If it's worth killing, it's worth overkilling. Also, I'd definitely have snapped those up were I still in Lichfield!
You're in the wrong place if you think overkill is possible. I don't even have any room to put more speakers but if I'd been in Stoke for meetings would have snapped those speakers up as well
This time next year you'll be looking at upgrading to an Atmos receiver and cutting holes in your ceiling for speakers. A few more years down the line you'll be "researching" professional grade processors and an entire rack-full of power amps. Welcome to the sh_-show. One day your house will be chock full of sound & vision stuff that at one point you considered overkill, but it's just the new normal. When we first got a 50" plasma (from a 26" LCD), on unboxing I was so taken aback by the scale of it I thought to check the return policy. Today we have 3x TVs larger than 50" in the house, and if anything, the main 75" is a little bit on the small side. Goes to show overkill is always the correct amount of kill.
Well I plugged the DM601's back in to audition them for someone yesterday and I've got to say I was suffering from slightly rose tinted memories. Don;t get me wrong, they're still excellent bookshelf speakers and stonking value for money these days....but the RS6s just offer so much more. Happy. Anyone want to buy my sub?
Whilse testing my headphones I did the only sensible thing & picked up another pair. I think we have a winner for bargain headphones. https://amzn.to/2W5QlMq £18 and they're actually amazing. Cable is a bit thin but there's a lifetime warranty on them & it's going to be easy enough to recable them anyway, might put some connectors there.
After my wife reminded me we do have a credit card, d'oh, I've ordered a Pathos Converto MK2. Not sure how long it is going to take to get here but, did get ₤54 off. Will soon be offering my M-DAC for sale, here first before fleabay.
https://www.gumtree.com/p/speakers/epos-els-subwoofer/1378224112 No way it's getting to Manchester, so think you're safe!
SoundMagic’s do sound very nice for the money but I’m extremely impressed with the sound of the Koss’s. Build quality is just nasty plastic but the sound is something else. Add a £4 headband and they’re super comfy. I might get another pair and mod the drivers in to some decent shells and see how well they do.
Anyone done much automotive hifi DIY stuff? I had some buddies in school that went extreme into it, but I never dabbled myself. The hifi in the truck isn't great though, been something on my to-do list since I bought it. There's plenty of volume available and even half-decent bass extension, but just kind of sounds like every speaker is behind a wet blanket when you turn it up. So just ordered a pair of these, and already have a load of adhesive matting left over from the AV room work that I'll use during the install. General consensus seems to be that swapping the front door speakers for these is a vast improvement from stock (and with the stock headunit), and do most of the job without the need to swap out the dash and rear speakers - which will probably all that I need given I don't do much driving about these days. Alternatively, this opens up a rabbit hole of in-car audio that cannot be re-closed.
Alot of people that do car audio make a huge mistake of going for wattage for some bizarre reason, anyone that knows anything about hifi will tell you that wattage makes very little difference if the speakers sensitivity is low (which most car speakers are). Just like real hifi, listen before you buy...the numbers mean almost nothing.
Just in my browsing tonight, I have established that car audio parts must use different rules for establishing power output/handling, because them are some big numbers. The same maths that Behringer use in their amps mayhaps. These particular speakers were chosen on account of being 95db sensitivity. They're apparently 90w continuous and 180w peak power handling, but I'm fairly certain the stock headunit would square-wave and nuke them well before anything like that anyway. I'm not chasing anything here (yet)... just a cheap improvement from stock, so not fussed with demos etc. But how would one demo before one buys in-car audio?
Read something about this some time ago. Outputs of quality hifi are qouted at very low levels of distortion, whilst car audio outputs are quoted at very high levels that would be intolerable.
I have some recollection of @Mojo doing some car audio in his time. He might be able to offer some insight, if he can be summoned.
It's been a while since I've touched car audio (although the 306 fully kitted out with DVD, PS2, multiple screens & 12" subs was awesome) as my last few cars have had the upgraded systems from factory but the "rules" can't have changed much. Door speakers are the easiest upgrade, just don't forget about your windows, some cars need a shallow depth speaker to fit in the door do the window can open & close. Usually they're round & up to 6.5" speakers, you can get (or used to be able to get) coaxial's with adjustable tweeters so you could aim them a bit better or remove them to place them on the A pillar. Rear shelf speakers can also have depth issues on some cars (or in the case of parcel shelf mounts, weight issues). The wattage thing with car audio is interesting. Part of it is the "Argos syndrome" where bigger numbers must be better the other is efficiency & cabinet/box limitations. Tfe average enclosure for for a car speaker is tiny (even for subs) so highly efficient speakers don't get the space they need to work best or produce bass. So car subs in particular go for high excursion, high "power" but low efficiency so they can move a lot of air with a small cabinet volume.
