S2k is my first convertible so I was surprised when I took a great sounding system from my prelude (after trade-in) and put it into the S2k. The same components that sounded great in the Prelude sounded worst than I would have imagined. To make a long story short, I'm not one of those who give up easy cause "it's a convertible and no matter what you do it will not sound as good". So, I've been experimenting and experimenting and experimenting and a year and a half later, I think I'm finally happy - still using the same components:

*Focals in the front powered by an OLD RF punch amp
*JL 12W3 in a $60 box in the trunk well powered by a PPI amp

As of today, I've done the following to improve the sound:

1-Installed dynomat door kit.

2-Installed dynomat behind the tweeters.

3-Modified the tweeter pods to angle them towards the driver and passenger instead of firing at each other.

4-Cut out the stock tweeter grill (if you can call it that) and replaced it with my Focal tweeter's grill.

5-Removed the rear deck (top's well). This is a temporary solution to keep it from rattling but increases road noise unless. One of these days, I will put it back with appropriate sound deadning material.

6-Added a series resister between the tweets & the xover to tune them down a bit. The sound is much more balanced now. An L-Pad would be a better solution but just a resistor works fine as well.

7-Reversed the Sub's phase for much cleaner bass.

8-Reversed the left front channel's phase to improve the sound stage and imaging. Using the IASCA test CD, I could tell the difference was night & day - specially with top down driving!!! I think that running just the tweeter out of phase might be better than running the whole left channel out of phase, I'll try that the next time I have to open up the door.

I think I'm happy now but there's still room for improvement so let's hear other ideas.

 

1 - Stuck dome midranges and tweeters in kick panels

2- Rotated toolwell sky-firing sub about 15 degrees toward the cabin. The cleanest bass seems to come when the sub is down-firing, rotated 15 degrees toward the cabin but it would take a smaller sub to make that work--and I'm not gonna make that sacrifice .

Even more important than the rotation was switching out the great Dayton DSQ for the godly Adire Brahma

In the future, I think I'll be switching out the dome mid for something I can cross way lower...

 

Add rear speakers and a HU with 6 channel time correction (ie. Alpine 9813 or 9815)

 

How do you change the phase of a speaker or channel?

 

b0mbrman: I have thought about going the kick panel route but don't the speakers (specially the tweets) get blocked by driver & passenger's legs? If I can't see the tweeter I can probably not hear it very well? My sub box is wedge shaped so I get the 15 deg rotation, if that's what you're talking about? I can even flip/turn the box and that would get the sub to fire down (it will have enough space at the bottem to move and space on the sides to breathe) and still angled 15 deg towards the cabin - I will try this today! Thanks!

StknCaS2k: I'm thinking of adding a mid range (only) speaker somewhere in the car, just cause i have two spare channels. Maybe in the kick panel or even in the rear. An HU with time correction would be really nice, I will look for this feature (along with some phasing options) in my next HU.

Anyone knows of an efficient small/thin midrange speaker (no tweets) that can be purchased alone?

 

Some amps have settings to change the phase but you can also do so by reversing the polarity, i.e. swap "+" & "-" wires going to a speaker/channel. Reversing a channel's phase is easier cause you can do it at the amp or HU (if no amp) level. To reverse just the tweeter's phase you'd have to gain access to the xover and swap the "+" & "-" wires for the tweeter, for stock speakers you can cut and swap the wires going to the tweeter from the mid ( I don't exactly remember the stock speaker wiring ).

 

Thanks mas. Interesting idea.

 

Running kick panels is probably one of the best ways to improve your imaging, stage, etc. With the kick panels down that low it allows the wave length coming off the left and right speaker to be close to the same. The only thing that could block the sound would be your foot but kick panels have been tried and proven in competition time and time again. Heck, there are competitors that just run kick panels and nothing else for their front stage.

The system that I would do would consist of 5 1/4" with tweeter mounted in the kick, a tweeter mounted up top, mounted either on the door or low on the a-pillar, wired out of phase, and then on a sperate channel run a 6 1/2" in the door in an AP enclosure and Dynamat on the door, outer and inner. I haven't yet decided on a sub setup but this is pretty much what my front stage is going to look like.

First rule in designing a good sounding system is good speaker placement first then use EQ's and what not to fine tune it and not make up for it's short comings.

 

Very Interesting!

 

You actually can see it. The face is pretty big but the kick panel is shallow enough so that I can still use the deadpedal...as long as I don't have my leg cocked back and to the left, it's completely unblocked.

I used a sealed-back mid (Link) so in theory, the kick panel could have had no depth at all. It's actually a pretty amazing driver--extension down to 500 Hz, 200 w power-handling.

The kick is still sealed though so that in the future, I'll still have the option of mounting a standard driver.Exactly. I just played around with the sub.You should buy mine so that I can switch over to Vifa PL's