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#1
Posted to rec.audio.car
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Oh man I'm borred.......
OK, I'm so desperate to talk about car audio that I swear I'm going to start
answering questions no one asked in the DESPERATE hope I might start a thread. The problem is right now my car sounds absolutely better than ANY car system I have ever owned, or heard.....EVER. Again, today I spent several hours in my car, absolutely dazzled by the incredible sound quality. The Infinity Kappas driven by my Phoenix Gold amp and my 6.5" Alpine Class R's driven by my Fosgate Punch 225.2 just sound absolutely PERFECT together. I have the crossovers dialed in absolutely perfectly. I swear, even my wife's music I typically hate (soft rock) sounded wonderful and engaging. I really am NOT trying to brag or anything like that, it's just I happen to be VERY pleased at the moment with my system so naturally I want to talk about car audio. I am just VERY INTO CAR AUDIO at the moment. But the problem is that judging from the number of new posts, I feel like I'm the only one (of course I know many of you are heavily into car audio, too). So, answering questions nobody is asking.... What about the old question of "where is the best place to put your subwoofers?'. Let me tell you a little story about how I learned this leason the HARD and EXPENSIVE way. I first got heavily into car audio around 1988. Between 1988 and 1995 I owned 4 different cars and with each car I kept upgrading my system. I mean, my very first car with what I would consider my first DECENT system back in 1988 had as it's front speakers a set of 4" Alpine coaxials driven by the head unit. I call it my first decent system because it was the first system I had ever owned with a SUBWOOFER driven by an outboard amp, a Rockford Fosgate Punch 75. And the sub was a Fosgate 12" punch in a ported enclosure. Although the front stage stunk, I thought I was in heaven as I finally had BASS IN MY CAR!!!!! Oh, and my back speakers were a set of Fosgate 767's 6.5" coaxials, again driven by the HU. I upgraded by first buying another amp to drive the front speakers, an Alpine 3522 (I think that was the model number, I know it ended in 22). The next upgrade was an amp to drive the rear Fosgate speakers, a Denon (when Denon used to make car amps) something, I honestly don't remember the model number but it was RATED at 30X2 but I could immediately tell they were overrated as the much smaller Alpine 3522 could blow this larger Denon away. No wonder Denon went out of business. Now I continued to make improvements, next using a much better quality 6.5" coaxial in front and finally seperates. My first set of seperates were Boston Accoustics Pro series 6.5". Anyway, in 1993 and 1994 I dabbled in competing in several IASCA events in my area. My cars were pretty nice, clean, but my systema were really nothing to write home about. HOWEVER, in 1995 I bought a brand new Nissan Maxima. Now in case you don't remember, this is the year they changed the body style to the more rounded style, they put a much more powerful engine in and was Motor Trends car of the year. It was an SE with beige leather, sunroof, and was this beautiful black/green metalic color. Now this was really the height of IASCA and I desided with this beautiful new car I was going to pull out all the stops and put an award winning, magazine quality system in this car. I had a good friend who was an installer for Magnolia Hi-Fi so I paid him under the table several thousand dollars (and four weeks with no car as it was in his garage as he worked every single day on it after he got home from work, somtimes late into the night) to build an absolute kick-ass system. It was beautiful. It was driven by a single amp, a Soundstream Reference 705, 5 channel amp that had just come out and was hailed by everyone for it's sound quality, features, and high-current abilities (the subwoofer channel was .5 ohm stable, all the other channels were 1 ohm stable). I bought the new at the time, Alpine 7939, the top of the line alpine, not the most attractive HU Alpine has ever built as the control knob looked like a nose and it was frankly a stupid design because although it kind of looked like a knob, it wasn't a knob, you turned the nose and all it accomplished was like hitting a volume up or volume down button, it was like it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a volume knob, or volume buttons, so this was some kind of compromise. Thankfully, Alpine realized what most people want are knobs so they can attenuate the volume up or down as quickly as they can turn a knob, that's the way I like it, so I can INSTANTLY turn the volume all the way down with a quick flick of the wrist. Of course, all models of Alpine's that end in "9" (like the famous 7909) indicate they have no internal amplifier of their own and require outboard amps. My front speakers were the Boston Accoustics Pro Series seperates and what was cool about the SE series with the Bose system was that it CAME with A-pillar pods for the Bose tweeters with grills that, of course, matched everything so I simply used those for my Boston tweets and the midbass speaks went in the factory door spots, however with much Dynamat added to the doors and trunk. In fact, funny story, when I first got the car and you pushed the trunk button on the remote the trunk quickly poppped completely opened. I had so much Dynamat applied to the trunk that when you pushed the trunk button, it simply unlocked and elevated a pathetic 1/4", my wife wasn't real happy about that. I had Boston Pro 6.5" midbass drivers (no tweeters) for rear fill, run in mono (I thought it helped anchor my center image better in mono). I had fake burled wood trim on the inside put in, had the ENTIRE "premium" Bose system ripped out (never saw more than 2 hours of use, don't think the cassette deck of the double DIN CD/Cassette player was EVER used). Had a burled wood push out spare compartment to fill the DIN space left behind after the double DIN unit was removed. He built a beautiful amp rack with amp, a Phoenix Gold 15 band EQ (EQ15 something, don't remember the model number but they were very popular EQ's at the time and for years afterwards) and two Monster Cable .5 farad caps tied together by two Monster gold plated buss barrs. The cool thing was that the Phoenix Gold EQ and Monster caps all had lots of white and blue (and blue matched the amp of course) and all the wiring was hidden in a pull-out compartment under the subwoofer so all the visable components seemed to match with this blue and white theme. When the amp rack was in it's compartment under the sub, I had two fans in a push/pull configuration to wash air over the entire affair but it was nearly impossible to SEE those fans ( however, you bet I fricken MADE the IASCA judges see those fans). I had an Optima Yellow top, Phoenix circuit breaker (as I still do today), and unlike now (I have Phoenix Gold RCA's and speaker wire now as I sold the stereo with the Maxima as the stereo was completely "built-into" the car so there was more value in selling the stereo complete with the car rather than picking this thing and that out of it because obviously the subwoofer/amp rack was built into the car) I had all Monster Cable high-end RCA's and speaker wire throughout. Anyway, the subs. I had a pair of Soundstream SPL12's, 12" subs in their own 1.5 cuibic foot sealed enclosures. Now the enclosure was obviously in the trunk, but the subs faced forward so when you put the rear seat arm-rest down you saw half of each sub, right there nearly at the opening. There was really no need for grills (although IASCA knocked some points off at one event which ****ed me off) as there was no way you could accidentally damage one as you would have to reach through the arm rest hole to touch them and of course nothing could accidentially fall back there or anything. ANYWAY, it was truly a work of art. I mean it was beautiful. And I certainly accumulated my share of trophies for the next few years. The largest being this RIDICULOUS 5 foot high trophy I won at a Magnolia Hi-Fi event, I won best of show, of course I think part of the reason I won that is that every component in that car was bought from store that sponsored the event, it certainly couldn't have hurt. And I did well in the IASCA circuit competing in Tacoma, Seattle, and Portland. As I recall, I ALWAYS placed (1st, 2nd or 3rd) competing in the amature 250-500 division I believe (which was actually a good division