Install the Peerless 7's I have, or replace them with Sundown Neo

[hondakilla98 29]

I have been accumulating equipment for a while. Originally I was going to be installing everything in my 96 Eldorado. Things change and now I'm finally making progress installing everything in my new ride. An 03 Lincoln town car. I've spent some time talking with BigJon here on the forum. He has large format teeters on his A pillars and Sundown neo 8's in his doors. I originally wanted 8's for the Cadillac, but they wouldn't work without modifying the door panels. So I bought Peerless Nomex 7" 830875 for my mids, and large format Scan-Speak Discovery D2608/9130 for my highs. Now I'm wondering if I should stick with the 7's or switch them out for 8's that I know will fit behind the factory panels. My sub stage will consist of 3 sa8's ported, running off an SAZ-1500D. My front stage will be running active off an alpine PXA-H100 crossover, and be powered by an MB Quart DSC-4125. I had a lot of help choosing the speakers I have now. The fact that Sundown hasn't released any specs besides an fr graph that wasn't done to any standard that's comparable apples to apples doesn't help either. So let's hear your opinions.

[Kanaworm$ 292]

The Sundowns shine in mid bass duty imo. If your looking for some up front bass they are the way to go. In a properly treated door they have amazing mid bass output again imo. I have mine ran as dedicated mid bass.

I have heard them along with a pro sound style tweeter in a door application and they definitely get loud and retain good sq.

If I were you I would stick with the Peerless since you already own them and see if they do what you want.

[Skullz 8]

Use what you have and if they don't work as your expecting them to then i would consider maybe a change but why change now without knowing how it will even sound first, after all you have them at your disposal for use and if they don't do as they should then make the change to something different. Couldn't say how many times we see people change their minds on things without even using the item they purchased to know they will or will not like but to each their own, it is your time and money so your free to do as you choose to do.

[Impious 1,476]

What type of crossover point are you looking at? How low can the tweeter play?

Generally speaking if you are using them in stock locations I would recommend the 7" over an 8" for a 2-way application due to the slightly improved off-axis response of the 7" driver.....unless you are using an extremely low crossover point. And no offense to Jacob but personally I would put a little more faith into the engineers at DST. I'm sure many are pleased with the sound of the Sundown Pro's, but if I were a betting man I would put my $$ on the Peerless to perform better overall.

[hondakilla98 29]

What type of crossover point are you looking at? How low can the tweeter play?

Generally speaking if you are using them in stock locations I would recommend the 7" over an 8" for a 2-way application due to the slightly improved off-axis response of the 7" driver.....unless you are using an extremely low crossover point. And no offense to Jacob but personally I would put a little more faith into the engineers at DST. I'm sure many are pleased with the sound of the Sundown Pro's, but if I were a betting man I would put my $$ on the Peerless to perform better overall.

The highs will be on axis, chin height on the A pillar. The mids will be in the factory location in the doors, about knee level. They will be crossed between 1.2k and 2k, it will depend on how low I can get the highs to play.

[Impious 1,476]

I'd keep the Peerless. Not sure what tweeters but 1.2Khz is pretty low even for a large format. Realistically you'll probably end up more in the 2khz range. Really no reason to run a tweeter down that low if you have a mid that can cover that range well. Lessen the distortion from the tweeter & probably better FR as well.

[hondakilla98 29]

I want to cross the tweeters as low as possible, to raise my soundstage. I had them installed in my Jeep on the dash for a while and had them crossed at 1.6k 24DB slope. And some focal 6.5's down in the doors. They sounded great and really raised the stage, but I wasn't running them very hard either. So I'll have to get them installed and see. The main reason I was asking, is because M5 commented before. He was concerned about how high the 7's could play and how low the tweeters could play.

I think I'll just install the 7's and see how it sounds. I just hate redoing work, which is why I started this thread.

[Impious 1,476]

There's far more to raising a soundstage than where the tweeters are located & their crossover point. Crossing extremely low to raise the stage has the side effect of more than likely increasing distortion from the tweeter at the very least, & more than likely their FR down that low won't be too stellar. My guess would be your problems with stage height are more related to things such as phase & FR (or some other issues) than they are crossover point.

My tweeters are almost always in my kicks.....no issues w/ stage height when setup properly.

[hondakilla98 29]

I haven't had a car that I could run kicks in. I'm a big guy and have size 16 feet. So there's generally not any extra space. I've had components in the doors, and components with the mid in the door and the tweet on the dash or A pillar. The last set I had were Focal Access 165 a1's with the tweets off axis, on the A pillars. They sounded decent, but the stage seemed a little low. The crossover on them was around 5k. When I went active and replaced the Focal tweets with the HDS tweets I have now, I started lowering the crossover point. As the crossover point went down, my stage became higher. The HDS tweets have a clean FR down to 1.8-2k. With some eq I have had them crossed at 1.6k and they sounded great. I'm not willing to change the location of my mids to get better staging, so I did the next best thing. I moved as much of the high frequency up and on axis as I could. What was really lacking with the Focal mids was midbass. It was almost non existant. So that was one of my goals for mids. The HDS look good, but bigger is better, So when I saw John's car with the Neo 8's. I started thinking.