Audio Help

[h3ctic]

G'day all,

I have a gen 3 camry. i recently installed a new headunit into the car. its a vortex which ill assume not many people know of. it seems pretty well set up for any add ons like subs and amps. it has a hell of a lot of wiring that comes standard at the back of the unit. well after my recent install, i have been celebrating by pumping the music a lil louder than i usually do. lol consequently, the front speakers have kinda blown i think. now, wen i play the music a decently loud but not too loud it distorts at certain keys ie sounds crap at certain points. so im thinking i may have pushed my luck a lil with them. i havent really sat in the back much so im hoping those ones arent damaged.

so now im thinking ill have to replace the front ones. i would like to put in a decent set of speakers that can handle a lil more punch but im not really a doof man so i dun need anything serious. just something that is easy to install (ie can fit into the door perfectly) and sounds decent and is low costing (pretty poor atm) lol.

i have no ideas about anything, and my knowledge about audio equipment extends no further than all ive sed here. haha

any help would be muchly appreciated.

thanks

joey

[coolworld]

you should be careful while playing the music it should not be so much loud that it will scratch your speakers.now change your speakers and play carefully in future.

[KevO]

if youre not really concerned about bass and quality of the sound, just go into your closes supercheap or what not and see the cheapest thing they have there. of course go when there are sales so its even cheaper.

im sure other forum members have more to add than i do, im pretty noob with audio as well

[STYLSH]

Gen3's fronts are a big pain... They have 4in stock drivers up front. If you want something easy, you'll need to get 4in speakers but even then it wont bolt up perfectly. And the other bad news is you dont have much room between the trim panel and the door. Pretty much you need to mod stuff if you want to change your fronts.

[h3ctic]

yea?

well i guess i dun mind the work too much. i enjoy trying new mods etc.

i guess ppl have done this b4? are there any tuts abt this kind of mod?

also im curious about wat are a decent set of speakers that sound good but at a decent price. what should i be looking for wen looking at speakers? theres a lot of writing that i understand nothin of.

[lateralus]

Gen3's fronts are a big pain... They have 4in stock drivers up front. If you want something easy, you'll need to get 4in speakers but even then it wont bolt up perfectly. And the other bad news is you dont have much room between the trim panel and the door. Pretty much you need to mod stuff if you want to change your fronts.

yes, be very mindful of the trim vs door issue. more so, make sure theres a gap between the magnet of the speaker and the window when its fully wound down, otherwise you'll only be able to have the windows 2/3 of the way down, lol. had that happen before :P

[Whip Cracker]

Hey mate,

Gen 3s speakers are useless... the rears in particular - the 6x9s in the back aren't too bad actually (Screaming Jets went real well with them :P )

May I suggest custom made door pods? Basically 6.5 inch splits (Focals are nice), you build the speaker into the door panel... fibreglass or wood MDF cut to the shape of the grill in the door panel. I did this on my last Camry... came out well. 3/4 of your music will be heard from the front... makes one hell of a difference when you have decent speakers that can handle the power.

If you're going to try and push heaps of power to a speaker, you'll need an amp that can supply that kind of power. I've read that if you try and push heaps of power from the Head Unit, it will destroy your speakers purely because it can't supply the power you're demanding. Distortion just means that it's hit the loudest it's going to get before you need more power after reading a few audio sites (someone correct me if I'm wrong).

A set of 80-100w RMS fronts would be good... the higher, the better. This is the nominal power that these speakers can run at, at a constant rate. Most places will sell speakers and tell you the Peak Power output (PMPO), normally the figures are around 300-400w or something dumb like that. It'll handle that for a minute or two... after that it'll start to destroy the speakers.

My setup's quite simple... relatively cheap :) I have a Head Unit (Panasonic, works well), Pioneer 4 inch splits that fit into the stock speaker spots, roughly at 70w RMS, I have JVC 90w RMS 6 x 9s in the rear, a Kicker Comp Series Sub 10 inch in ported box running at 400w RMS and have an Earthquake 4 channel amp that can run 135w RMS off each channel.

My front speakers run off the first 2 channels of the amp and the Sub runs off the last two channels in a bridged mode (2 x channels become one... you connect to the Pos of the 3rd channel and the Neg of the 4th channel). In bridged mode the amp will output 400w RMS... which makes this perfect to run my Kicker Sub. My rear 6 x 9s run off the Head Unit, which is plenty enough power as is... they're used for background fill music. The rear speakers aren't made to be the "Main" speakers by any means - that's what the fronts are for.

Tune so the speakers have a High Pass filter... don't want them to play too much bass... (that's what the sub's for) and you'll probably never destroy the drivers :)

This is my opinion... and what I've done. Each to their own at the end of the day :P Best off having Anthony (STYLSH) provide further input because his Audio... well, I woulda been deaf sitting in his driver's seat one time... the front drivers are INSANE!! You pay for what you get though :P

[RoM2nV]

Are you from Perth? I have a pair of left over 4" alpine Type S speakers that I'd be willing to sell (from my previous gen 3 audio setup).

