I took on the dash to mean on the dash. I guess you refer to on the dash as a-pillars as well. Semantics I guess.

Don't ditch the S2k as a sound car mate. It can be really good if you invest a lot of yourself in it. Any car is bad for audio from a technical point of view. Then again, the combination of open air, high revs, a proper chassis, and the right tunes beats home theatre for me.
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A dash is a dash and a pillar is a pillar, they are not one in the same.

And the s2000 is a horrible audio vehicle, but that's not why we bought them now is it. This is why the best place to put a tweeter in an S2000 is a factory location. You will not get any improvement putting in in any other location. In a vehicle that you want to do some SQ in, the dash is the best place for a tweeter. It angles the sound directly at you ears and you lose nothing with the sound bouncing off the windshield.

 

Any high freq cancellation would come from their distance, location and environment, would the not?

 

Sure, it's just exacerbated when they are cross firing. The only way to know exactly where and how much is to take a frequency response snapshot for left, right, and both summed together. The summed signal will be the one with aberrations.

Roadnoise is the worst battle, but with an oem hardtop most of that can be fixed. There are many good things about the S2000 for audio use. With a softop there are very few reflections with the top down by construction. The open area between the trunk and cabin is great for sub use. The pillars are very wide, so the entire soundstage can be raised with a decent sized mid. Home audio guys will say cars in general are crap for sound but that doesn't stop us does it?

There is nothing special about the stock location. For all we know it could be a cost sensitive choice. Running wires up the pillars requires a wire loom that's not there to begin with. It's not like Honda had a special audio team for the S2k, they just threw in the audio at the last minute. I mean for starters they mounted speakers in the headrests people. There is also nothing special about the windshield. Look at any tweeters with waveguides or horns. None of them are shaped like a windshield for a good reason. It's a random design. No telling how the response will look like, it's a shot in the dark. Most importantly it's not at optimum height, which again is one of the few requirements for a tweeter mount.

On the other hand are there any designs out there with a basic flat baffle tweeter at ear level? Sure, floorstanding speakers. That's literally what you are emulating with high pillar mounted tweeters.

 

Slighty OT but the Audyssey Imprint software that Alpine use does an amazing job of raising the soundstage for the OEM location. The difference is startling, and is a good choice for anyone not wanting to mount tweeters elsewhere.

 

As an MECP certified installer, I can say that cvjoint is right. Mount them in the A pillars, at ear height.

On the topic of staging... How many of you have actually set up your staging, at all? When I was really into car audio, my friend told me once "You spend so much time and money your stereo, and no offense, it sounds jacked up." After he sat in the drivers seat, he changed his mind. Something along the lines of "It sounded like a concert."

 

I try to lower linear and nonlinear distortion first and then focus on staging. Lowering distortion is higher on my list than staging but... With that in mind I have been playing around with a line array of 4" mids to get the entire vocal range at ear level. I'm gradually getting better and better staging. Here's the new temporary setup that I'm trying out:



The majority of the vocals are handled by the line array 200hz to 6.3khz. The nonlinear distortion if very low, under 1%, or audible threshold at 100db per side. The supertweeter handles the rest on top. I also tuned left and right speaker within 3db of variation in the frequency response. The staging is great, and it's also low distortion to boot.