as the 150-300 watts division was MURDER as I recall and there were always many more competitors in that catagory). I had enough points to go to nationals my first year but it was out of the question as I couldn't take that much time away from work, nor did I want to have to rent a trailer or, of course, put several thousand miles on the car to drive to Daytona. Also, I knew enough about the real HEAVY HITTERS like Dave Rivera and Steve Brown who were already doing things with 'glass and Rivera's ridiculous fishtanks he incorporated in all his installs to know I didn't stand a chance against these SPONSORED (unlike me) multi-kilobuck systems. Anyway, I'm actually finally getting to my original point which was how I learned some important lessons about bass. Basically, it started when I realized just by chance one day that when the trunk was open the bass increased SUBSTANTIALLY. At the time, I had no idea why this was so. I really didn't. So I believe I actually asked the question here nearly 15 years ago about why the hell my bass got so much louder when the trunk was open. Like I said, I did not know the things I know now and I just couldn't wrap my head around this frankly annoying phenomena (I wanted this substantially increased bass ALL THE TIME). And of course someone like Manville Smith explained to me that what was happening was that as my subwoofer cones were bassically at the center of the car and that bass is going back (as well as forward), bouncing off the rear-trunk, then going forward, this extra distance of travel causing these waves to become 180 degrees out of phase and when those waves catch up to the waves going forward in the first place, they cancel out a substantial portion of my bass. Of course, I've spent thousands, this enclosure and amp-rack drawer are built into the car (I mean, when you opened my trunk, NOTHING would tell you there was a stereo there (except for the fact you might think it was a very small trunk for a car that size), EVERYTHING was completely stealth and built in AS IF it had come with the car. It was a truly amazing install job and if I were to pay a shop to do the work, I'm sure it would have cost several thousand dollars in installation alone (my friend did it for only $1000 for all his hard work night after night, he guessed probably 50 hours, and keep in mind, this is what he does for a living). So of course, nothing could be done about the situation I found myself in, and I just learned to accept it (because, OBVIOUSLY, turning the subwoofer around was quite literally impossible unless I destroyed it first to get it out of the car). So I learned a VERY expensive lesson in accoustics: you always want your cones as close to the boundries of your car like corners or at least the rear-end to avoid cancellation. You know, I kind of blamed my installer, Glen, a bit as well. I mean, HE WAS CERTTIFIED for Pete's sake and should have seen this coming. I also let him do the majority of designing the system (I just picked out the components I wanted to use, but I let him have free reign with how the whole thing was to be designed and built. I always wonder if the subwoofers had simply been facing the rear with attractive sub grills and such, if the bass would have been much louder. OR, I now wonder if he had taken more time in sealing the space behind the sub with 1" MDF if those waves could have been prevented from going to the rear, because as he had it, he used just thin 1/8" plywood for facia elements covered in automotive carpet that matched the Maxima's trunk carpet (of course he used 3/4" MDF for the sub enclosure). Now, to be fair, that system did pump out the bass pretty damn well. But in truth it doesn't come close to my two 15"s driven by my 1000 watt Class D I have now. I mean, my system now is TRULY a ground pounder, like none other I've ever owned. But, of course, beyond it's brute force, like I said, it;s SQ is simply AMAZING. Like I said at the begginging, THE BEST system I have ever owned or even HEARD in my life. Well, that was a whole lot of bull**** for no good reason. If anyone has stories about their first systems or how they got into car audio I love hearing those stories. I reallly do because if you're old like me (41), in high-school the **** was 6x9's, a cassette deck and booster EQ. THAT was state of the art in '83 and was what I had in my first car (well, minus the booster EQ, but I did have a cassette deck which was considered "high-end" anda pair of 6X9's. Of course it sounded like crap but we didn't know any better. Anyway, I love stories......please share...... MOSFET |
#2
Posted to rec.audio.car
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Oh man I'm borred.......
When I said Fosgate 767's, I meant Boston Accoustics 767's. I think I made
that error several times in that last post. MOSFET |
#3
Posted to rec.audio.car
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Oh man I'm borred.......
Also, when I said "no wonder Denon went out of business", of course I meant
no wonder Denon stopped making cat audio amplifiers, because the one I had STUNK, and I think the model number was something like DCA-400 (or at least 400 was the model number I'm quite sure, and like I said although it was RATED at 30 x 2 it MAYBE put out 20 watts X 2 RMS. Very underpowered for a rather large amp, a little larger than my MUCH more powerful Fosgate Punch 75 and INCREDIBLY larger than the more powerful Alpine 3522. MOSFET "MOSFET" wrote in message ... When I said Fosgate 767's, I meant Boston Accoustics 767's. I think I made that error several times in that last post. MOSFET |
#4
Posted to rec.audio.car
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Oh man I'm borred.......
On Jun 11, 7:16*pm, "MOSFET" wrote:
Also, when I said "no wonder Denon went out of business", of course I meant no wonder Denon stopped making cat audio amplifiers I never heard any cat audio I wanted amplified, (except maybe those little tiny kitten mews, those are barely audible, but so cute!) Our cat moans in the middle of the night and wakes everyone up. If they had stuck to the plan and made cat audio attenuators like I told em to, they woulda definately stayed in business. |
#5
Posted to rec.audio.car
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Oh man I'm borred.......
Well I prefer Tabby amplifiers as the sound tends to be cleaner and bit more
laid back than your standard Calico amplifier. Of course, when using a cat amplifer, you must make sure voltage does not drop too much as you will begin drawing more amperes to compensate (ohm's law: watts=volts X amperes) and the increased heat from higher amperage draw CAN fry a cat of you are not careful. The smell is a dead (no pun intended) givaway if this is occuring so I always recommend the use of circuit breakers or fuses near the cat so this does not occur. Of course, the other drawback from cat amplifiers is there is often a lot of hiss (OK, well, hissing), screetching, moaning, and caterwauling. All of this can effect SQ. Tongue planted squarely in cheek, MOSFET "suprstar" wrote in message ... On Jun 11, 7:16 pm, "MOSFET" wrote: Also, when I said "no wonder Denon went out of business", of course I meant no wonder Denon stopped making cat audio amplifiers I never heard any cat audio I wanted amplified, (except maybe those little tiny kitten mews, those are barely audible, but so cute!) Our cat moans in the middle of the night and wakes everyone up. If they had stuck to the plan and made cat audio attenuators like I told em to, they woulda definately stayed in business. |
#6
Posted to rec.audio.car
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Oh man I'm borred.......
Haha, seriously tho, I wish there were cat audio attenuators..
So I see traffic is approaching zero around here lately? Last time I was here, I think you blew up some JL tweeters, captain howdy was posting your personal info, and bob wald was preaching about pyramid's superiority... That'd be about the time I got my last new car, and had my entire system transplanted from the old car. You upgrade your system? BAH! I've had the SAME system in my last 3 cars - alpine hu, 2 kicker ix704 amps that must be 12 years old - one to run the 4 corners (70x4), the other bridged for the subs (280x2), and a pair of jl 12w6's in the trunk. Rock solid, still pounds as good as ever. I'd upgrade any of it, if it ever died! I wonder if bob wald's rockwood/pyramid/pyle system is still running |
#7
Posted to rec.audio.car
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Oh man I'm borred.......
