Does anybody know the sensitivity of the stock tweeters in the TSX?

I'd like to repalce mine with something similar in volume but with a less shrill sound.

 

Only someone in Japan.

Consider a door mid/tweeter upgrade together.

I use 8 ohm 1" silk domes that are 92 dB and 4 ohm mids that are 89 dB in our kit, and that comes out about right. The amp sends the two tweeters the same power output.

Remember that the OEM tweeter capacitors are in the amp in series with the tweeter outputs... so if you don't want to use that value you need to series another cap with it and do the math, or bridge the solder point on the board and short the caps that are there.

 

I replaced my front tweeters and the front door speakers with Alpine SPS 171A's as per this thread.

https://acurazine.com/forums/audio-video-electronics-navigation-22/added-alpine-sps-171as-my-06-tsx-331765/

It made a big difference and I am really pleased with them.



Excited

 

I've already upgraded my door and deck speakers.
Aha! Now there's some great information that I haven't seen posted before. If the doors and tweeters are getting the same power, then I have a well defined problem to solve.

Thanks!

 

I've already replaced my door speakers and deck speakers with 170As and 690As repsectively. I'm very pleased with the improvement but now that the mid and low frequencies have cleaned up, I'm noticing some things from the stock tweeters that didn't bother me before. When it was all mud, it was harder to notice the shrillness of the stock tweeters.

Unfortunately, Alpine does not offer matched tweeters as separates.

 

Ron, aren't the 170A's coaxials? Why have 6 tweeters in the car? Maybe tha's some of the shrillness too?

 

Yes - the 170A's are coaxial, as are the 690A's, but I doubt any of them are getting any high frequency energy since the crossover is done in the TSX amp. Anything that reaches the door rear speakers should only be mid to low frequency anyway.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

OK, you're wrong.

As has been posted before, taking apart the TSX amp and analyzing the PCB shows that there are a pair of op-amps used as high-pass filters for the front 4 channels (tweet and mid), another pair of op amps used for high-pass filters for the rear doors, and a single op amp used for a mono low pass filter for the by-nines.

There are series capacitors on the PCB of the amp that are on the tweeter outputs and they are a gentle hi-pass for those tweeters (remember that changing tweeters changes xover due to impedance variations).

But there is no low pass on any of the door speaker wires. This is why many TSX owners install door tweeters or coaxials and use factory wiring.

If you don't want highs coming out of those coaxes, I'd clip the tweeter wire and then see how things sound...

 

Interesting! If that's the case then the easiest thing to try first would be simply unplugging the stock tweeters. It's possible that I'll be satisfied with the tweeters in the 170As and never miss the stock tweeters.

Thanks again!

 

Perhaps I don't understand and I'm not an audio expert, but isn't that the key difference between the 170A's and the 171A's is that the 171A's are component speakers with seperate tweeters? (I certainly stand to be corrected)





Excited

 

The 171 are component speakers. A driver in the door and a tweeter in the dash and a seperate crossover network. The 170 are coaxial speakers, driver and tweeter on one assembly, in the door, with a likely passive crossover built in.

 

You've got it. The problem is that the tweeters are only available if you buy the entire 171A package. You can't buy them separately.

 

Maybe buying the entire package isn't a bad thing. It's not super expensive and the tweeters will be an excellent match for the front door speakers and won't be competing for the high notes.

Once again I'm not an audio expert, just offering a solution.



Excited

 

In retrospect, I think I should have given that route more consideration when I started. With the 170As already installed though, I'm disinclined to buy more 6.5" speakers.

If the tweaters in the 170As are decent, then I might be happy simply disconnecting the stock tweeters. Otherwise, I can disconnect the tweeters in the 170As and install a pair of the suggested tweeters in the dash.

 

Not sure you want to disconnect the tweeters in the stock location. The crossover between the front doors and front tweeters takes place in the amp so the signal you'll get in your coaxial 170As is already missing the highest frequencies. The 170A tweeters may still play something depending on where the built-in 170A crossover is set. But, I suspect that, without any tweeters in the dash, you will be missing the higher ranges of the sound spectrum. I think your choices are to either stick with the OEM tweeters or upgrade them, but not to disconnect them. My

 

This is what I thought originally, but elduderino says otherwise above.

 

I stand corrected. eldude would know better. And I read that post a couple of times too.

 

Ron Parr,
Just curious, what tweeters did you decide on and how do they sound?

 

Thanks for checking in. This project is stalled right now for two reasons: (1) I'm super busy at work and (2) I'm trying to understand why there's such a difference between the XM and Aux input. I've noticed that most of my issues with shrillness in the treble are when I'm using my iPod. My iPod sounds fine when connected to other devices, so it's not a problem with the iPod.

What I've currently done is to turn down the treble in my iPod's equalizer, but left the treble adjustment on the strereo unchanged. This seems to put XM and Aux input on about equal footing.

With these settings the treble is tolerable enough that I can hold out at least until things quiet down a bit a work.

 

Ron is your ipod shrillness coming from the line-out of the ipod or the headphone jack? Also, do all songs sound shirll or just certain ones?

 

Ron, what codec are you using?

We notice a big diff here with our iPod and some customer's iPods, and it seems to be codec-selection related.

 

Answering both questions:

I have an iPod mini (2nd gen) connected through my 06's aux jack in the armrest via a Monster connector that grabs line out from the dock connector. All of the music on my mini is AAC-128 encoded (default iPod encoding).

I notice the issue more in some songs than others, but it's not just badly digitized music from the 80s. In general, I notice it in songs with more treble, e.g., soprano voices, which is what one would expect from a general issue with treble. I do think it's a general issue and not one specific to bad encoding of a few old songs.

Clearly there are some more issues that need to be explored. To save you all some typing I'll enumerate some of them:

- The mini is known for having weak bass, although this supposedly improved in the second gen mini. It's possible that I'm compensating for weak bass by turning the volume up and then noticing the side effect of too much treble. However, I have not noticed this problem when listening through headphones.

- I should try listening to the same song on the mini and in the CD player to compare.

- I should try connecting my iPod video for two reasons: 1) to compare the bass and treble on the different devices and 2) to play back some uncompressed music (I store stuff uncompressed on my iPod video).

- I don't yet have a ground loop isolator added and even though it probably wouldn't make a difference for this issue, I suppose it couldn't hurt to give it a try in case there's some strange high frequency effect that I'm only able to notice when it combined with something from the music.