Need advices for a front stage - Toyota Celica

[The enD 467]

Hello. I bought this car a few months back and the time has come for me to start with audio upgrades. I would like to focus this thread on the front stage.

My goals: Two-way active setup. Clean sound. Ability to get decently loud inside the car, I have no interest in a parking lot party vehicle. Good, precise response in the listening frequency range.

Installation locations: I have two 10" Sundown Neo Pro midbass drivers I am planning on installing, one per door. Around 0.5 cub ft ported, tuned to ~60Hz. I would like to retain my foot space, so for now kick panels are out of the picture. I have no problem with mounting speakers on the A pillars or on/under the dash. I have yet to decide what other drives I need and choose a mounting location for them.

Aiming: I understand in the lower frequency range there is no need to "aim". So for the 10" in the doors I'll place them in a direction that will be most space efficient to make the enclosures in the doors. For the higher freq range I would like to go with on-axis. There is no particular reason for that(I just like it), so a change to that can be made. I don't give a fuck about the passengers, so everything will be aimed for the best experience at the drivers seat.

Size restrictions: If there is space for it I can and will mount it, if bigger will mean better performance. One sacrifice I am not ready to make is adjusting myself to the system or in other word blocking my front shield view by a lot or leg room deficit.

Fabrication skills: Woodwork, fiberglass, fabrication. I may not a pro in this regions, but I am willing to learn and spend countless hours to do it right.

Equipment: For now I only have two 10" Neo Pro midbass. The front will be powered by a SAX100.4D active using it's 24dB slope crossovers. One speaker per channel. I would like to keep it as cheap/simple as possible. For now no processor will be used. The cheap Sony HU will be replaced with a carputer as the build progresses.

For the bass I will soon have a SA-12 ported at 32Hz in the back.

Sound deadening: Long story short I don't want to deal with sound deadening products for now. I was given the suggestion by a member here, M5, of using lead for adding weight to the panels in order to lower flex and noise levels. My goal here is to make the vehicle as quiet as possible-reduce road noise and block the music for the outer world. I would like opinions on the lead idea and tight polyfill stuffing in the voids of the inner interior skin. I have no intentions of selling the car so the polyfill and gluing(yes I am gluing the lead to the metal panels) is no problem for me.

Thank you for your time and incoming advices on drivers selection and their suitable mounting locations for my goals.

Pictures of the vehicle in a moment.

[The enD 467]

Vehicle: Toyota Celica 6th gen

Passenger door inner panel, ignore the already existing stuff. 6.5" mounted in stock location.

A-pillar

Dash, in the future the will be a big ass screen for the carputer

Left part of the vehicle front

Would do my best to fabricate a 0.5 enclosure for the 10". If needed there will be metal cutting. The interior panel most likely won't be recognisable after that, probably some buttons relocations as well.

Trunk area. There will be a 1.75 cub ft box for a 12, 32Hz tuning.

Shoot from the passenger headrest

Overall- the gauges on the left A-Pillar will be gone.

Lots of cutting to come

[Shogen 325]

Nice. I have no input right now besides that.

[eggyhustles 33]

horns!

[Ohjay 116]

This should be interesting, those 10s are going to look XL in those little doors. This was by far the best looking body style for the Celica imo. I want to see how this one turns out.

[Impious 1,476]

What processing will you have at your disposal? Were you building the carputer for SQ purposes, or just general purposes? I'm not intimately familiar with carputers other than knowing there seems to be some options available for pretty advanced processing (EQ, time alignment, crossovers, etc) in the carputer world, if that's the route you were going with it. You will need time alignment with the mids mounted in your doors, so at the very least find a way to make that happen.

With using 10's I'd say your options are fairly limited. Realistically in a 2-way the options are horns or a tweeter capable of playing very low. Horns would not be a great option if you don't/won't have a lot of EQ at your disposal. Finding tweeters that can play down to 1.2khz - 1.5khz or so isn't impossible but will limit your options and will require a large format tweeter. You will want to keep that 10" crossed as low as realistically possible. I don't know the Sd, but if we assume it has a 9" cone beaming will begin around 1500hz. If you start going above that, aiming will become critical or you'll end up with holes in the response that you can't EQ out.