Misfit you havent had a DECENT system in all the time that you've been coming
here,stop the bull****. Just love the post about your new Alpine speakers a while back, arent you the one that was making fun of Japanese speakers? I love stories too and I would love to share one about a ****brick that has been coming here for many years talking dumb **** as if he knew his face from his asshole just to keep changing his so called facts as time goes by. But I think you already know that story. In article , "MOSFET" wrote: OK, I'm so desperate to talk about car audio that I swear I'm going to start answering questions no one asked in the DESPERATE hope I might start a thread. The problem is right now my car sounds absolutely better than ANY car system I have ever owned, or heard.....EVER. Again, today I spent several hours in my car, absolutely dazzled by the incredible sound quality. The Infinity Kappas driven by my Phoenix Gold amp and my 6.5" Alpine Class R's driven by my Fosgate Punch 225.2 just sound absolutely PERFECT together. I have the crossovers dialed in absolutely perfectly. I swear, even my wife's music I typically hate (soft rock) sounded wonderful and engaging. I really am NOT trying to brag or anything like that, it's just I happen to be VERY pleased at the moment with my system so naturally I want to talk about car audio. I am just VERY INTO CAR AUDIO at the moment. But the problem is that judging from the number of new posts, I feel like I'm the only one (of course I know many of you are heavily into car audio, too). So, answering questions nobody is asking.... What about the old question of "where is the best place to put your subwoofers?'. Let me tell you a little story about how I learned this leason the HARD and EXPENSIVE way. I first got heavily into car audio around 1988. Between 1988 and 1995 I owned 4 different cars and with each car I kept upgrading my system. I mean, my very first car with what I would consider my first DECENT system back in 1988 had as it's front speakers a set of 4" Alpine coaxials driven by the head unit. I call it my first decent system because it was the first system I had ever owned with a SUBWOOFER driven by an outboard amp, a Rockford Fosgate Punch 75. And the sub was a Fosgate 12" punch in a ported enclosure. Although the front stage stunk, I thought I was in heaven as I finally had BASS IN MY CAR!!!!! Oh, and my back speakers were a set of Fosgate 767's 6.5" coaxials, again driven by the HU. I upgraded by first buying another amp to drive the front speakers, an Alpine 3522 (I think that was the model number, I know it ended in 22). The next upgrade was an amp to drive the rear Fosgate speakers, a Denon (when Denon used to make car amps) something, I honestly don't remember the model number but it was RATED at 30X2 but I could immediately tell they were overrated as the much smaller Alpine 3522 could blow this larger Denon away. No wonder Denon went out of business. Now I continued to make improvements, next using a much better quality 6.5" coaxial in front and finally seperates. My first set of seperates were Boston Accoustics Pro series 6.5". Anyway, in 1993 and 1994 I dabbled in competing in several IASCA events in my area. My cars were pretty nice, clean, but my systema were really nothing to write home about. HOWEVER, in 1995 I bought a brand new Nissan Maxima. Now in case you don't remember, this is the year they changed the body style to the more rounded style, they put a much more powerful engine in and was Motor Trends car of the year. It was an SE with beige leather, sunroof, and was this beautiful black/green metalic color. Now this was really the height of IASCA and I desided with this beautiful new car I was going to pull out all the stops and put an award winning, magazine quality system in this car. I had a good friend who was an installer for Magnolia Hi-Fi so I paid him under the table several thousand dollars (and four weeks with no car as it was in his garage as he worked every single day on it after he got home from work, somtimes late into the night) to build an absolute kick-ass system. It was beautiful. It was driven by a single amp, a Soundstream Reference 705, 5 channel amp that had just come out and was hailed by everyone for it's sound quality, features, and high-current abilities (the subwoofer channel was .5 ohm stable, all the other channels were 1 ohm stable). I bought the new at the time, Alpine 7939, the top of the line alpine, not the most attractive HU Alpine has ever built as the control knob looked like a nose and it was frankly a stupid design because although it kind of looked like a knob, it wasn't a knob, you turned the nose and all it accomplished was like hitting a volume up or volume down button, it was like it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a volume knob, or volume buttons, so this was some kind of compromise. Thankfully, Alpine realized what most people want are knobs so they can attenuate the volume up or down as quickly as they can turn a knob, that's the way I like it, so I can INSTANTLY turn the volume all the way down with a quick flick of the wrist. Of course, all models of Alpine's that end in "9" (like the famous 7909) indicate they have no internal amplifier of their own and require outboard amps. My front speakers were the Boston Accoustics Pro Series seperates and what was cool about the SE series with the Bose system was that it CAME with A-pillar pods for the Bose tweeters with grills that, of course, matched everything so I simply used those for my Boston tweets and the midbass speaks went in the factory door spots, however with much Dynamat added to the doors and trunk. In fact, funny story, when I first got the car and you pushed the trunk button on the remote the trunk quickly poppped completely opened. I had so much Dynamat applied to the trunk that when you pushed the trunk button, it simply unlocked and elevated a pathetic 1/4", my wife wasn't real happy about that. I had Boston Pro 6.5" midbass drivers (no tweeters) for rear fill, run in mono (I thought it helped anchor my center image better in mono). I had fake burled wood trim on the inside put in, had the ENTIRE "premium" Bose system ripped out (never saw more than 2 hours of use, don't think the cassette deck of the double DIN CD/Cassette player was EVER used). Had a burled wood push out spare compartment to fill the DIN space left behind after the double DIN unit was removed. He built a beautiful amp rack with amp, a Phoenix Gold 15 band EQ (EQ15 something, don't remember the model number but they were very popular EQ's at the time and for years afterwards) and two Monster Cable .5 farad caps tied together by two Monster gold plated buss barrs. The cool thing was that the Phoenix Gold EQ and Monster caps all had lots of white and blue (and blue matched the amp of course) and all the wiring was hidden in a pull-out compartment under the subwoofer so all the visable components seemed to match with this blue and white theme. When the amp rack was in it's compartment under the sub, I had two fans in a push/pull configuration to wash air over the entire affair but it was nearly impossible to SEE those fans ( however, you bet I fricken MADE the IASCA judges see those fans). I had an Optima Yellow top, Phoenix circuit breaker (as I still do today), and unlike now (I have Phoenix Gold RCA's and speaker wire now as I sold the stereo with the Maxima as the stereo was completely "built-into" the car so there was more value in selling the stereo complete with the car rather than picking this thing and that out of it because obviously the subwoofer/amp rack was built into the car) I had all Monster Cable high-end RCA's and speaker wire throughout. Anyway, the subs. I had a pair of Soundstream SPL12's, 12" subs in their own 1.5 cuibic foot sealed enclosures. Now the enclosure was obviously in the trunk, but the subs faced forward so when you put the rear seat arm-rest down you saw half of each sub, right there nearly at the opening. There was really no need for grills (although IASCA knocked some points off at one event which ****ed me off) as there was no way you could accidentally damage one as you would have to reach through the arm rest hole to touch them and of course nothing could accidentially fall back there or anything. ANYWAY, it was truly a work of art. I mean it was beautiful. And I certainly accumulated my share of trophies for the next few years. The largest being this RIDICULOUS 5 foot high trophy I won at a Magnolia Hi-Fi event, I won best of show, of course I think part of the reason I won that is that every component in that car was bought from store that sponsored the event, it certainly couldn't have hurt. And I did well in the IASCA circuit competing in Tacoma, Seattle, and Portland. As I recall, I ALWAYS placed (1st, 2nd or 3rd) competing in the amature 250-500 division I believe (which was actually a good division as the 150-300 watts division was MURDER as I recall and there were always many more competitors in that catagory). I had enough points to go to nationals my first year but it was out of the question as I couldn't take that much time away from work, nor did I want to have to rent a trailer or, of course, put several thousand miles on the car to drive to Daytona. Also, I knew enough about the real HEAVY HITTERS like Dave Rivera and Steve Brown who were already doing things with 'glass and Rivera's ridiculous fishtanks he incorporated