88 SE

Wonderin if anyone could help me with this problem. I recently redid my stereo in my FC.. i bought...

Aiwa CDC-X227 deck

Pioneer TS-A1654 6.5 inch speakers for rear
Pioneer TS-G1047 4 inch speakers from the front

Im using an old 10 inch JBL sub and amp I have in the back too.

THe problem is the rear speakers way overpower my front speakers so it makes for HORRIBLE imaging. Fading doesnt work very well as:

1) The fronts cant handle bass worth crap
2) My sub is hooked to the rear pre-amp output so when i fade to front, my sub level goes down.

Any ideas on how to fix this balance issue?

88 SE

I think i might bave found a possible cause. i just looked at the speakers specs...

The 6.5s are 91db/w
the fronts are only 90db/w

hmm

journey

Theres really no point to rear speakers, *especially* in a car as small as the FC. If you must have rears, put those 4's in the rear. I have Polk DX6 speakers(6.5" coaxial), getting 75W apiece from an alpine amp, and they match pretty decent to the 2 polk MM120(12") subs getting 1200W. Sometimes i would like a little more in the 100-200hz freq range, but that wont happen without component speakers.

journey

schexy1

Although it is bad to hook up a sub to the rear output, it is better to hook it up to the fronts. There are several reasons for this. In your case your rears are overpowering the fronts and you can't use the fader. Another reason is that rear stage is for fill. When a stereo decodes music and seperates the rear channel, not all of the music is played. Listen to a song played through two stereos, one with the sub on the front channel and one with the sub on the rear. It should sound like bass notes were left out of the rear setup. I would advise changeing the sub to the front channel and putting a cap/bass blocker on other four speakers.

Mr. Eccentric

What!?

A 2 channel stereo system is what is in cars (this guy does not have surround sound, ie. there is no such thing as 'decoding' as part of a headunit's process) The only decoding done is from digital to analog by the converter alongside the transport. In a 2 channel system the identical information goes to the rear speakers, as the front.

2 channels means left and right, although there is FR, FL, RR, RL, there are still only two distinct channels.

Overcome the fader problem for the sub with a piggyback splitter. There, done.

GTR

iTrader: (6)

Do a S5 Door panel swap and put the 4' in the dash and 5 1/4 on the door panel. and 6.5 in the rear. it sounds great to me.

Mr. Eccentric

I'm not sure what the orig. S4 set up is/was, but to doing the S5 swap, you'd need to wire it accordingly. The 4" under dash and rear are full range. The door speakers have factory individual amps with crossovers so that only the bass frequencies are produced. It's more complicated than the rewards are worth in terms of sound, not to mention they didn't use any true two way drivers, so the factory system is adequate at best.

Okay 88 SE, let's get to the bottom of this... We'll get this straight. I need to know the answers to these questions though.

Where are your 4" fronts located (underdash or in the door?)

Are those Pioneer speakers full range (ie. two way, or three way)?

Is your sub in a box, are you sure it has it's own crossover, so it is only trying to reproduce the bass frequencies?

What the Hell is this pre-out 'rear' stuff anyway. Isn't there one set of pre-outs on the headunit that you can connect to the amp/sub?

1st disconnect the sub altogether and try the fader, and the right left balance. Make sure everything is proper. That will at least give you a starting point so you will know if anything is obviously wrong.

Answer for this stuff and we'll go from there.

The most economical, reasonable set up is either:
underdash 2 ways
rear 2 ways
cd deck (headunit) unit pre-out to amp
amp to sub with built in crossover to (filter highs)

or

again the same, but with whatever fits in the doors (I think it's 6.5's) instead of the underdash

88 SE

All of the speakers are 2 way full range speakrs.

The 4 inch are located

The sub is in a box in the back, and the amp crossover is set to 80hz.

My stereo's pre-out is a rear channel. I can tell because when i fade to the front, the sub turns lower and lower. If i fade to 100% front, the sub turns off.

My big problem with fading to the front to balance it out is just that those front 4 inches kinda suck. BEcause they are facing downwards, the sound they put out is sort of muddled. Know what I mean?


I think the problem could probably be solved by putting speakers in the doors, but where in S4's can you put speakers?

I dont mind just cutting a hole in the door and sticking a speaker there, but I dont know where in the door has the metal cutouts that would be big enough for a speaker and baffle.

schexy1

Aiwa CDC-X227 deck = 4 discrete channels

Decoding was the incorrect word to use, but it was used for simplicity. Music is not recorded(tapes records and CDs) or transmitted(radio) in channels. It is done in tracks (cassettes are usually 16 or 32). Several (not all) tracks are combined to make each channel. Depending on the type of output the stereo has (mono, stereo, suround) will determine how the tracks are combined. A mono stereo (found in old cars with only a center dash speaker) will combine all of the tracks. A 2 channel, 4 channel, 6 channel and so on will combine the tracks differently.

You will hear differences in the front and rear channels unless your stereo is really cheap. A way to test this is find the song Ghetto Bird by Ice Cube. In the song there is a hellicopter flying arround. If you have a decent 4 channel stereo you will hear the helicopter sound move from LF to LR to RR to RF and repeat the pattern a few times. If the front and rear played the same, the helicopter would only move from side to side. the helicopter always circles in my cars.