[ssh 924]

Brad wouldn't this be a good application for a diffraction ring?

[Impious 1,476]

Brad wouldn't this be a good application for a diffraction ring?

Potentially, depending on the FR, distortion and break up nodes of the driver another octave higher. I understand the basic idea of how a diffraction ring operates but don't have actual specific details of designing one, so it would end up being trial & error for him.

Really I don't even know if the driver is good up to 1500hz. I know Jacob recommends them up to like 5khz, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll perform optimally for a sound quality installation anywhere near that range.

[lithium 358]

Sound deadening: Long story short I don't want to deal with sound deadening products for now. I was given the suggestion by a member here, M5, of using lead for adding weight to the panels in order to lower flex and noise levels. My goal here is to make the vehicle as quiet as possible-reduce road noise and block the music for the outer world. I would like opinions on the lead idea and tight polyfill stuffing in the voids of the inner interior skin. I have no intentions of selling the car so the polyfill and gluing(yes I am gluing the lead to the metal panels) is no problem for me.

i think you confusing some of the info m5 gave you.

mlv is an alternative to lead. do some reading at sounddeadenershowdown.com, great info

lead or mlv acts as a barrier.

cld tiles reduce vibration of panels

polyfill wont do anything beneficial in the doors.

polyfill + water = mold

[The enD 467]

horns!

Can you add more than just that? Why would it fit my needs? Where should I mount them? Why them instead of a full-range or a tweeter?

This should be interesting, those 10s are going to look XL in those little doors. This was by far the best looking body style for the Celica imo. I want to see how this one turns out.

I like the 7th gen most, but I am loving this one too.

[The enD 467]

What processing will you have at your disposal? Were you building the carputer for SQ purposes, or just general purposes? I'm not intimately familiar with carputers other than knowing there seems to be some options available for pretty advanced processing (EQ, time alignment, crossovers, etc) in the carputer world, if that's the route you were going with it. You will need time alignment with the mids mounted in your doors, so at the very least find a way to make that happen.

With using 10's I'd say your options are fairly limited. Realistically in a 2-way the options are horns or a tweeter capable of playing very low. Horns would not be a great option if you don't/won't have a lot of EQ at your disposal. Finding tweeters that can play down to 1.2khz - 1.5khz or so isn't impossible but will limit your options and will require a large format tweeter. You will want to keep that 10" crossed as low as realistically possible. I don't know the Sd, but if we assume it has a 9" cone beaming will begin around 1500hz. If you start going above that, aiming will become critical or you'll end up with holes in the response that you can't EQ out.

For now the only processing I'll have will be the HU. The carputer will be build for general purposes, but I have thought of using it as a sound processor too and I might go that route. For starters I can balance the left and right channel on the HU, so it sounds the same coming from both ways?

What about a large format full-range crossed above the frequency that the midbass will have trouble with?

[The enD 467]

Sound deadening: Long story short I don't want to deal with sound deadening products for now. I was given the suggestion by a member here, M5, of using lead for adding weight to the panels in order to lower flex and noise levels. My goal here is to make the vehicle as quiet as possible-reduce road noise and block the music for the outer world. I would like opinions on the lead idea and tight polyfill stuffing in the voids of the inner interior skin. I have no intentions of selling the car so the polyfill and gluing(yes I am gluing the lead to the metal panels) is no problem for me.

i think you confusing some of the info m5 gave you.

mlv is an alternative to lead. do some reading at sounddeadenershowdown.com, great info

lead or mlv acts as a barrier.

cld tiles reduce vibration of panels

polyfill wont do anything beneficial in the doors.

polyfill + water = mold

I asked him and he said both effects will be present. Why wouldn't lead stop vibrations of the panels? You are adding a lot of weight.

