Show us your Audio System Builds!

[Ron]

Like the title says, show off your builds!

Unlike it seems, a lot of people, I actually like the Entune Premium head unit. So I built my system around it. I had some stuff left over from my last truck and decided that the speakers sounded like shit in this one. I have a pretty eclectic taste of music (I can go from Megadeth to the Beatles to Opeth to Umphry's McGee to King Diamond to Pink Floyd to NWA to Kenny Chesney), so the speakers have to live up to the range.

Here are the speakers I used:

For tweeters, I went with the Subaru Kicker Tweeters. I installed these before anything else.

I usually don't prescribe to forum hype, but the Kicker drop ins do make a difference. They are brighter & clearer. I'm pretty happy with them.

For the rears I put in the Kicker CSC67 speakers. They are definitely great speakers for rear fill. For front doors, I had a leftover set of PPI6.5 woofer drivers from another build, as well as the JL 10TW1-2 Subwoofer.

I bought all the wiring needs from Mr Marv on TW, as well as a fantastic sub box and amp. I painted the sub box with Duratex paint.

The amp is an Arc Audio XDI 850.5. It puts out 85 watts rms (the max that the OEM wiring can take)

I installed the speakers after some vibration/noise mitigation using Noico 80mil

Rear:

For the front, I got a set of MDF speaker adapters from Mr. Marv, and painted them with a plasti-dip style paint:

Next, I had to solder the wiring harnesses that went from the head unit to the amp, the from the amp back to the OEM wiring:

RCA connectors into the amp.

Installed everything in its place:

I tuned the amp with a
DSO Nano oscilloscope to set the gains. The OEM head unit doesn't clip even at Max volume, but I set the gains at 52 volume, using 1khz tone at 0dB, and 60hz at 0dB. @Mr Marv was very helpful.


Now your turn!

 

[Ron]

I have no idea why the tweeters show up 3 times...

 

[Tyler]

Looks well done. A lot better than the hack jobs I see around here.

 

[Ron]

Looks well done. A lot better than the hack jobs I see around here.

I wish I had paid more attention to writing out how I did the harnesses for this thread. People get all uptight about using OEM wiring and they shouldn't. It can handle good power.

 

[Ron]

Going to change out my sub today. It's not that the JL 10TW1-2 doesn't sound good (it does), I just wanted something a little snappier. Hopefully this is the solution. I listen to a lot of metal and prog and it seems like the JL is more suited to country and rap.

This particular amp is made for boxes that are 10 Litre to 12 Litre of airspace (0.35 cubic feet to 0.42 cubic feet). My sub box is 0.42 cubic feet so I should get the best response out of this particular sub. This is an Audison Prima APS 10D comp sub, with dual 4 Ohm voice coils. I will be wiring the voice coils in parallel to get me 2 Ohm per.

 

[ToyoDrew]

Going to change out my sub today. It's not that the JL 10TW1-2 doesn't sound good (it does), I just wanted something a little snappier. Hopefully this is the solution. I listen to a lot of metal and prog and it seems like the JL is more suited to country and rap.

This particular amp is made for boxes that are 10 Litre to 12 Litre of airspace (0.35 cubic feet to 0.42 cubic feet). My sub box is 0.42 cubic feet so I should get the best response out of this particular sub. This is an Audison Prima APS 10D comp sub, with dual 4 Ohm voice coils. I will be wiring the voice coils in parallel to get me 2 Ohm per.

OO nice. That has comparable specs to the Sundown Audio SD3 I've been planning to buy so now I'm really interested to hear your opinion on this sub (once it's broken in and tuned of course).

 

[Ron]

OO nice. That has comparable specs to the Sundown Audio SD3 I've been planning to buy so now I'm really interested to hear your opinion on this sub (once it's broken in and tuned of course).