in all his installs to know I didn't stand a chance against these SPONSORED (unlike me) multi-kilobuck systems. Anyway, I'm actually finally getting to my original point which was how I learned some important lessons about bass. Basically, it started when I realized just by chance one day that when the trunk was open the bass increased SUBSTANTIALLY. At the time, I had no idea why this was so. I really didn't. So I believe I actually asked the question here nearly 15 years ago about why the hell my bass got so much louder when the trunk was open. Like I said, I did not know the things I know now and I just couldn't wrap my head around this frankly annoying phenomena (I wanted this substantially increased bass ALL THE TIME). And of course someone like Manville Smith explained to me that what was happening was that as my subwoofer cones were bassically at the center of the car and that bass is going back (as well as forward), bouncing off the rear-trunk, then going forward, this extra distance of travel causing these waves to become 180 degrees out of phase and when those waves catch up to the waves going forward in the first place, they cancel out a substantial portion of my bass. Of course, I've spent thousands, this enclosure and amp-rack drawer are built into the car (I mean, when you opened my trunk, NOTHING would tell you there was a stereo there (except for the fact you might think it was a very small trunk for a car that size), EVERYTHING was completely stealth and built in AS IF it had come with the car. It was a truly amazing install job and if I were to pay a shop to do the work, I'm sure it would have cost several thousand dollars in installation alone (my friend did it for only $1000 for all his hard work night after night, he guessed probably 50 hours, and keep in mind, this is what he does for a living). So of course, nothing could be done about the situation I found myself in, and I just learned to accept it (because, OBVIOUSLY, turning the subwoofer around was quite literally impossible unless I destroyed it first to get it out of the car). So I learned a VERY expensive lesson in accoustics: you always want your cones as close to the boundries of your car like corners or at least the rear-end to avoid cancellation. You know, I kind of blamed my installer, Glen, a bit as well. I mean, HE WAS CERTTIFIED for Pete's sake and should have seen this coming. I also let him do the majority of designing the system (I just picked out the components I wanted to use, but I let him have free reign with how the whole thing was to be designed and built. I always wonder if the subwoofers had simply been facing the rear with attractive sub grills and such, if the bass would have been much louder. OR, I now wonder if he had taken more time in sealing the space behind the sub with 1" MDF if those waves could have been prevented from going to the rear, because as he had it, he used just thin 1/8" plywood for facia elements covered in automotive carpet that matched the Maxima's trunk carpet (of course he used 3/4" MDF for the sub enclosure). Now, to be fair, that system did pump out the bass pretty damn well. But in truth it doesn't come close to my two 15"s driven by my 1000 watt Class D I have now. I mean, my system now is TRULY a ground pounder, like none other I've ever owned. But, of course, beyond it's brute force, like I said, it;s SQ is simply AMAZING. Like I said at the begginging, THE BEST system I have ever owned or even HEARD in my life. Well, that was a whole lot of bull**** for no good reason. If anyone has stories about their first systems or how they got into car audio I love hearing those stories. I reallly do because if you're old like me (41), in high-school the **** was 6x9's, a cassette deck and booster EQ. THAT was state of the art in '83 and was what I had in my first car (well, minus the booster EQ, but I did have a cassette deck which was considered "high-end" anda pair of 6X9's. Of course it sounded like crap but we didn't know any better. Anyway, I love stories......please share...... MOSFET |
#8
Posted to rec.audio.car
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Oh man I'm borred.......
Really don't know what your talking about.
Yes, I've had many different tweeters, that is true. And yes, the Alpine's were EXCEPTIONAL and I may try using them again in the future. The same is true of my old JL VR series tweets, EXCELLENT. But I am very happy with my Kappa series CMMD Infinity tweets at the moment; I enjoy trying different tweets as I have yet to find sonic perfection, perhaps I never will. Alpine has clearly improved it's speakers DRAMATICALLY in the last 10 years (and I mean ALL types of speakers they produce). They single-handedly HAVE changed my opinion of Japaneese speakers. I'm not going to get "into it" with you, but may I remind you that you spent COUNTLESS posts extolly the virtues of 6x9's and that they were the end-all-be-all of car audio sound quality. So I would take caution in your insults as your car audio knowledge from that ONE flame-war alone demonstrates a woefully lacking knowledge of car audio, or at least knowledge of what "good" sound reproduction is. I am now blocking all your posts so don't bother responding. Take care, sweetie. MOSFET "Captain Howdy" wrote in message ... Misfit you havent had a DECENT system in all the time that you've been coming here,stop the bull****. Just love the post about your new Alpine speakers a while back, arent you the one that was making fun of Japanese speakers? I love stories too and I would love to share one about a ****brick that has been coming here for many years talking dumb **** as if he knew his face from his asshole just to keep changing his so called facts as time goes by. But I think you already know that story. In article , "MOSFET" wrote: OK, I'm so desperate to talk about car audio that I swear I'm going to start answering questions no one asked in the DESPERATE hope I might start a thread. The problem is right now my car sounds absolutely better than ANY car system I have ever owned, or heard.....EVER. Again, today I spent several hours in my car, absolutely dazzled by the incredible sound quality. The Infinity Kappas driven by my Phoenix Gold amp and my 6.5" Alpine Class R's driven by my Fosgate Punch 225.2 just sound absolutely PERFECT together. I have the crossovers dialed in absolutely perfectly. I swear, even my wife's music I typically hate (soft rock) sounded wonderful and engaging. I really am NOT trying to brag or anything like that, it's just I happen to be VERY pleased at the moment with my system so naturally I want to talk about car audio. I am just VERY INTO CAR AUDIO at the moment. But the problem is that judging from the number of new posts, I feel like I'm the only one (of course I know many of you are heavily into car audio, too). So, answering questions nobody is asking.... What about the old question of "where is the best place to put your subwoofers?'. Let me tell you a little story about how I learned this leason the HARD and EXPENSIVE way. I first got heavily into car audio around 1988. Between 1988 and 1995 I owned 4 different cars and with each car I kept upgrading my system. I mean, my very first car with what I would consider my first DECENT system back in 1988 had as it's front speakers a set of 4" Alpine coaxials driven by the head unit. I call it my first decent system because it was the first system I had ever owned with a SUBWOOFER driven by an outboard amp, a Rockford Fosgate Punch 75. And the sub was a Fosgate 12" punch in a ported enclosure. Although the front stage stunk, I thought I was in heaven as I finally had BASS IN MY CAR!!!!! Oh, and my back speakers were a set of Fosgate 767's 6.5" coaxials, again driven by the HU. I upgraded by first buying another amp to drive the front speakers, an Alpine 3522 (I think that was the model number, I know it ended in 22). The next upgrade was an amp to drive the rear Fosgate speakers, a Denon (when Denon used to make car amps) something, I honestly don't remember the model number but it was RATED at 30X2 but I could immediately tell they were overrated as the much smaller Alpine 3522 could blow this larger Denon away. No wonder Denon went out of business. Now I continued to make improvements, next using a much better quality 6.5" coaxial in front and finally seperates. My first set of seperates were Boston Accoustics Pro series 6.5". Anyway, in 1993 and 1994 I dabbled in competing in several IASCA events in my area. My cars were pretty nice, clean, but my systema were really nothing to write home about. HOWEVER, in 1995 I bought a brand new Nissan Maxima. Now in case you don't remember, this is the year they changed the body style to the more rounded style, they put a much more powerful engine in and was Motor Trends car of the year. It was an SE with beige leather, sunroof, and was this beautiful black/green metalic color. Now this was really the height of IASCA and I desided with this beautiful new car I was going to pull out all the stops and put an award winning, magazine quality system in this car. I had a good friend who was an installer for Magnolia Hi-Fi so I paid him under the table several thousand dollars (and four weeks with no car as it was in his garage as he worked every single day on it after he got home from work, somtimes late into the night) to build an absolute kick-ass system. It was beautiful. It was driven by a single amp, a Soundstream