I've read whole Don's site.

I had no intentions to put polyfill in the doors. But in all other places where there are voids between two metals, as it will be hard to add lead there. Sound and temperature isolation is what I am looking from it. Got the idea from here:

http://youtu.be/WemxDv4K57g?t=3m45s

[Skullz 8]

Before doing all kinds of massive amounts of work i would at least try some sort of baffle to test them with in the doors to see if you even like how well they play and sound before going all in and trying to incorporate them into your door panels.

[ssh 924]

As Brad said, horns require some extensive EQ ability.

I've only used one type of large format tweeters: Peeless/scanspeak hds tweets. I've had them crossed around 2000hz and they worked well, but that doesn't mean they would work at 1500hz.

I would start playing with the sundown neos and find out exactly how high you can play them until you hear cone break up, etc. Then you can start looking for a driver that has a "usable" FR down to the neos.

As Brad said, the neos will start to "beam" around 1500hz.

From what I understand on the subject, as the wavelength of the frequency being played is near the same length as the diameter of the cone, then interference occurs, beam pattern changes, and this causes peaks and dips in the FR in an off-axis situation.

Beaming can be found by dividing the speed of sound by the diameter of the moving cone. Units must be the same.

example: sd = 310cm^2, and speed of sound = 340m/s

310/10000 = 0.031m^2

area of circle = pi*r^2

0.031 = pi*r^2

0.00986761 = r^2

0.09933584 = r

d = r*2

diameter = 0.198671m

340 m/s (speed of sound) / 0.198671 = 1711.

So a speaker with an sd of 310cm^2 will start to beam around 1700hz.

Here's an example of a diffraction ring from Gary Bigg's regal:

There is no pattern to the size of the teeth, you just want them to be varied in length so it breaks up the interference and attenuates the side lobes.

[The enD 467]

Before doing all kinds of massive amounts of work i would at least try some sort of baffle to test them with in the doors to see if you even like how well they play and sound before going all in and trying to incorporate them into your door panels.

There is no way to place them on the doors without making some changes to the door panels. And I don't really see a point running them IB when I am going to be porting them. The sound would not quite match in the end.

[altoncustomtech 773]

Damn Teo, I can't wait to see how this thing turns out. I know that with your passion and determination in this it will turn out great. Be sure to soak up all this great information, these guys truly know their shit.

I agree with Stefan about playing with the Sundowns. Make a simple box or at least a baffle to mount it in and try to listen to it at the angles and distances you'll have in the car. You'll hear the beaming and other effects they're talking about. With a little work you'll find the frequencies that it begins to have issues with and be better prepared to purchase a driver for the upper end and know where your restrictions are.

I like the idea of using the difraction ring to help alleviate beaming issues. Also the idea of using a good full range driver is a good one as well. I love that you're concentrating on SQ over SPL.

It's not much, but that's all the input I have. Good luck buddy, I'm looking forward to seeing the progress on this thing!

[The enD 467]

I would start playing with the sundown neos and find out exactly how high you can play them until you hear cone break up, etc. Then you can start looking for a driver that has a "usable" FR down to the neos.

Guess I'll do just that. I'm reading the 10's can go up to 3k so that would help in some way.

[ssh 924]

I just know a lot of drivers are advertised with a wide frequency bandwidth, and even state "usable", yet in reality it's far from ideal.

[Impious 1,476]

I would start playing with the sundown neos and find out exactly how high you can play them until you hear cone break up, etc. Then you can start looking for a driver that has a "usable" FR down to the neos.

Guess I'll do just that. I'm reading the 10's can go up to 3k so that would help in some way.

That's an on-axis measurement. You will not get 3khz out of that driver off-axis. Laws of physics, it will begin beaming well before that point, which means the off-axis response begins go fall off rapidly.