Update on subwoofer:

Everything I say is subjective in regards to how I feel the subs compare to each other, so first, I'll lay down some data from each manufacturer:

The JL Audio model 10TW1-2 is a one - 2 ohm voice coil driver that can run at 75w - 300w continuous with a peak of 600W. It has a mounting depth of 4.36". It requires 0.35 NET cubic feet of air in a sealed box. 0.35 net equals a box built for 0.42 cubic feet before the subwoofer is installed. Because the subwoofer speaker displaces 0.047 cubic feet, you get 0.35 cubic feet of space in the box.

Audison APS 10D is a two - 4 ohm voice coil driver that can run up to 400w continuous with a peak of 800w. It has a 3.46" mounting depth and requires 12 lr or 0.42 cubic feet of air in a sealed box (no such displacement aerobics here, just build a box that has 0.42 cubic feet of space before you put the driver in).

The amplifier I have and has been connected to both drivers (at different times of course) is an Arc Audio 850.5 XDi. The subwoofer channel produces 225w RMS at 4 ohm and 400w RMS at 2 ohm. The JL subwoofer is a 2 ohm voice coil driver, so it falls into the 400w RMS setting. Because I ran the Audison's dual 4 ohm voice coils in parallel as per the manual, it also ends up at 2 ohm falling into the 400w RMS setting.

So now for the butt dyno:

I had some tuning issues with the JL. The bass felt muddy and the timing was off. So after a lot of back and forth with @Mr Marv (who by the way is a treasure trove of audio information), the amp settings were changed multiple times in small increments until I ended here:

The tic marks on the dials are 20hz intervals. That said, the crossover point for the front speakers is 90 hz, the rear 100 hz, bass boost is 6dB and the sub is set at 60 hz. These sounded to me like the best settings so far, and I am rolling with them for at least a month before I change. I ran with these settings on the JL for two weeks before the Audison was installed.

Also, for timing, Marv suggested I switch the wiring on the sub to the opposite of pos - pos, neg to neg. His explanation from text:

Reversing the wires does not change the amount of movement the sub makes, rather it changes the direction the cone moves in relation to the signal (commonly referred to "poor man's alignment"). What happens is when the front speaker cone is moving out the sub cone is moving in allowing the 2 waves to arrive at your ears closer in phase thereby giving you more impact. With actual time alignment set up properly you can make the sub sound like it is out on the hood!

This actually made the JL sub sound much better than it had in weeks, projecting the kick closer to the dash and not into my back. it made the front stage sound much more full, but it only seemed to sound good for a couple of genres: Rap, Country and Pop. The problem with that is I'm a big fan of Progressive rock/metal, Metal and Hard Rock. Trying to find that happy medium is difficult.

Doing a ton of research, I put out the following question on do it yourself mobile audio: http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...t-my-car/398594-10-sub-0-42cf-sealed-box.html

That's where I found the Audison for sale, and found that the specs were perfect not only for the sealed box, but also better suited for the amp.

The Audison is wired to the amp the exact same way (except for the voice coils being run in parallel). The timing is perfect, and the bass is great for everything I'm listening to right now, which is a range from the following:

Opeth
Umphrey's McGee
Snoop Dogg
NWA
Porcupine Tree
Spock's Beard
Megadeth
with some Pink Floyd and Grateful Dead thrown in for good measure as well as Kenny Chesney.

The bass response in definitely quicker and more defined. I don't get any flat bottoming out with metal, especially with Metallica's Master of Puppets (this one seemed to beat up the JL). I am running the same music I ran through the JL and there are noticeable differences.

In conclusion, if you are looking for a clean sounding, shallow mounting, not needing a huge sealed box subwoofer driver, don't be afraid to look at Audison. It is a comparably priced subwoofer (in my case, I spent $229.99 on the JL from Boomer McLoud's in Merrimack NH, and $225 from a member on DIYMA, shipped).

 

[Bkautz]

So many ideas that was the first thing im looking to do is upgrade the speakers i love me some good sound