Can I wire a power resistor in series with a speaker to permanently lower its gain? I want to set my fade to neutral so my rear 6x9s will play at full volume but I don't want my rear speakers pulling the soundstage back. How would I calculate the db to ohm relationship?

 

You can do that with the R door speakers - they have no passive xover. Do NOT try to do that with a series resistor on the dash tweeters - it will foul up the passive xover in the amp.

The door speaker is around 4 ohms. Add 4 ohms for -3dB. For -6dB, I'd use 12 ohms in series.

http://www.madisound.com/cgi-bin/ind...25043&pid=1243

and

http://www.madisound.com/cgi-bin/ind...25043&pid=1251


Is this system stock?

 

thanks,
no its with your speaker kit.

Is 15w rating enough? I thought the oem amp was putting out around 20w a channel?

 

15W is fine. I would rate it at 18W at 1k, and 12w at 30 hz to 20k, but that's just because that was the old Alpine HU rating before they started lying like everyone else.

 

You see why I used to have a 6-speaker kit only, and recommend disconnecting the rears entirely.

Other than that how do you like?

 

Sounds a whole lot better than the oem. The only issue I have is with the tweets being way too bright but I have less than an hour on them, I'm guessing they'll soften with more use.
The 6x9s are amazingly clean if only I could lower the volume on the rear door speakers. I don't think -6db is enough though. I was thinking -9db or even as low as -12db. I'll try the 20 or 25ohm resistors and see what kind of difference they make. I may just end up disconnecting them but for 65 cents a resistor I will try it out and see.

 

^^

FYI, my tweeters were bright to begin with but it turned out that the series caps for the xovers were for the CL and not the TSX. Once the TSX ones were used then the system sounded much better to my ears.

 

I think the tweeters were changed. There's no longer a capacitor. I'm not sure if bright is the correct word for it. It's more like when you hear voices you can hear the "air" sound quite noticeably. "ssssssh" sounds are more noticeable than I would like them to be but maybe that's normal?

 

Can you recall if it sounds the same as my system when you heard it?

I kind of know what you mean. When my car is stationary my system sounds fine (maybe still just a tad bright). But, when moving, the road noise tends to mask the lower frequencies and so I'm left with hearing more of the highs unless I turn up the volume. Also, I still have the OEM speakers in the rear doors so I'm not sure how the sound from those interacts with the rest of the Avincar system.

 

No yours didn't have any raspy ssssh sounds. It might be just my selection of cds. I noticed it sounds perfect on certain cds but too high on others.
I think it should be fine after it breaks in though.

 

Yeah, let's give it a couple of hours...

 

Ken, do you know if there's a local store around LA that would sell these high powered resistors? The shipping on that site is like 7 bux for $2 worth of stuff.

 

http://www.speakercity.com/Merchant2...Code=xCloseout

http://www.speakercity.com/Merchant2..._Code=eagleres

 

Great, thanks!

 

You could also do this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/MALLORY-AUDIO-CO...QQcmdZViewItem

 

The speakers do need some break-in time. Even more than a couple of hours!

As much of an improvement as it is over stock, I can't help but want to tweek my system, just to see if I can make any improvements. I've been living with these speakers for several months, and definitely appreciate the improvement.

When I measured recently (with my test CD and sound level meter), it seems to me that the tweeters are pretty bright. Perhaps Elduderino has some ideas on what else can be done, since a series resistor is out of the question? (Either that, or maybe I need to re-enable my rear door midranges. )

I'm really happy with the performance of the 6x9s. It's not quite sub-replacement, but pretty close.

 

Alrite I disconnected the rears, set the treble to -3, the bass to -3, and fade to -3 and now it sounds amazing! I get a nice band pass to my doors with this setup so now I can play it extremely loud with almost no distortion at all. I have to say it again, sounds amazing!

 

Actually, it sounded amazing before. NOW you like it better.

How many hours have you played the system overall?

 

about 4-5 hrs on the 6x9s and 2-3 hrs on the woofers and tweeters. Still breaking them in.

 

OK... If you decide you want to knock the highs down, a 4 ohm Lpad would be my suggestion.

But remember, this system isn't intended for loud - it's intended for good. Loud is a bonus, but if it doesn't sound perfect loud, that's not its intention. FOr loud, we recommend you do an amp upgrade.

 

It gets loud enough for me most of the time. I could see where someone might want some lower, harder-hitting bass from a sub, but I think the vast majority of people would be stoked with this upgrade. I think I practically sold a couple of sets just demoing to the local TSX crew. (Well, they seemed impressed!) I came from having a sub, and I know it's not the same level of bass, but I'm pretty satisfied with it anyway.

As for the highs, I love the clarity of the tweeters, but maybe I'll try some l-pads. Thanks for the ideas!

 

I figured I might as well resurrect this old thread... After putting this project aside for a while, I recently started researching l-pads a bit more, as I still wanted to dampen the tweeters somewhat. I didn't like most of what I was finding, until I saw that you can make a non-adjustable l-pad with a couple of resistors!

This website has some more info. and a calculator: http://www.lalena.com/Audio/Calculator/LPad/

I played around with values, and came up with 1ohm and 12ohm resistors for a 2.5db drop. 3db would have been my limit, so this was close enough.

Listening to a few songs, the soundstage is still high enough, I think, and there is still plenty of sound coming out of those tweeters. But, it's a bit more controlled and not as harsh; I think I'm going to like this mod. I feel like I can hear the voices more clearly; with less treble it's also kind of like increasing the bass and midrange. So, I guess there's some danger you can throw things off somewhat, but so far, I think it's working out well. I think it's much closer to the balance I was looking for.

 

I did a quick test with my test CD, and the tweets are still bright relative to the rest of the system, so I think I could have gone even further with the sound reduction. Oh well, I think I'll listen to it as-is for a while, since it sounds good.

 

fixing a resistor inline with the speaker wire to your 6x9's to lower "gain" (which isn't correct, it's Voltage) will usually have adverse affects on sound quality. just fade and forget.