Also, just because the FR "looks" relatively flat doesn't mean there aren't issues that in a true SQ install will limit it's use. For example, if you look around 630hz there's about a 5db bump in response, and there's a general bump in response between 500hz - 1khz. There might be a cone breakup node or some other issue in that region that is not easily fixed and that will affect the sound. There might be some distortion issues that aren't readily apparent in that particular FR measurement. Simply put, there's no way to really tell from that one graph what type of high frequency performance you can expect in an SQ oriented install.

That 3khz figure thrown out is simply the point where the response starts to fall off on-axis in that meaurement, it doesn't mean the response up to that point is "usable" from a sound quality perspective, and definitely not off-axis in the doors.

[Impious 1,476]

For now the only processing I'll have will be the HU. The carputer will be build for general purposes, but I have thought of using it as a sound processor too and I might go that route. For starters I can balance the left and right channel on the HU, so it sounds the same coming from both ways?

Not going to help. You will need time alignment for the midbass at minimum for proper imaging, assuming that's your goal with the SQ install. We localize midbass by time arrival difference between our two ears, you can't fix that with level adjustments.

What about a large format full-range crossed above the frequency that the midbass will have trouble with?

I'm not a fan of the idea of "full range" drivers used on the top-end of a 2way. There are advantages in how low the driver will play compared to a large format tweeter, but IMO the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages. IMO large format tweeter is a better option.

[Impious 1,476]

Here's an example of a diffraction ring from Gary Bigg's regal:

There is no pattern to the size of the teeth, you just want them to be varied in length so it breaks up the interference and attenuates the side lobes.

Minor correction: that picture I believe is of Doug Winkler's JBL 2118's, this is a picture of Garry's Regal: Regal

[ssh 924]

Here's an example of a diffraction ring from Gary Bigg's regal:

There is no pattern to the size of the teeth, you just want them to be varied in length so it breaks up the interference and attenuates the side lobes.

Minor correction: that picture I believe is of Doug Winkler's JBL 2118's, this is a picture of Garry's Regal: Regal

Yep your right, I forgot Gary Bigg used them in his regal, but built those (the image I posted) for Doug's setup.

[The enD 467]

For now the only processing I'll have will be the HU. The carputer will be build for general purposes, but I have thought of using it as a sound processor too and I might go that route. For starters I can balance the left and right channel on the HU, so it sounds the same coming from both ways?

Not going to help. You will need time alignment for the midbass at minimum for proper imaging, assuming that's your goal with the SQ install. We localize midbass by time arrival difference between our two ears, you can't fix that with level adjustments.

What about a large format full-range crossed above the frequency that the midbass will have trouble with?

I'm not a fan of the idea of "full range" drivers used on the top-end of a 2way. There are advantages in how low the driver will play compared to a large format tweeter, but IMO the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages. IMO large format tweeter is a better option.

I'll be looking for a processor, if I can't figure a way out with the carputer.

What tweeters would you recommend? I don't have a set price range, but try to keep it reasonable.

[REVpuggie 23]

For now the only processing I'll have will be the HU. The carputer will be build for general purposes, but I have thought of using it as a sound processor too and I might go that route. For starters I can balance the left and right channel on the HU, so it sounds the same coming from both ways?

Not going to help. You will need time alignment for the midbass at minimum for proper imaging, assuming that's your goal with the SQ install. We localize midbass by time arrival difference between our two ears, you can't fix that with level adjustments.

What about a large format full-range crossed above the frequency that the midbass will have trouble with?

I'm not a fan of the idea of "full range" drivers used on the top-end of a 2way. There are advantages in how low the driver will play compared to a large format tweeter, but IMO the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages. IMO large format tweeter is a better option.

I'll be looking for a processor, if I can't figure a way out with the carputer.

What tweeters would you recommend? I don't have a set price range, but try to keep it reasonable.

would also like to know ... looking @ scanspeak R3004/602010 but not sure yet ....

[REVpuggie 23]

@ the enD , those scanspeaks R3004/602010 should be usable from 1,1khz with a 24db slope