SolaraGuy.com

it's interesting you mention repointing your mids in the door. This past weekend I spent some time sealing up the big hole in the door behind the door card and noticed two things. It seemed to bring the soundstage up a little and towards the front of the car and it increased the midbass a little bit more. I have deadened the crap out of the doors and have a deflex pad in there so the gain was there but it took me a few listens to really compare the difference.

I will also be trying reversing the phase of the mids to see if helps any further.

...still waiting for the first pic...








-crisp

X2

waiting...

wait.. you havent plugged up the hole.. and sound deadened?

that should fix a whole lotta stuff.

I dynamated the crap out of the door inner and outer panels back when I put my speakers in (a bit too much as I've come to learn). I just never covered the big hole with anything. Although now that I know better I'll be picking up some mass loaded vinyl to go on top of the outer panel and closed cell foam for the door card for true quite before I cover that hole.

Yeah sorry about the pics, I've been pretty busy. Atm, my little sound system project is on hold because I just blew out my left mid. I'm going to get myself a pair of id oem 6.5" mids and a set of seas neo tweeters. Probably one of the sweetest sounding combos for the price since I have active capability with my amp.

For improving mid bass response, obviously deadening helps. You can use plexiglass plus liquid nails or silicone caulking to cover the hole. From what I understand, eggcrate foam is more effective than deflex pads (and a whole lot cheaper!). I have baffles for my mids that I have cut the bottoms out of so I'm going to figure out a way to glue the foam where the bottom of the baffles were, just behind the 6.5" drivers, to see if this improves bass response.

since this is your thread, how did you decouple the baffle from the door? I am using clay but have heard of using extruded butyl "rope" to really stick the baffle to the door. Not sure there will be a sound difference.

also what type of baffle are you using?

^ I lined the area around the speaker hole with sound deadening. The flanges of the speaker baffle went over that, and then I used the stock speaker mounts, with that little protective piece cut off. The foam on the stock speaker mounts were still in good shape so I kept them. As for the speaker baffle, I just used some generic plastic (not foam) baffles on ebay. I think they were the metras. Like I said, I cut out the bottom because the baffle is so small that it hurt my mid-bass (most drivers are designed for infinite baffle, ie. free air). However, I did line the insides of the baffle with more sound deadening on top of that. I feel the resulting mid bass you get just by doing that is almost, if not as good as, sound deadening the entire door. Once I get my new mids in I will be using clay to decouple the angled mdf rings I just got and lining the speaker all around with clay even further just to add some mass and reduce vibration. In this set-up I just made sure to screw in the speaker mount really well, as well as screw in the speaker to the mount really well, and I get no vibration whatsoever.

The extruded butyl rope is actually very useful for covering the big hole in our doors with plexiglass.

As a side note, I've decided to take my project to the next step and see if I can fabricate some custom tweeter pods out the sail panels and get the pointing absolutely perfect. Otherwise, I'll see if I can get some hinged tweeter mounts to just get the pointing right, and be done with it. I've racked my brain enough trying to get the perfect sound stage.

If I decide that my custom tweeter pods are good enough, I may just decide to start making them for other SG'ers who may be interested. Even customized down to specific tweeter mounts and where they want them to be pointed.

Having the mdf rings for baffles will help your sound as it is adding mass to the baffle. Decoupling with clay or extruded butyl helps reduce resonance in the baffle. I never use those metra weather covers, or as they are listed "baffles" as I have never heard them improve sound. And remember vibration damping is only 1/2 the picture of deadening a door.