Reference 705, 5 channel amp that had just come out and was hailed by everyone for it's sound quality, features, and high-current abilities (the subwoofer channel was .5 ohm stable, all the other channels were 1 ohm stable). I bought the new at the time, Alpine 7939, the top of the line alpine, not the most attractive HU Alpine has ever built as the control knob looked like a nose and it was frankly a stupid design because although it kind of looked like a knob, it wasn't a knob, you turned the nose and all it accomplished was like hitting a volume up or volume down button, it was like it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a volume knob, or volume buttons, so this was some kind of compromise. Thankfully, Alpine realized what most people want are knobs so they can attenuate the volume up or down as quickly as they can turn a knob, that's the way I like it, so I can INSTANTLY turn the volume all the way down with a quick flick of the wrist. Of course, all models of Alpine's that end in "9" (like the famous 7909) indicate they have no internal amplifier of their own and require outboard amps. My front speakers were the Boston Accoustics Pro Series seperates and what was cool about the SE series with the Bose system was that it CAME with A-pillar pods for the Bose tweeters with grills that, of course, matched everything so I simply used those for my Boston tweets and the midbass speaks went in the factory door spots, however with much Dynamat added to the doors and trunk. In fact, funny story, when I first got the car and you pushed the trunk button on the remote the trunk quickly poppped completely opened. I had so much Dynamat applied to the trunk that when you pushed the trunk button, it simply unlocked and elevated a pathetic 1/4", my wife wasn't real happy about that. I had Boston Pro 6.5" midbass drivers (no tweeters) for rear fill, run in mono (I thought it helped anchor my center image better in mono). I had fake burled wood trim on the inside put in, had the ENTIRE "premium" Bose system ripped out (never saw more than 2 hours of use, don't think the cassette deck of the double DIN CD/Cassette player was EVER used). Had a burled wood push out spare compartment to fill the DIN space left behind after the double DIN unit was removed. He built a beautiful amp rack with amp, a Phoenix Gold 15 band EQ (EQ15 something, don't remember the model number but they were very popular EQ's at the time and for years afterwards) and two Monster Cable .5 farad caps tied together by two Monster gold plated buss barrs. The cool thing was that the Phoenix Gold EQ and Monster caps all had lots of white and blue (and blue matched the amp of course) and all the wiring was hidden in a pull-out compartment under the subwoofer so all the visable components seemed to match with this blue and white theme. When the amp rack was in it's compartment under the sub, I had two fans in a push/pull configuration to wash air over the entire affair but it was nearly impossible to SEE those fans ( however, you bet I fricken MADE the IASCA judges see those fans). I had an Optima Yellow top, Phoenix circuit breaker (as I still do today), and unlike now (I have Phoenix Gold RCA's and speaker wire now as I sold the stereo with the Maxima as the stereo was completely "built-into" the car so there was more value in selling the stereo complete with the car rather than picking this thing and that out of it because obviously the subwoofer/amp rack was built into the car) I had all Monster Cable high-end RCA's and speaker wire throughout. Anyway, the subs. I had a pair of Soundstream SPL12's, 12" subs in their own 1.5 cuibic foot sealed enclosures. Now the enclosure was obviously in the trunk, but the subs faced forward so when you put the rear seat arm-rest down you saw half of each sub, right there nearly at the opening. There was really no need for grills (although IASCA knocked some points off at one event which ****ed me off) as there was no way you could accidentally damage one as you would have to reach through the arm rest hole to touch them and of course nothing could accidentially fall back there or anything. ANYWAY, it was truly a work of art. I mean it was beautiful. And I certainly accumulated my share of trophies for the next few years. The largest being this RIDICULOUS 5 foot high trophy I won at a Magnolia Hi-Fi event, I won best of show, of course I think part of the reason I won that is that every component in that car was bought from store that sponsored the event, it certainly couldn't have hurt. And I did well in the IASCA circuit competing in Tacoma, Seattle, and Portland. As I recall, I ALWAYS placed (1st, 2nd or 3rd) competing in the amature 250-500 division I believe (which was actually a good division as the 150-300 watts division was MURDER as I recall and there were always many more competitors in that catagory). I had enough points to go to nationals my first year but it was out of the question as I couldn't take that much time away from work, nor did I want to have to rent a trailer or, of course, put several thousand miles on the car to drive to Daytona. Also, I knew enough about the real HEAVY HITTERS like Dave Rivera and Steve Brown who were already doing things with 'glass and Rivera's ridiculous fishtanks he incorporated in all his installs to know I didn't stand a chance against these SPONSORED (unlike me) multi-kilobuck systems. Anyway, I'm actually finally getting to my original point which was how I learned some important lessons about bass. Basically, it started when I realized just by chance one day that when the trunk was open the bass increased SUBSTANTIALLY. At the time, I had no idea why this was so. I really didn't. So I believe I actually asked the question here nearly 15 years ago about why the hell my bass got so much louder when the trunk was open. Like I said, I did not know the things I know now and I just couldn't wrap my head around this frankly annoying phenomena (I wanted this substantially increased bass ALL THE TIME). And of course someone like Manville Smith explained to me that what was happening was that as my subwoofer cones were bassically at the center of the car and that bass is going back (as well as forward), bouncing off the rear-trunk, then going forward, this extra distance of travel causing these waves to become 180 degrees out of phase and when those waves catch up to the waves going forward in the first place, they cancel out a substantial portion of my bass. Of course, I've spent thousands, this enclosure and amp-rack drawer are built into the car (I mean, when you opened my trunk, NOTHING would tell you there was a stereo there (except for the fact you might think it was a very small trunk for a car that size), EVERYTHING was completely stealth and built in AS IF it had come with the car. It was a truly amazing install job and if I were to pay a shop to do the work, I'm sure it would have cost several thousand dollars in installation alone (my friend did it for only $1000 for all his hard work night after night, he guessed probably 50 hours, and keep in mind, this is what he does for a living). So of course, nothing could be done about the situation I found myself in, and I just learned to accept it (because, OBVIOUSLY, turning the subwoofer around was quite literally impossible unless I destroyed it first to get it out of the car). So I learned a VERY expensive lesson in accoustics: you always want your cones as close to the boundries of your car like corners or at least the rear-end to avoid cancellation. You know, I kind of blamed my installer, Glen, a bit as well. I mean, HE WAS CERTTIFIED for Pete's sake and should have seen this coming. I also let him do the majority of designing the system (I just picked out the components I wanted to use, but I let him have free reign with how the whole thing was to be designed and built. I always wonder if the subwoofers had simply been facing the rear with attractive sub grills and such, if the bass would have been much louder. OR, I now wonder if he had taken more time in sealing the space behind the sub with 1" MDF if those waves could have been prevented from going to the rear, because as he had it, he used just thin 1/8" plywood for facia elements covered in automotive carpet that matched the Maxima's trunk carpet (of course he used 3/4" MDF for the sub enclosure). Now, to be fair, that system did pump out the bass pretty damn well. But in truth it doesn't come close to my two 15"s driven by my 1000 watt Class D I have now. I mean, my system now is TRULY a ground pounder, like none other I've ever owned. But, of course, beyond it's brute force, like I said, it;s SQ is simply AMAZING. Like I said at the begginging, THE BEST system I have ever owned or even HEARD in my life. Well, that was a whole lot of bull**** for no good reason. If anyone has stories about their first systems or how they got into car audio I love hearing those stories. I reallly do because if you're old like me (41), in high-school the **** was 6x9's, a cassette deck and booster EQ. THAT was state of the art in '83 and was what I had in my first car (well, minus the booster EQ, but I did have a cassette deck which was considered "high-end" anda pair of 6X9's. Of course it sounded like crap but we didn't know any better. Anyway, I love stories......please share...... MOSFET |
#9
Posted to rec.audio.car
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Oh man I'm borred.......