They fitted perfectly no dramas whatsoever. Were the best 4 inch speakers I could get from jb-hifi, around the 70 dollar mark, had them for a couple of months.

Though if you want to get some bigger speakers, I reccomend you get splits and stay away from any of the major brands (alpine,kenwood, etc etc.) Get some focals/mb quart etc, they all make awesome splits.

Edited March 22, 2009 by RoM2nV

[h3ctic]

what do u mean wen u say u have splits? what are they?

and wats a high pass filter?

sorry mate. i live in syd. =) unless u can do a good deal with postage included.

Edited March 22, 2009 by h3ctic

[lateralus]

what do u mean wen u say u have splits? what are they?

and wats a high pass filter?

sorry mate. i live in syd. =) unless u can do a good deal with postage included.

traditional speakers are coaxial, whereas splits do what their name suggets - split. you have a mini subwoofer and tweeters that come seperate in the same package, so you get all the mid range response from the woofer and the crispness of the tweeters. they give a much better overall sound than standard speakers, especially for the front.

[Whip Cracker]

Splits - pretty much 2 x speakers. One is a Woofer/Mid, the other is Treble, with normally is a 1 inch tweeter - you place these wherever you like really... I have mine in the A pillar of the front door :)

Coaxials - all Sub/Mid/Treble all in one speaker (which are the general speakers on the market).

A High Pass Filter is a device or a setting that tells that channel/speaker what frequency it can play. There are both High Pass and Low Pass Filters. You'd use a High Pass Filter to not allow a speaker to go under say, 80-100hz (to take the majority of the bass out of the speaker) and a low pass filter to not go anything higher than say 60hz, so it only plays a low frequency... rather than just *rumble rumble rumble* from the sub when it's not meant to be.

[Eargunk]

If you have some skills in fibre glassing you could do what i did and build pods to house 6.5 inch speakers, i had 4" but wernt happy with its low tones (didnt have an umf to it and is generally restricted in design, most expensive one ive found for 4" are focals and went for $400 compared to 6.5" where they can run past $1k) IMO buying cheap means you have to buy and buy again.

have a look at my front speakers, it has a tweeter (the small round thing on the door, was suppose to be on the side of the side mirrors but housing didnt fit) and the woofer (big circle thing in the door) the filter is a box which you hide somewhere (its sitting in the door in my car)

but if your lucky you'll find 400$ speakers in a freshly wrecked WRX at the wreckers and grab it for 20$ or so.

[RoM2nV]

Aha ok, i've found a family member who wants the speakers so don't worry about them anymore :P

On another note, high/low pass filters can help to improve the sq of your sound system, as your usual splits etc don't really reproduce bassy sounds that well, its better to cut off those low frequencies entirely, and let the subwoofer do what its best at ;)

The opposite can be done in regards to a low-pass filter and a subwoofer.

I don't know if there is any specific way you should attune these filters, but I went by the way it sounded to me (subjective).

If you are on a tight budget you can forget about rear speakers easily, as they do not make much of a difference. The money saved can be used to purchase a better amp or splits etc.

[h3ctic]

so these high/low pass filters, are they little resistors? or are they something u buy? or is it built into the HU?

[RoM2nV]

so these high/low pass filters, are they little resistors? or are they something u buy? or is it built into the HU?

From what I know/have, an amplifier has a low/high pass filter/s, though this can be dependant on the type of amp and the amount of channels it has etc

[h3ctic]

ah so its in the amp. gotcha.

if i get some small say abt 4" speakers for the front, would i need an amp? would there be much improvement?

how much would a small amp cost?

[RoM2nV]

In general, the smaller the speaker, the smaller the magnet/cone. Less mass has to be moved in order to create the sound. My 4" alpines were a piddly 40w rms so I decided to run them off the head unit. If I had a pair of splits that had a similar power rating, I would run them off the amp, for the sake of having higher sound quality.

Amps can cost quite a bit. If your after bang for buck amps you cannot go past the response amps, they are sold at jaycar. I managed to snap up a 4x100w rms (720w rms total power) amp for about $260. This does power the sub, but is slightly underpowering it, so I plan to get a monoblock to do the job properly. I've heard good things about rockford fosgate, as their amps seem to be the best within all the 'mainstream' kind of brands. If you have a look around, you'll notice that if you buy bigger/better speakers, you'll practically be forced to buy an amp that can provide more power. Just make sure you do your reasearch before you purchase a second-hand 15" subdoofer for $150 thinking its a 'bargain' ;)

Another thing to note is that in general your amp should be providing more rms power than all the speakers combined, in order to avoid the speakers being heated up when they are cranked up too high.

[Whip Cracker]

so these high/low pass filters, are they little resistors? or are they something u buy? or is it built into the HU?

You can make your own High Pass Filter if you like... as simple as soldering a Capacitor to the Pos of the speaker cable. Jaycar have a Pricelist/Book that has a chart on what Cpacitor will filter at what frequency. Because my HU doesn't have a High Pass Filter (dunno why), I ended up installing a capacitor for each of my front splits... they don't go below 100hz frequency now and has taken all the bass out of the speakers. Just means I can crank them more and not worry too much about destroying them :P