The previous owner had installed focals and a JL audio slash v1 300/4. I recently burned one of the focals..I don't know how. I contacted focal and they told me the particular model was 6-7 years old. I liked the sound of it when it was working though.

My price range is about $100-200. I'm going to be upgrading my cheap alpine CDA-9851 to a CDA-9887 soon as well.

The brands that I have looked at are mb quart, infinity kappa, jl audio...with so many out there, what is the best? My focal tweeters still work, but the previous owner did not have crossovers. I'm not sure if I should stick with the focal tweeters and get a component set that has them. Help me out guys.

 

Oh yeah, the previous owner had wood speaker rings installed, so I don't have to work about depth too much. I do have some dynamat that I was thinking about install, is it worth the weight increase?

 

you mention that the passive crossovers were not included... i assume then that the tweeters and mids running active off the JL amp?

 

yup...i don't think that was a good idea...the channels powering the tweeters were tuned down though.

 

it's not necessarily a bad idea, so long as everything was set appropriately (crossover point/slope and relative speaker level). you have more control, obviously, with an active setup, but also more room for user error.

do you know which model set you have?

did you find the sound leaned more "bright/detailed" or "warm/laid back"? and do you want to keep that "tonal balance" or move the other way?

 

Looks like Phil is hard on the case. And as he already knows what I'm likely to suggest, I'll leave him to it...

 

after figuring out the answers to what philbert is asking, you may want to check out www.madisound.com.

you can get a nice pair of speakers only there or tweeters only, and most of them give you graphs showing the frequency response. if you can read that kind of graph and have clear goals, you can get exactly the sound you want. but you have to know what philbert is asking and know what that looks like on a graph to make the educated decision yourself.

running 'active' like that can usually produce the best overall sound, but you have to tweak the crossover points (meaning where music shifts from the midbass to the tweeters) or you won't get any benefit. it's not dangerous or even particularly difficult. an easy way to tune the system is to get a test tone CD that has a frequency sweep from around 1kHz or less to around 5kHz or more. basically you then just adjust the crossover knobs until you hear the same volume all the way up the sweep. what that does is it makes your transition from midbass to tweeters seamless.

 

LOL. I'm lost. I'll get back to this thread when I go do some reading.

The sound was definitely bright/detailed. I liked it the way it was, but my gf said it hurts her ears....maybe because it was too "detailed". After I installed the sub, tuning it was a bit difficult...lets just say.. I gave up on it. Do you guys have any good sites, where I can learn how to tune my amps? Lol...I'm sorry, but I'm really a noob.

 

Oh yes, I still don't know what model the Focal is. I gave him the reference number and all he told me was that it was out of warranty and the model is 6-7 years old.

 

There's a lot here, but it's good stuff:
http://www.bcae1.com/