You know what I'm talking about. I know that you don't want to get "into it"
with me. In article , "MOSFET" wrote: Really don't know what your talking about. Yes, I've had many different tweeters, that is true. And yes, the Alpine's were EXCEPTIONAL and I may try using them again in the future. The same is true of my old JL VR series tweets, EXCELLENT. But I am very happy with my Kappa series CMMD Infinity tweets at the moment; I enjoy trying different tweets as I have yet to find sonic perfection, perhaps I never will. Alpine has clearly improved it's speakers DRAMATICALLY in the last 10 years (and I mean ALL types of speakers they produce). They single-handedly HAVE changed my opinion of Japaneese speakers. I'm not going to get "into it" with you, but may I remind you that you spent COUNTLESS posts extolly the virtues of 6x9's and that they were the end-all-be-all of car audio sound quality. So I would take caution in your insults as your car audio knowledge from that ONE flame-war alone demonstrates a woefully lacking knowledge of car audio, or at least knowledge of what "good" sound reproduction is. I am now blocking all your posts so don't bother responding. Take care, sweetie. MOSFET "Captain Howdy" wrote in message ... Misfit you havent had a DECENT system in all the time that you've been coming here,stop the bull****. Just love the post about your new Alpine speakers a while back, arent you the one that was making fun of Japanese speakers? I love stories too and I would love to share one about a ****brick that has been coming here for many years talking dumb **** as if he knew his face from his asshole just to keep changing his so called facts as time goes by. But I think you already know that story. In article , "MOSFET" wrote: OK, I'm so desperate to talk about car audio that I swear I'm going to start answering questions no one asked in the DESPERATE hope I might start a thread. The problem is right now my car sounds absolutely better than ANY car system I have ever owned, or heard.....EVER. Again, today I spent several hours in my car, absolutely dazzled by the incredible sound quality. The Infinity Kappas driven by my Phoenix Gold amp and my 6.5" Alpine Class R's driven by my Fosgate Punch 225.2 just sound absolutely PERFECT together. I have the crossovers dialed in absolutely perfectly. I swear, even my wife's music I typically hate (soft rock) sounded wonderful and engaging. I really am NOT trying to brag or anything like that, it's just I happen to be VERY pleased at the moment with my system so naturally I want to talk about car audio. I am just VERY INTO CAR AUDIO at the moment. But the problem is that judging from the number of new posts, I feel like I'm the only one (of course I know many of you are heavily into car audio, too). So, answering questions nobody is asking.... What about the old question of "where is the best place to put your subwoofers?'. Let me tell you a little story about how I learned this leason the HARD and EXPENSIVE way. I first got heavily into car audio around 1988. Between 1988 and 1995 I owned 4 different cars and with each car I kept upgrading my system. I mean, my very first car with what I would consider my first DECENT system back in 1988 had as it's front speakers a set of 4" Alpine coaxials driven by the head unit. I call it my first decent system because it was the first system I had ever owned with a SUBWOOFER driven by an outboard amp, a Rockford Fosgate Punch 75. And the sub was a Fosgate 12" punch in a ported enclosure. Although the front stage stunk, I thought I was in heaven as I finally had BASS IN MY CAR!!!!! Oh, and my back speakers were a set of Fosgate 767's 6.5" coaxials, again driven by the HU. I upgraded by first buying another amp to drive the front speakers, an Alpine 3522 (I think that was the model number, I know it ended in 22). The next upgrade was an amp to drive the rear Fosgate speakers, a Denon (when Denon used to make car amps) something, I honestly don't remember the model number but it was RATED at 30X2 but I could immediately tell they were overrated as the much smaller Alpine 3522 could blow this larger Denon away. No wonder Denon went out of business. Now I continued to make improvements, next using a much better quality 6.5" coaxial in front and finally seperates. My first set of seperates were Boston Accoustics Pro series 6.5". Anyway, in 1993 and 1994 I dabbled in competing in several IASCA events in my area. My cars were pretty nice, clean, but my systema were really nothing to write home about. HOWEVER, in 1995 I bought a brand new Nissan Maxima. Now in case you don't remember, this is the year they changed the body style to the more rounded style, they put a much more powerful engine in and was Motor Trends car of the year. It was an SE with beige leather, sunroof, and was this beautiful black/green metalic color. Now this was really the height of IASCA and I desided with this beautiful new car I was going to pull out all the stops and put an award winning, magazine quality system in this car. I had a good friend who was an installer for Magnolia Hi-Fi so I paid him under the table several thousand dollars (and four weeks with no car as it was in his garage as he worked every single day on it after he got home from work, somtimes late into the night) to build an absolute kick-ass system. It was beautiful. It was driven by a single amp, a Soundstream Reference 705, 5 channel amp that had just come out and was hailed by everyone for it's sound quality, features, and high-current abilities (the subwoofer channel was .5 ohm stable, all the other channels were 1 ohm stable). I bought the new at the time, Alpine 7939, the top of the line alpine, not the most attractive HU Alpine has ever built as the control knob looked like a nose and it was frankly a stupid design because although it kind of looked like a knob, it wasn't a knob, you turned the nose and all it accomplished was like hitting a volume up or volume down button, it was like it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a volume knob, or volume buttons, so this was some kind of compromise. Thankfully, Alpine realized what most people want are knobs so they can attenuate the volume up or down as quickly as they can turn a knob, that's the way I like it, so I can INSTANTLY turn the volume all the way down with a quick flick of the wrist. Of course, all models of Alpine's that end in "9" (like the famous 7909) indicate they have no internal amplifier of their own and require outboard amps. My front speakers were the Boston Accoustics Pro Series seperates and what was cool about the SE series with the Bose system was that it CAME with A-pillar pods for the Bose tweeters with grills that, of course, matched everything so I simply used those for my Boston tweets and the midbass speaks went in the factory door spots, however with much Dynamat added to the doors and trunk. In fact, funny story, when I first got the car and you pushed the trunk button on the remote the trunk quickly poppped completely opened. I had so much Dynamat applied to the trunk that when you pushed the trunk button, it simply unlocked and elevated a pathetic 1/4", my wife wasn't real happy about that. I had Boston Pro 6.5" midbass drivers (no tweeters) for rear fill, run in mono (I thought it helped anchor my center image better in mono). I had fake burled wood trim on the inside put in, had the ENTIRE "premium" Bose system ripped out (never saw more than 2 hours of use, don't think the cassette deck of the double DIN CD/Cassette player was EVER used). Had a burled wood push out spare compartment to fill the DIN space left behind after the double DIN unit was removed. He built a beautiful amp rack with amp, a Phoenix Gold 15 band EQ (EQ15 something, don't remember the model number but they were very popular EQ's at the time and for years afterwards) and two Monster Cable .5 farad caps tied together by two Monster gold plated buss barrs. The cool thing was that the Phoenix Gold EQ and Monster caps all had lots of white and blue (and blue matched the amp of course) and all the wiring was hidden in a pull-out compartment under the subwoofer so all the visable components seemed to match with this blue and white theme. When the amp rack was in it's compartment under the sub, I had two fans in a push/pull configuration to wash air over the entire affair but it was nearly impossible to SEE those fans ( however, you bet I fricken MADE the IASCA judges see those fans). I had an Optima Yellow top, Phoenix circuit breaker (as I still do today), and unlike now (I have Phoenix Gold RCA's and speaker wire now as I sold the stereo with the Maxima as the stereo was completely "built-into" the car so there was more value in selling the stereo complete with the car rather than picking this thing and that out of it because obviously the subwoofer/amp rack was built into the car) I had all Monster Cable high-end RCA's and speaker wire throughout. Anyway, the subs. I had a pair of Soundstream SPL12's, 12" subs in their own 1.5 cuibic foot sealed enclosures. Now the enclosure was obviously in the trunk, but the subs faced forward so when you put the rear seat arm-rest down you saw half of each sub, right there nearly at the opening. There was really no need for grills (although IASCA knocked some points off at one event which ****ed me off) as