Oh hey there!! I might have done a little bit So my advice - Avoid 6x9's - they have a place but not in most cars. Concentrate on the fitting rather than the expense - the well-fitted half-decent kit will ALWAYS perform better than supreme stuff - fitted badly. Work on the soundstage - you don't go to a concert and turn your back to the stage so concentrate on the front only and then back for rear fill. Put tweeters in line with your ears and as far back as possible - this increases the soundstage and width On a budget, look for a 2-way front end with crossovers. Try to amp the front speakers where possible, even if a small amp - recommend the vibe micro stuff if on a budget and space is at a premium. Very useful as allows OEM integration with the correct looms - This one
Awesome, thanks... Assuming for a moment that this little speaker swap I'm doing were to whet my appetite for more, instead of just appeasing me. A few questions if I may. The "car" in question isn't a car, but a pickup. A 2019 Nissan Navara double cab specifically. Standard fit is a pair of tweeters on opposite corners of where the dash meets the windscreen, 6x9s in the front doors and 6.5s in the rear doors. It sounds fine at low volume and with the windows/sunroof closed, but windows being open necessitates volume increasing, and the "wet duvet" effect increases significantly. The internets seem to think that double cab pickups aren't an ideal for starting point sound quality due to the amount of glass, but then I'm not chasing excellence here, just "better". Any upgrades I do I'd want to keep the OEM look/placement and headunit. Support for the 360 cameras in aftermarket headunits seems limited to no-name Chinese android ones, and with those comes all sorts of other miscellaneous jank. What's their place? I picked these particular 6x9s because A) They're a relatively straight swap for OEM fit 6x9s B) two different people on Navara forums said they did such a swap and it was massively improved and C) at £65 very low risk. I.e. just making sure everything is tight & tidy? Or something else. I don't think the stock headunit has an aux out, so I'm guessing this would preclude me from a separate amp, unless you can pull a reasonable signal from the speaker-level outputs, but that seems like it wouldn't be a good starting point.
Always happy to advice where i am able to do so... the problem with these little projects is they always turn into a slippery slope! Being a pickup generally goes in your favour as you have bigger areas to fit speakers - more hidey holes for amps etc. Have you pulled a door card off to see what could be causing the wet duvet effect? do they have some sort of material covering the speaker grill? You don't need to necessarily change the head units these days and i am in favour of keeping them if that is required. There is enough aftermarket alternatives and clever trickery to get around OEM integration these days. 2 examples of products - JBL MS8 and Audison Bit One. They have their place if they can be integrated smoothly, 6x9's tend to be quite good for pulling in mid to lower bass and not so much for the higher end of the mid to tweeter frequencies. Personally, I'd look to get something like these - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Universal-Speaker-Adapter-Spacer-Rings/dp/B017BY1ZZQ And then use a complete solution such as these - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Audison-AP...son+prima&qid=1594635265&s=automotive&sr=1-13 That will give you a smooth frequency response from 60 upto 20,000 hz. A small subwoofer should then be able to give fill from 35hz up to 60hz. It'll give a smooth rounded system So in terms of fitting, making sure the baffle the speaker sits on is flush, use a piece of rubber or foam to keep the speaker sealed. Making sure that the door skin is filled with sound deading and any air holes are covered. Speakers work best when the back waves don't interact with the front, making sure the speaker is mounted to the metal skin and not the plastic door card which has an opportunity to flex. Sound deadening both doors and door skin to add mass - again to stop reverb and rattles. As the door card goes on, making sure that the speaker is outputting through the speaker grill and sound waves not slipping out the sides and under the door card (can buy foam surrounds for this purpose, which might help your wet blanket sound) The vibe microamp can be purchased with an OEM integration loom. plugs into the back of the stereo where the iso loom would go and takes a high-level output, converts it, amplifies it.. and then spits it out down the original speaker wires to the door speakers. Genius! Technology has come a long way and high level speaker inputs are much better than they used to be!
