MK5 stereo install advice

[Greg Roles]

[benno]

Well it's all done, and in, and all I can say is WOW. The teewts in the A pillar, on zero db gives a nice high, slightly up front sound stage, even without time alignment. Leave em where they are Benno!

hmm interesting. I find it kinda low... would love to get it a bit higher. I'll wait until I have them amplified before I do anything though.

Sub looks great mate. How bigs your box?

I need an amp and sub dammit. And HU... and money.

People are getting 10"s into that same spot, yeah?

[Greg Roles]

The problem is the volume you have to work with. I reckon you *could* get away with a 10", but I built a box as you can see earlier in this thread, and it came out to 8 litres eggsactly. The G1008 was purchased because it recommends an 8.5L enclosure, so I actually added a 500mL tupperware container and siliconed it over a hole in my box, then covered the heck out of it all with dynamat. I measured my volume with water in garbage bags, and it comes out to as close to 8.5L as I can measure. And yes I went to a lot of trouble to remove bubbles etc!!

The bottom line is the sound is great, and I'm confident I have my sub in an optimal enclosure, at least via the specs. You need a fairly shallow sub to fit the space, forget a big magnet jobbie. I had to remove metal and it was pretty tight with what I did, a 10inch would have to be a rather precise install.

That said Jaycar have a superb 10" woofer, last year anyway, and I put one in a 25L vented box in a Lancer I bought cheap of a girlie, and resold, and the bass response was a selling factor! Sounded great, off a basic Jaycar amp. Sure it's basic stuff, but with careful selection and a good install, it can sound bloody amazing.

Sub was a CS2366 and was $140. Discontinued about a year back, but for the money I reckon it'd be hard to beat. Thing is I'm unsure the exact volume if you sealed the entire area where my lighter grey face is. but if I was on a budget, I'd be looking at these sort of options!

E-bay too, is your friend, and you can do it all bit by bit!

[Greg Roles]

My first results with "my disc" and jaycars cheapie DBL meter...

[Greg Roles]

My sub, with eq on....

[benno]

So forgive my ignorance...

You're using a test disc and a Jaycar meter to get those figures? Cool.

Where's your crossover point set at? Bit of a dip there at 400hz.

[Greg Roles]

Yep, "my disc" from Sheffield labs, and Jaycars baby $50 db meter. Works fine!

Sub is currently 100hz down, and rears 125 and up, fronts 100hz up ( i think from memory..). I'm amazed the little 8" is performing down around 40hz, you can really see the "lump" the hawkins bass boost in my amp produces.

The whole aim is to see where it's high and low, smooth out the curve with the crossover / Eq and then tune by ear from there. Interesting to note the much better sounding "rock" eq curve doesn't do squat for my 400 hz low point huh. All very interesting, and more late nights tweaking to come. These things let you see where the cross, bass boost and EQ really are needed.

It's very cool to be able to really see what's going on, and I've never gone to this level of trouble before.

DB meter and test disc available to local dubbers of course, but you'd better bring a pizza, or your hot sister.

[Greg Roles]

Well my first parametric attempt isn't so crash hot..... and it doesn't sound that good either! Much to learn about this alpine parametric eq, and it even has adjustable centre freq, which adds to the intrigue / making me look stupid... flat in blue vs "attempt 1" in red. I also changed the crossover, and all the door mids are 125Hz and up, with the sub 100Hz and down. Too many options!!

[Greg Roles]

Seems I'm just as crash hot tweaking the sub below the Bostom recommended boost range at 39Hz. red is tonights attempt at approx 35 and a bit more boost, 2pm over 12pm position. Too much! What a weird valley at 45 odd! Amazingly the little sub is trying to do something now, down towards 20, probably distortion!

[benno]

Following it all with interest mate, even if I understand little of it.

able to local dubbers of course, but you'd better bring a pizza, or your hot sister.

I just may take you up on that when I have my install finalised

Or should I say if I ever finalise it.... never finished the install in my last car and drove it around unfinished for 10 years or so.

[Greg Roles]

Well that makes two of us mate, I'm fumbling along in this area let me tell ya....

[benno]

Hey Greg how much power is your sub getting?

Still trying to decide on amp options for my car... the Blaupunkt has been sent for a quote to repair, hopefully it's economical to do so. It's rated at 1x190 RMS bridged and supposedly has a frequency response from 10hz up... The thing is so tiny it's hard to believe it makes that much power.

The RE8s that are recommended in this thread look interesting. How power hungry are they guys?

If the Blau can be repaired I'll probably get an Audison for the front stage... some really smoking deals around atm.

After I pay the bloody rego, and first service on the car that is. Grr.

[Greg Roles]

I'm putting a modestly rated 250rms into a 200rms sub at 2ohms. It's plenty. I'd worry more about the subs sensitivity than the RMS of either. My sub is a dual voice coil, and I had two channels available at 125rms at 4ohm each, so I had various ways to wire it up, but chose the highest sensitivity 2 ohm version according to the specs. I see no need to go for a bigger sub personally, and actually turn this sub down at the lights because I'm conscious of the doof it produces! Drop by and have a listen sometime. If I come across another 8" boston cheap enough I may put one in the other side to use that spare channel I currently have. But one is doing an awesome job, for me anyway. Might not be enough for you young'ins runnin around robbin banks all smacked up on scooby snacks.

Those RE-8's look similar to the one I have, and I'd have to rate the Bostons performance highly. It doesn't do much below 30Hz and keep a nice slope, but the SQ sound for the compact install is awesome. Smaller subs are nice and cheap too. If I didn't have a boner for boston stuff, I'd get an RE-8 and be very happy.

When I was planning this stereo just prior to getting the car, I looked into a small digital amp, such as alpine, but read somewhere about poor low end response being the downside. Not sure how true this is, but I guess to get it so small you have to compromise something?? Hence me getting another monster old school USA amp that I had owned before and had good results with. It is far from compact!

[Greg Roles]

RE-8's $182 shipped from USA on e-bay at the moment, not sure where you can get them locally.

[benno]

FHRX in Sydney are actually offering free shipping atm, and the RE8 is $189 from them

Yeah I've heard d class amps *may* have a bit less response at lower freqs, but unless I get a 4ch AB amp that will fit under the front passenger seat at a reasonable price the Blau will have to do.

I can actually get a Steg 4x45 under there, which should be good for roughly 150RMS for a sub (apparently they make significantly better than advertised figures). Maybe I should just do that.

I'm not sure this low frequency response of a d class amp really matters all that much with an 8" sub anyway... ?