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I've managed to install some speakers in the original dash cut-outs and a little sub behind the glove compartment and even without an external power amplifier it rocks extremely well!!
for my daily job I work as an engineer in broadcasting electronics, pro video cameras and my specialty is audio. I've been involved in development in audio equipment from since I was a kid as my father was an engineer for Amroh, Wharfdale and BNS. I've always had measurement equipment to my disposal and I have a pretty good set of ears. My specialty in speaker design is creating super small systems with super large sound. I used to calculate everything by hand back in the days, but nowadays you can get really great free software.
In cars it is a custom to not use an enclosure, so all car speakers are designed to work in a huge variety of super leaky super bad or non existent enclosures. Which is why they are never superb performers, even if you would want to put them in an enclosure, when you would calculate a proper one if you managed to get your hands on the parameters you'll see that even small drive units want huuuuuuuuuge boxes. If it gets any smaller linearity is compromised and the speaker will start to vastly exaggerate certain frequencies.
So, the real proper approach to car audio bliss is to implement a real enclosure and use hifi drive units instead. And when you are really good and experienced you will be able to see in the blink of an eye whether the parameters of a certain drive unit make it suitable for your application or not. In this case I have been shopping around for speakers that don't have any complex demands in terms of filtering and can work in super tiny enclosures. I wasn't looking for an earthquake machine, but just really proper tight and realistic music reproduction.
After making some orders and creating some small speakers I have decided to go with the Fountek FR88EX fullrange driver to place in the dash, but placed these in a 90 degree PVC rainwater drainage pipe bend with a little piece of tube sealed with a cap. This resulted in a less than 1 liter enclosure that fitted right in place in the original holes under the original grilles.
Then I wanted to add a good dose of low end, and managed that with the Monacor SPH-4TB. There are several more very suitable candidates though, all with some slight benefits and down sides. Creating audio systems is always done by choosing the combination with the least down sides, it is always a compromise of some kind, no matter how much effort and money you'll throw at it. You can not bend physical laws. When I started calculating with these woofers I was rather surprised at the amazingly small enclosure this resulted in, first results ended up in an enclosure barely larger than 1 liter! That was with a 51cm long bassreflex port though. I finally did some calculations with the series resistance that they were going to see from the passive filtering I planned for them, that resulted in a calculated enclosure of 2.2 liters and with the huge 30mm 51cm long port that ended up in a roughly 4 liter large enclosure. I also chose PVC pipe for this as there are fantastic adapter pieces available from 120mm to 35mm, which was very usable to fit the port in. The subwoofer has a similare shape as the little satellite boxes, but just a size larger. It is small enough to fit behind the dash completely.
I'm planning to shoot some pictures some time soon, but the guts of the system aren't exactly lookers, it just sounds absolutely stunning!!
If any of you are planning a system or want something that is completely concealed feel free to ask me more details you may wish to know about such a system.
Some systems I've made:
The heart of my system are the fullrangers and are based on these speakers which I have designed too.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full-...fr88-ex-8.html
Here's how they measure without sub:
for my daily job I work as an engineer in broadcasting electronics, pro video cameras and my specialty is audio. I've been involved in development in audio equipment from since I was a kid as my father was an engineer for Amroh, Wharfdale and BNS. I've always had measurement equipment to my disposal and I have a pretty good set of ears. My specialty in speaker design is creating super small systems with super large sound. I used to calculate everything by hand back in the days, but nowadays you can get really great free software.
In cars it is a custom to not use an enclosure, so all car speakers are designed to work in a huge variety of super leaky super bad or non existent enclosures. Which is why they are never superb performers, even if you would want to put them in an enclosure, when you would calculate a proper one if you managed to get your hands on the parameters you'll see that even small drive units want huuuuuuuuuge boxes. If it gets any smaller linearity is compromised and the speaker will start to vastly exaggerate certain frequencies.
So, the real proper approach to car audio bliss is to implement a real enclosure and use hifi drive units instead. And when you are really good and experienced you will be able to see in the blink of an eye whether the parameters of a certain drive unit make it suitable for your application or not. In this case I have been shopping around for speakers that don't have any complex demands in terms of filtering and can work in super tiny enclosures. I wasn't looking for an earthquake machine, but just really proper tight and realistic music reproduction.
After making some orders and creating some small speakers I have decided to go with the Fountek FR88EX fullrange driver to place in the dash, but placed these in a 90 degree PVC rainwater drainage pipe bend with a little piece of tube sealed with a cap. This resulted in a less than 1 liter enclosure that fitted right in place in the original holes under the original grilles.
Then I wanted to add a good dose of low end, and managed that with the Monacor SPH-4TB. There are several more very suitable candidates though, all with some slight benefits and down sides. Creating audio systems is always done by choosing the combination with the least down sides, it is always a compromise of some kind, no matter how much effort and money you'll throw at it. You can not bend physical laws. When I started calculating with these woofers I was rather surprised at the amazingly small enclosure this resulted in, first results ended up in an enclosure barely larger than 1 liter! That was with a 51cm long bassreflex port though. I finally did some calculations with the series resistance that they were going to see from the passive filtering I planned for them, that resulted in a calculated enclosure of 2.2 liters and with the huge 30mm 51cm long port that ended up in a roughly 4 liter large enclosure. I also chose PVC pipe for this as there are fantastic adapter pieces available from 120mm to 35mm, which was very usable to fit the port in. The subwoofer has a similare shape as the little satellite boxes, but just a size larger. It is small enough to fit behind the dash completely.
I'm planning to shoot some pictures some time soon, but the guts of the system aren't exactly lookers, it just sounds absolutely stunning!!
If any of you are planning a system or want something that is completely concealed feel free to ask me more details you may wish to know about such a system.
Some systems I've made:
The heart of my system are the fullrangers and are based on these speakers which I have designed too.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full-...fr88-ex-8.html
Here's how they measure without sub:
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