there was no way you could accidentally damage one as you would have to reach through the arm rest hole to touch them and of course nothing could accidentially fall back there or anything. ANYWAY, it was truly a work of art. I mean it was beautiful. And I certainly accumulated my share of trophies for the next few years. The largest being this RIDICULOUS 5 foot high trophy I won at a Magnolia Hi-Fi event, I won best of show, of course I think part of the reason I won that is that every component in that car was bought from store that sponsored the event, it certainly couldn't have hurt. And I did well in the IASCA circuit competing in Tacoma, Seattle, and Portland. As I recall, I ALWAYS placed (1st, 2nd or 3rd) competing in the amature 250-500 division I believe (which was actually a good division as the 150-300 watts division was MURDER as I recall and there were always many more competitors in that catagory). I had enough points to go to nationals my first year but it was out of the question as I couldn't take that much time away from work, nor did I want to have to rent a trailer or, of course, put several thousand miles on the car to drive to Daytona. Also, I knew enough about the real HEAVY HITTERS like Dave Rivera and Steve Brown who were already doing things with 'glass and Rivera's ridiculous fishtanks he incorporated in all his installs to know I didn't stand a chance against these SPONSORED (unlike me) multi-kilobuck systems. Anyway, I'm actually finally getting to my original point which was how I learned some important lessons about bass. Basically, it started when I realized just by chance one day that when the trunk was open the bass increased SUBSTANTIALLY. At the time, I had no idea why this was so. I really didn't. So I believe I actually asked the question here nearly 15 years ago about why the hell my bass got so much louder when the trunk was open. Like I said, I did not know the things I know now and I just couldn't wrap my head around this frankly annoying phenomena (I wanted this substantially increased bass ALL THE TIME). And of course someone like Manville Smith explained to me that what was happening was that as my subwoofer cones were bassically at the center of the car and that bass is going back (as well as forward), bouncing off the rear-trunk, then going forward, this extra distance of travel causing these waves to become 180 degrees out of phase and when those waves catch up to the waves going forward in the first place, they cancel out a substantial portion of my bass. Of course, I've spent thousands, this enclosure and amp-rack drawer are built into the car (I mean, when you opened my trunk, NOTHING would tell you there was a stereo there (except for the fact you might think it was a very small trunk for a car that size), EVERYTHING was completely stealth and built in AS IF it had come with the car. It was a truly amazing install job and if I were to pay a shop to do the work, I'm sure it would have cost several thousand dollars in installation alone (my friend did it for only $1000 for all his hard work night after night, he guessed probably 50 hours, and keep in mind, this is what he does for a living). So of course, nothing could be done about the situation I found myself in, and I just learned to accept it (because, OBVIOUSLY, turning the subwoofer around was quite literally impossible unless I destroyed it first to get it out of the car). So I learned a VERY expensive lesson in accoustics: you always want your cones as close to the boundries of your car like corners or at least the rear-end to avoid cancellation. You know, I kind of blamed my installer, Glen, a bit as well. I mean, HE WAS CERTTIFIED for Pete's sake and should have seen this coming. I also let him do the majority of designing the system (I just picked out the components I wanted to use, but I let him have free reign with how the whole thing was to be designed and built. I always wonder if the subwoofers had simply been facing the rear with attractive sub grills and such, if the bass would have been much louder. OR, I now wonder if he had taken more time in sealing the space behind the sub with 1" MDF if those waves could have been prevented from going to the rear, because as he had it, he used just thin 1/8" plywood for facia elements covered in automotive carpet that matched the Maxima's trunk carpet (of course he used 3/4" MDF for the sub enclosure). Now, to be fair, that system did pump out the bass pretty damn well. But in truth it doesn't come close to my two 15"s driven by my 1000 watt Class D I have now. I mean, my system now is TRULY a ground pounder, like none other I've ever owned. But, of course, beyond it's brute force, like I said, it;s SQ is simply AMAZING. Like I said at the begginging, THE BEST system I have ever owned or even HEARD in my life. Well, that was a whole lot of bull**** for no good reason. If anyone has stories about their first systems or how they got into car audio I love hearing those stories. I reallly do because if you're old like me (41), in high-school the **** was 6x9's, a cassette deck and booster EQ. THAT was state of the art in '83 and was what I had in my first car (well, minus the booster EQ, but I did have a cassette deck which was considered "high-end" anda pair of 6X9's. Of course it sounded like crap but we didn't know any better. Anyway, I love stories......please share...... MOSFET |
#10
Posted to rec.audio.car
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Oh man I'm borred.......
And I just can't help add one more thing. What the hell is it with me that
bugs you so much? Why did you try and sell my car on an on-line car sales site, a nasty trick I reported to your IP which might have explained your mysterious three month absense from this group. What have I done to you? I try to be polite and helpful to all. I am NOT an EE and I would certainly not claim to know everything in the world about car audio. And I certainly may make a mistake now and then, and I have absolutely no problem copping to my mistakes. But here's the thing, I HAVE been involved with car audio for over 20 years now. That is absolutely, positively true as my wife would more than attest. I HAVE worked for Phoenix Gold in their marketing department as I have an MBA from the University of Portland, class of '95. All of these facts can be checked out and verified, my name is Nicholas Victor Tanner. Phoenix Gold would be happy to tell you I have worked for them and the University of Portland Business School would certainly be more than happy to verify for you that I got my MBA in 1995, hell, I'll Email you a photo of my degree. They would also tell you I taught a Consumer Behavior class to both graduates and undergrads as an adjunct proffessor, and NO, I don't mean I was a TA, I designed the curriculm, had an office, office hours, the works (I did this in the evenings and was paid quite well, I mean it's a private Catholic school), the students called me Dr. Tanner which was technically incorrect as I don't have a PhD, but YOU KNOW I didn't correct them as I liked the sound of it. What education do you have, just out of curiosity (I want to know the education level of your average troll). I competed in IASCA events for years and have installed DOZENS of systems for friends, family and myself. Again, do I know it all? Of course not. But do I know a hell of a lot about car audio? I think I can honestly say, yes, I do. Certainly enough to help 90% of the questions that come this way. So again, I don't know where all the annimous (do you know what that word means?) comes from. I REALLY don't. But you're blocked so I won't hear any response and frankly, I really don't care. MOSFET "Captain Howdy" wrote in message ... Misfit you havent had a DECENT system in all the time that you've been coming here,stop the bull****. Just love the post about your new Alpine speakers a while back, arent you the one that was making fun of Japanese speakers? I love stories too and I would love to share one about a ****brick that has been coming here for many years talking dumb **** as if he knew his face from his asshole just to keep changing his so called facts as time goes by. But I think you already know that story. In article , "MOSFET" wrote: OK, I'm so desperate to talk about car audio that I swear I'm going to start answering questions no one asked in the DESPERATE hope I might start a thread. The problem is right now my car sounds absolutely better than ANY car system I have ever owned, or heard.....EVER. Again, today I spent several hours in my car, absolutely dazzled by the incredible sound quality. The Infinity Kappas driven by my Phoenix Gold amp and my 6.5" Alpine Class R's driven by my Fosgate Punch 225.2 just sound absolutely PERFECT together. I have the crossovers dialed in absolutely perfectly. I swear, even my wife's music I typically hate (soft rock) sounded wonderful and engaging. I really am NOT trying to brag or anything like that, it's just I happen to be VERY pleased at the moment with my system so naturally I want to talk about car audio. I am just VERY INTO CAR AUDIO at the moment. But the problem is that judging from the number of new posts, I feel like I'm the only one (of course I know many of you are heavily into car audio, too). So, answering questions nobody is asking.... What about the old question of "where is the best place to put your subwoofers?'