell it hurts the butt / back. No idea how people who do this as a job can manage. But very happy w/ the way things are turning out. All I have left is just wiring up the relay and adding RCA cables to the amps.
EDIT: Going to add a couple of 120mm fans on the false floor above the Hifonics amp as an exhaust. But I need some sort of mesh over them to prevent screws, garbage from falling in. Can't seem to find any mesh filters that will block something like an M3 SSD screw but still not restrictive af.
EDIT: Going to add a couple of 120mm fans on the false floor above the Hifonics amp as an exhaust. But I need some sort of mesh over them to prevent screws, garbage from falling in. Can't seem to find any mesh filters that will block something like an M3 SSD screw but still not restrictive af.
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Your local lumber yard should have rolls of 6" or 8" mesh, used to bug screen soffit vents. Or I found this on Amazon, made of stainless.
Finished w/ the wiring. Pretty happy with everything considering how much wire there is.
Day off tomorrow so I'll do the testing and then start tuning.
Day off tomorrow so I'll do the testing and then start tuning.
Ended up swapping out the JL 6.5 in the doors again to the $85 Hertz ones I bought a couple months ago. There was something seriously wrong w/ one of those JLs. Made tuning hard.
Now back on to tuning, again. I take about 20 measurements per driver. Moving the mic around slightly each time. Then I make an average.
Red line is the average. The purple is the 'house curve' I chose. It is what I want it to sound like.
In Room EQ Wizard they do have an EQ tool which uses the same type of filters as most DSPs, including mine. So I use it make a prediction that matches the house curve. TBH this sucks and I'm not all that good at it. My DSP allows 15 filters. There are a few smaller peaks and valleys, but it is relatively close.
Then in SigmaStudio I use the same values from REW and make a parametric EQ for the dash left speaker and copy them over.
And now to do it w/ the rest of the drivers.
Now back on to tuning, again. I take about 20 measurements per driver. Moving the mic around slightly each time. Then I make an average.
Red line is the average. The purple is the 'house curve' I chose. It is what I want it to sound like.
In Room EQ Wizard they do have an EQ tool which uses the same type of filters as most DSPs, including mine. So I use it make a prediction that matches the house curve. TBH this sucks and I'm not all that good at it. My DSP allows 15 filters. There are a few smaller peaks and valleys, but it is relatively close.
Then in SigmaStudio I use the same values from REW and make a parametric EQ for the dash left speaker and copy them over.
And now to do it w/ the rest of the drivers.
So I was pretty damn happy w/ the way it sounded driving around yesterday. But one major issue was the bass. This stupid head unit lowers the bass as you increase volume to prevent damage to the speakers. So it means the sub volume was the same @ low volumes as on the highway. Some amps come w/ a remote bass knob, but the Alpine amp I'm using for subs does not. Remembered I had an ancient Phoenix Gold 'Bass Cube'. Which was AFAIK the first bass sound processor that had a remote bass knob. A number of years ago I had opened it and as a dumbass I had moved a potentiometer. But I didn't have a way to test at the time.
It uses some unknown power connector so I unsoldered the original connector and soldered on wires instead. Powered it up w/ a PSU and it did turn on. It uses a 4-pin RJ11 wire for ther remote bass knob. Happened to have one lying around from work, 25ft. Did a dirty install last night on the car and to my surprised it still worked. So this morning I wired it in properly and ran the cable for the remote knob.
Getting pretty close to being able to reinstall the passenger seat I think. Maybe tomorrow? So close now I can feel it. I need this to be done. This has to be the most time consuming project I've had in at least 10 years.
It uses some unknown power connector so I unsoldered the original connector and soldered on wires instead. Powered it up w/ a PSU and it did turn on. It uses a 4-pin RJ11 wire for ther remote bass knob. Happened to have one lying around from work, 25ft. Did a dirty install last night on the car and to my surprised it still worked. So this morning I wired it in properly and ran the cable for the remote knob.
Getting pretty close to being able to reinstall the passenger seat I think. Maybe tomorrow? So close now I can feel it. I need this to be done. This has to be the most time consuming project I've had in at least 10 years.
In all honesty it is an astounding project to me. Is this something that people often do, or are you just super cool?
I am that... But it definitely is a thing. Just not something most people do. Boutique car audio shops will do corrections. But they won't be cheap. Places like Vision's definitely won't. But most car audio builds are more for volume than sound quality.
I don't know when to stop. It does sound good. But due to the fact there isn't any tweeters, the 3.5" are stretching themselves too much. And the midbass is still isn't good enough. Bought some used older Focal components, which are made in France, not China. Hope to help with both situations. But midbass is still going to be muddy due to the fact it isn't possible to completely remove resonance from the doors. They are vibrating even w/ all the sound deadening I did. So I'm going to try to 3d print enclosures. This is what I've come up w/ so far. Going to be nearly 2KG each. Not sure how I could go about test fitting them before hand either. I've done my best to account for everything in the way.
Comes out to about 4.5L, which is pretty small. Should perform about to what is below for low frequencies.
EDIT: Test printing now. I've thinned all the walls down to 2mm instead of 10 for test fitting. So will use a whole lot less material.
Comes out to about 4.5L, which is pretty small. Should perform about to what is below for low frequencies.
EDIT: Test printing now. I've thinned all the walls down to 2mm instead of 10 for test fitting. So will use a whole lot less material.
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