There are many other songs that use back ground voices, passing cars and a host of other sound effects that use discrete channels to make the sound appear in a certian place in you vehicle.

Although they may seem to play the same thing, the front and rear speakers don't play the same. Ask any serious IASCA or USAC competitor if all channels play the same. Ask anyone who records music in a recording studio about the track thing.

Mr. Eccentric

88SE:

On your head unit is there a pre out front and also pre out rear? Are they RCA type connections?

What I mean by piggyback is just an RCA cable that will let you run two signals simultaneously into one. Therefore you'll have an RCA cable that takes the signal from the front pre out down to the amp. At the amp end that cable will plug in but also have the piggyback connection, so you'll be able to "splice" in another normal set of red&white RCA's to the unused connection on the piggyback. These rca's would come from the rear pre out. Therefore when you fade from front to rear nothing will happen with the pre's.

You can pick these piggyback cables up at Radioshack etc.

If you still have a hard time picturing it, I'll whip up an illustration in paint to give you a better visual idea of the connection.

Make sure you check the connections like I said with your front speakers, they may be wired backwards. This will screw everything up, so it's critical to ensure everything is working right 1st off.

Tell me how it goes. I'll try to help as much as possible.

Mr. Eccentric

Alright I've got a pic of the piggyback cable here for you, so you may be better able to tell what I'm getting at.

See the white RCA in the foreground there. It has a male end (this would go into the amp/sub the other male at the opposite end of the wire would go into the pre out rear). The female end that is also attached there would accept a regular red---------red
white-------white

type RCA. The opposite male end of this cord would attach to the pre out front.

Again, this way, no matter where your fader is, the sub won't be affected.

88 SE

thats the problem, it only has rear outs. 1 set total RCA pre-outs. thats it

maxcooper

The head unit has four indenpendent outputs, but the source has only two tracks/channels. Tapes and CDs are recorded with two tracks/channels -- left and right. If that wasn't the case, you could bet that high-end players would offer more outputs. They don't; there are only two tracks on the tape and CD media formats. The media that audio recording engineers use have more tracks, but that isn't what you get at the record store.

DTS and Dolby Digital recordings on DVDs have more tracks. And processors for these signals have been around for some time. The original Dolby movie sound format uses two channels of input that get processed into LF, CENTER, RF, REAR. I think the SACD format also has more than two tracks. But commercially available recordings on cassette tapes and regular audio CDs only have two tracks/channels. Well cassettes more correctly have 4 tracks -- left and right in two directions. But the heads only read two channels when playing the tape in a given direction. Auto reverse cassette players have heads that can read all four tracks, but only two are used when playing, depending on the direction.

Perhaps there is some processing in the head unit to adjust the signal to more output channels, but there are only two source tracks/channels for tape and audio CD formats.

There are other tricks that can be used to make it sound like something is circling you with two tracks (and two, four, or more speakers). They can use doppler shift to make it sound like something is changing its speed of approach or it speed of going away from you. The shape of your ears and listening environment also change the sound depending on what direction it is coming from. If someone drops something behind you, you can usually tell it was behind you, even though you only have two ears and might have your eyes shut. You can mimic these changes in two channels to give the listener the impression that something is behind or in front of them.

To block some bass so you can turn up the volume in the front, you could add some capacitors in series with the front speaker wiring. There is a product called Bass Blockers that are just that. You could also pick some capacitors up from Radio Shack and try a few to see what sounds right for your setup.

-Max

maxcooper

FM stereo radio is two channels and stereo records are also two channel. AM radio is mono (one channel).

Mr. Eccentric

Alright don't desprair 88SE. There is a solution. I'm not sure what it is yet. But this has become a good little challenge. We'll get it yet. I'll give it some thought.

I see what you're saying if the pre-outs are associated with the rear's only. We'll see if we can fix it.

1st off, are there a pair of speaker "INPUT" terminals on your external amp? Should be just like the bare wire terminals that you run to your sub box, but IN instead of OUT. We may be able to connect the sub this way, so that the fader won't affect it.

Montego

iTrader: (1)

Just go out to your local stereo shop and purchase yourself an attunuator. Connect it to the rear speakers, the one I have has a two screws (for both speakers) that allow me to adjust the power going into the speakers and hence control volume independently. It's only like 10 bucks.

Currently I'm running an alpine head unit, polk component speaker's for the front. For the rears I have some kenwood's 3 way speakers (can't remember the correct size but they are a little smaller than the 6x9, I want to say that they are 5x8's). Anyway, I also hooked up the bose snake for base. Since the bose has a pre-amp the base was waaaayyy louder than the rest of my speakers. Hooked up the attunuator and problem fixed.

Hope this helps,

Lates,

Roger Collins

buy a real headunit with sub level control
like an alpine any of them
then you can use your fader to balance front to rear and then sub level to adjust your sub
definitely need bass blockers on the 4" something like 47microfarads if you like it loud.

as far as that other crap
front and rear produce the same 2 channel stereo signal

if you want to cheese then hook the 4" up to the rear speaker leads and the 6" up to the front
then you can use your fader to balance rear to front
turn amp gain to adjust sub