Who's running active?
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 34
Likes: 0
Head: Pioneer DEX-P99RS
Amp: JL Audio 900/5
Components: Polk SR6500 6.5"/1" in factory mid/tweeter location
Sub: JL Audio 10W3v2 in .65 ft^3 sealed box in trunk
500W to sub, 100W to mids, 100W to tweeters
I'm still tweaking things so this isn't final, but right now I have all my slopes at 12dB/oct, sub-to-mid crossed at 50Hz and mid-to-tweeter crossed at 8kHz.
The Polk passive crossovers crossed at 3.1kHz, so when the autotune on my P99RS kept picking 8kHz, I thought it was on crack. I'd set it back to like 3.5kHz or whatever the closest point is and then re-run the autotune without letting it set the crossovers. Finally just recently I re-did the full autotune again and decided to leave it at 8kHz and try it out. The RTA curve I got actually did look better...required less tweaking with the EQ...and when driving, it seems to sound better.
It seems that when you're listening while parked, your leg blocking the mid doesn't have as noticeable an effect as when you're moving down the road. I'd get the car where it sounded good parked, but then once I started driving it, the tweeters seemed way too loud and I'd have to turn them down several dB. Then when stopped, the tweets sounded too low. I think since they're not blocked, and are closer to your head, their sound isn't drowned out as much by road noise. So, now that my mids are crossed a lot higher, the fluctuations in perceived mid vs. tweeter volume don't have as much of an impact when driving vs. parked.
Of course, it does drag the soundstage down, but I don't think a great soundstage will ever be possible with a component set like this in this car...though the P99RS's time alignment does help with that as long as I don't have a passenger. Since the SR6500's can also be configured as compaxials, I'm thinking of maybe even trying them in that configuration to see how they sound...though with higher frequencies being more directional, the leg-blocking may be more of a problem there.
I was also surprised when it picked 50Hz for crossing over the sub, but it sounds great. The bass completely sounds like it's coming from the front of the car, and it doesn't make the plastic bits rear of the seats rattle nearly as bad as when I'd had it crossed at 80Hz previously. I haven't done any RTA'ing on the low end yet, though, to see how my mids are handling playing down to 50Hz. Polk claims usable output down to 30Hz on these, but c'mon...hehe
Being able to set the time delay for the sub way back in the trunk really seems to help, too...very noticeable change in the bass sound if I turn off the time alignment.
Amp: JL Audio 900/5
Components: Polk SR6500 6.5"/1" in factory mid/tweeter location
Sub: JL Audio 10W3v2 in .65 ft^3 sealed box in trunk
500W to sub, 100W to mids, 100W to tweeters
I'm still tweaking things so this isn't final, but right now I have all my slopes at 12dB/oct, sub-to-mid crossed at 50Hz and mid-to-tweeter crossed at 8kHz.
The Polk passive crossovers crossed at 3.1kHz, so when the autotune on my P99RS kept picking 8kHz, I thought it was on crack. I'd set it back to like 3.5kHz or whatever the closest point is and then re-run the autotune without letting it set the crossovers. Finally just recently I re-did the full autotune again and decided to leave it at 8kHz and try it out. The RTA curve I got actually did look better...required less tweaking with the EQ...and when driving, it seems to sound better.
It seems that when you're listening while parked, your leg blocking the mid doesn't have as noticeable an effect as when you're moving down the road. I'd get the car where it sounded good parked, but then once I started driving it, the tweeters seemed way too loud and I'd have to turn them down several dB. Then when stopped, the tweets sounded too low. I think since they're not blocked, and are closer to your head, their sound isn't drowned out as much by road noise. So, now that my mids are crossed a lot higher, the fluctuations in perceived mid vs. tweeter volume don't have as much of an impact when driving vs. parked.
Of course, it does drag the soundstage down, but I don't think a great soundstage will ever be possible with a component set like this in this car...though the P99RS's time alignment does help with that as long as I don't have a passenger. Since the SR6500's can also be configured as compaxials, I'm thinking of maybe even trying them in that configuration to see how they sound...though with higher frequencies being more directional, the leg-blocking may be more of a problem there.
