Car Audio buffs, help on tweeter positioning

[mystickid]

hey guys,



I am getting the Alpine Type R 2-Way 6x9 front speakers for my car.



I want to know what is the BEST, most effective surround sound enhancing place to position my tweeters in the front of the car. i heard that for optimum quality, to place them in the front of the car on the cieling but at an angle facing my ears.



So, any car audio buffs, please help me out.



Much thanx.

[JasonD]

First of all, why are you putting 6x9`s in the front of your car? A round speaker will always be acoustically better than an oval, plus it will be a lot easier to install.



I like to put a component or coaxial set in the front doors (tweeter and midrange), plus a second set of tweeters in the A-pillars facing the windshield. By facing the tweeters at the windshield you drastically widen the soundstage. If you can`t afford to buy the extra tweeters right now, you can just put the tweeters from the component set in the A-pillar and the midrange in the door. This works fine, but sounds a LOT better with the second set of tweeters. Also, if you go with the dual tweeter setup be sure to get the exact same tweeters that are in your doors, or it will always sound funny. All of your highs should be matched, and your most powerful are in the front and less powerful (or lesser quality) should be in the rear.



When sitting in the driver or passenger seat, the music should sound like it`s coming somewhere between your dashboard and your hood, not right on top of you, and you shouldn`t be able to exactly pinpoint any one speaker. This gets better as you add more and more speakers, and worse as you get less. Obviously if you have four speakers, you will be able to pinpoint them. I have 14 speakers total (not counting the subs) in my Expedition, and would add more if I had the room.

[D3mon]

The trouble with a standard car is that you (the driver) sit to one side rather than in the centre of the vehicle.



This destroys the effect of `stereo`, that is, that two speakers ( left and right channel ) placed eqidistant from your left and right ears, produce sound that arrives at your ears at exactly the same time.



The further away from your ears you can mount both your speakers, the more accurate this effect can become.



As JDookie says, positioning the tweeters up high, e.g. on the dash tight under the windshield will give you a better `sound-stage` as higher frequencies have more impact on the ears/brains perception of where the sound is coming from.



Often though, it isn`t possible to get good positioning there because of the relatively short distance from your ears to the dash. Positioning your tweeters, way down in the footweels, on the kick panels say, pointing up toward the rear-view mirror in the top-centre of the windscreen, will give an improved sound-stage, but perhaps to some detrement of the `stereo` effect.



To counter-act this, it may be possible to take measurements to a point just in front of your driver`s headrest and fit your speakers such that you driver-side tweeter is close to half the distance away from your head than the passenger-side speaker.



Switching the phase (connect +wire to minus terminal and minus wire to +terminal on your speaker) on your driver`s side speaker should then create a redistributed stereo sound, perfect for the driver and almost perfect for the passenger (assuming the measurements work out about the same for him/her)



Note: `Sound-stage` is your perception of where the music is coming from. Out on the Hood, or higher up is good, inside the dash or console, is bad.

[mystickid]

JDOOKIE-- I plan to put the 6x9`s in the replacement slots of my factory speakers that are in the front car doors. is that the correct place?



"

The trouble with a standard car is that you (the driver) sit to one side rather than in the centre of the vehicle.



This destroys the effect of `stereo`, that is, that two speakers ( left and right channel ) placed eqidistant from your left and right ears, produce sound that arrives at your ears at exactly the same time.

To counteract this non-stereo effect, can I just set the balance on my CD receiver deck to be more sound coming from the right passenger side speaker to create the stereo effect.

[D3mon]

there`s a bit more to it than that, but whatever works for you.

[Lowejackson]

If you have say a drive unit in the floor well and a tweeter above the dash how do you compensate for the time/phase differences, (if there are any).

[D3mon]

Professional advice would be to keep the tweeter and the mid together (or a close together as possible.)



In practice, timing on midrange frequencies is not quite so important as the human ear is less able to determine the `perceived` source of the sound. The lower the frequency, the less `directional` it becomes, hence why the subs can be way back in the boot/trunk and still sound like they are right there in front of you.



Edit: make sure, if you`re running components, that if you switch the phase on the drivers tweeter (+ to - / - to +), you do it on the drivers midrange as well. Don`t want two speakers on the same channel out of phase.



Edit2: Never put midrange/tweeter speakers in the rear - only subs. Placing speakers less than 10inch dia. (i.e. subs) on the read deck or in the rear doors will `drag` the soundstage toward the back of the car. What`s more, why spend money on quality speakers for the passengers? You`re the driver, you deserve the stereo sweet-spot the most!