I was also surprised when it picked 50Hz for crossing over the sub, but it sounds great. The bass completely sounds like it's coming from the front of the car, and it doesn't make the plastic bits rear of the seats rattle nearly as bad as when I'd had it crossed at 80Hz previously. I haven't done any RTA'ing on the low end yet, though, to see how my mids are handling playing down to 50Hz. Polk claims usable output down to 30Hz on these, but c'mon...hehe
Being able to set the time delay for the sub way back in the trunk really seems to help, too...very noticeable change in the bass sound if I turn off the time alignment.
Thread Starter
Joined: Apr 2004
Posts: 21,080
Likes: 1,292
From: Perpetuity
Yeah, having 3 radically different listening environments drives me crazy. You get it all set nice in your garage, then once you drop the top and start moving, it all literally goes out the window.
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 34
Likes: 0
Not only that, but you can't use the auto-EQ to compensate for road/engine noise at all. If you initiate it with the engine running, it says "Outside noise detected - aborted". Duh, that's the idea - I want you to compensate for that outside noise.
I've thought about trying to get someone to drive me around while I check the RTA and tweak the EQ, but it'd be hard to maintain a constant speed on a constant road surface, plus it'd be boring for someone to just drive me around listening to pink noise for an hour or two, lol
Registered User
Joined: Jun 2011
Posts: 65
Likes: 0
From: Fremont, CA
My setup is pretty standard:
20hz -63hz
63hz-200hz
200hz-3,100hz
3,100hz-20khz
Crossing the subwoofer higher than 63hz tends to pull the stage back. I do 80hz sometime but only to same my midbass from stress.
I only run the door midbass up to 200hz. The distortion in my driver is pretty high past 400hz or so and cannot be crossed with the tweeter.
200hz up in the pillar to have a high soundstage.
One speaker covers the entire telephone band range (300hz-3,000hz). Crossovers in this range are usually bad as the phase distortion is more audible. The dispersion patterns between a tweeter and a 6.5" speaker are also quite different at the top of this range.
The crossover point at 3.1khz ensures that the tweeter is not overdriven and at the same time satisfies center-to-center requirements. There are 3 inches or so between the tweeter and the midrange which would require a cross point no higher than 4,5khz. In a car we are in nearfield and that rule of thumb is not restrictive enough. Ideally I should cross at 2.2khz but the tweeters can't handle that very well.
All speakers play in the omnidirectional frequency bands with these cross points as well.
20hz -63hz
63hz-200hz
200hz-3,100hz
3,100hz-20khz
Crossing the subwoofer higher than 63hz tends to pull the stage back. I do 80hz sometime but only to same my midbass from stress.
I only run the door midbass up to 200hz. The distortion in my driver is pretty high past 400hz or so and cannot be crossed with the tweeter.
200hz up in the pillar to have a high soundstage.
One speaker covers the entire telephone band range (300hz-3,000hz). Crossovers in this range are usually bad as the phase distortion is more audible. The dispersion patterns between a tweeter and a 6.5" speaker are also quite different at the top of this range.
The crossover point at 3.1khz ensures that the tweeter is not overdriven and at the same time satisfies center-to-center requirements. There are 3 inches or so between the tweeter and the midrange which would require a cross point no higher than 4,5khz. In a car we are in nearfield and that rule of thumb is not restrictive enough. Ideally I should cross at 2.2khz but the tweeters can't handle that very well.
All speakers play in the omnidirectional frequency bands with these cross points as well.
Where can I find some reference material regarding these cross-over points other than by my ear or experience?
I've read now on 3 different forums about the 63hz sub cutoff, and I can do that no problem, but I only have 2 more channels so I don't know how to best cross over from there.I don't have a good method for moving to 4 channels so I'm stuck with 1x10" (sub in trunk), 2x6.5" (door components), and 2x1" tweeters(door components). So if I cross my sub over at about 80hz, what LPF and HPF should I set my 6.5s to and what HPF should I set my tweeters too?
I had set my:
sub lpf 120hz 12db slope
mids hpf 100hz/lpf 5k 12db slope
tweeters hpf at 5k 6db slope
Sounds good, and goes loud, but I think maybe too much bass for average music. I will mess around with it more, but just wondering if there was something I was supposed to shoot for ball park instead of picking certain songs to ear tune.
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post