. Let me tell you a little story about how I learned this leason the HARD and EXPENSIVE way. I first got heavily into car audio around 1988. Between 1988 and 1995 I owned 4 different cars and with each car I kept upgrading my system. I mean, my very first car with what I would consider my first DECENT system back in 1988 had as it's front speakers a set of 4" Alpine coaxials driven by the head unit. I call it my first decent system because it was the first system I had ever owned with a SUBWOOFER driven by an outboard amp, a Rockford Fosgate Punch 75. And the sub was a Fosgate 12" punch in a ported enclosure. Although the front stage stunk, I thought I was in heaven as I finally had BASS IN MY CAR!!!!! Oh, and my back speakers were a set of Fosgate 767's 6.5" coaxials, again driven by the HU. I upgraded by first buying another amp to drive the front speakers, an Alpine 3522 (I think that was the model number, I know it ended in 22). The next upgrade was an amp to drive the rear Fosgate speakers, a Denon (when Denon used to make car amps) something, I honestly don't remember the model number but it was RATED at 30X2 but I could immediately tell they were overrated as the much smaller Alpine 3522 could blow this larger Denon away. No wonder Denon went out of business. Now I continued to make improvements, next using a much better quality 6.5" coaxial in front and finally seperates. My first set of seperates were Boston Accoustics Pro series 6.5". Anyway, in 1993 and 1994 I dabbled in competing in several IASCA events in my area. My cars were pretty nice, clean, but my systema were really nothing to write home about. HOWEVER, in 1995 I bought a brand new Nissan Maxima. Now in case you don't remember, this is the year they changed the body style to the more rounded style, they put a much more powerful engine in and was Motor Trends car of the year. It was an SE with beige leather, sunroof, and was this beautiful black/green metalic color. Now this was really the height of IASCA and I desided with this beautiful new car I was going to pull out all the stops and put an award winning, magazine quality system in this car. I had a good friend who was an installer for Magnolia Hi-Fi so I paid him under the table several thousand dollars (and four weeks with no car as it was in his garage as he worked every single day on it after he got home from work, somtimes late into the night) to build an absolute kick-ass system. It was beautiful. It was driven by a single amp, a Soundstream Reference 705, 5 channel amp that had just come out and was hailed by everyone for it's sound quality, features, and high-current abilities (the subwoofer channel was .5 ohm stable, all the other channels were 1 ohm stable). I bought the new at the time, Alpine 7939, the top of the line alpine, not the most attractive HU Alpine has ever built as the control knob looked like a nose and it was frankly a stupid design because although it kind of looked like a knob, it wasn't a knob, you turned the nose and all it accomplished was like hitting a volume up or volume down button, it was like it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a volume knob, or volume buttons, so this was some kind of compromise. Thankfully, Alpine realized what most people want are knobs so they can attenuate the volume up or down as quickly as they can turn a knob, that's the way I like it, so I can INSTANTLY turn the volume all the way down with a quick flick of the wrist. Of course, all models of Alpine's that end in "9" (like the famous 7909) indicate they have no internal amplifier of their own and require outboard amps. My front speakers were the Boston Accoustics Pro Series seperates and what was cool about the SE series with the Bose system was that it CAME with A-pillar pods for the Bose tweeters with grills that, of course, matched everything so I simply used those for my Boston tweets and the midbass speaks went in the factory door spots, however with much Dynamat added to the doors and trunk. In fact, funny story, when I first got the car and you pushed the trunk button on the remote the trunk quickly poppped completely opened. I had so much Dynamat applied to the trunk that when you pushed the trunk button, it simply unlocked and elevated a pathetic 1/4", my wife wasn't real happy about that. I had Boston Pro 6.5" midbass drivers (no tweeters) for rear fill, run in mono (I thought it helped anchor my center image better in mono). I had fake burled wood trim on the inside put in, had the ENTIRE "premium" Bose system ripped out (never saw more than 2 hours of use, don't think the cassette deck of the double DIN CD/Cassette player was EVER used). Had a burled wood push out spare compartment to fill the DIN space left behind after the double DIN unit was removed. He built a beautiful amp rack with amp, a Phoenix Gold 15 band EQ (EQ15 something, don't remember the model number but they were very popular EQ's at the time and for years afterwards) and two Monster Cable .5 farad caps tied together by two Monster gold plated buss barrs. The cool thing was that the Phoenix Gold EQ and Monster caps all had lots of white and blue (and blue matched the amp of course) and all the wiring was hidden in a pull-out compartment under the subwoofer so all the visable components seemed to match with this blue and white theme. When the amp rack was in it's compartment under the sub, I had two fans in a push/pull configuration to wash air over the entire affair but it was nearly impossible to SEE those fans ( however, you bet I fricken MADE the IASCA judges see those fans). I had an Optima Yellow top, Phoenix circuit breaker (as I still do today), and unlike now (I have Phoenix Gold RCA's and speaker wire now as I sold the stereo with the Maxima as the stereo was completely "built-into" the car so there was more value in selling the stereo complete with the car rather than picking this thing and that out of it because obviously the subwoofer/amp rack was built into the car) I had all Monster Cable high-end RCA's and speaker wire throughout. Anyway, the subs. I had a pair of Soundstream SPL12's, 12" subs in their own 1.5 cuibic foot sealed enclosures. Now the enclosure was obviously in the trunk, but the subs faced forward so when you put the rear seat arm-rest down you saw half of each sub, right there nearly at the opening. There was really no need for grills (although IASCA knocked some points off at one event which ****ed me off) as there was no way you could accidentally damage one as you would have to reach through the arm rest hole to touch them and of course nothing could accidentially fall back there or anything. ANYWAY, it was truly a work of art. I mean it was beautiful. And I certainly accumulated my share of trophies for the next few years. The largest being this RIDICULOUS 5 foot high trophy I won at a Magnolia Hi-Fi event, I won best of show, of course I think part of the reason I won that is that every component in that car was bought from store that sponsored the event, it certainly couldn't have hurt. And I did well in the IASCA circuit competing in Tacoma, Seattle, and Portland. As I recall, I ALWAYS placed (1st, 2nd or 3rd) competing in the amature 250-500 division I believe (which was actually a good division as the 150-300 watts division was MURDER as I recall and there were always many more competitors in that catagory). I had enough points to go to nationals my first year but it was out of the question as I couldn't take that much time away from work, nor did I want to have to rent a trailer or, of course, put several thousand miles on the car to drive to Daytona. Also, I knew enough about the real HEAVY HITTERS like Dave Rivera and Steve Brown who were already doing things with 'glass and Rivera's ridiculous fishtanks he incorporated in all his installs to know I didn't stand a chance against these SPONSORED (unlike me) multi-kilobuck systems. Anyway, I'm actually finally getting to my original point which was how I learned some important lessons about bass. Basically, it started when I realized just by chance one day that when the trunk was open the bass increased SUBSTANTIALLY. At the time, I had no idea why this was so. I really didn't. So I believe I actually asked the question here nearly 15 years ago about why the hell my bass got so much louder when the trunk was open. Like I said, I did not know the things I know now and I just couldn't wrap my head around this frankly annoying phenomena (I wanted this substantially increased bass ALL THE TIME). And of course someone like Manville Smith explained to me that what was happening was that as my subwoofer cones were bassically at the center of the car and that bass is going back (as well as forward), bouncing off the rear-trunk, then going forward, this extra distance of travel causing these waves to become 180 degrees out of phase and when those waves catch up to the waves going forward in the first place, they cancel out a substantial portion of my bass. Of course, I've spent thousands, this enclosure and amp-rack drawer are built into the car (I mean, when you opened my trunk, NOTHING would tell you there was a stereo there (except for the fact you might think it was a very small trunk for a car that size), EVERYTHING was completely stealth and built in AS IF it had come with the car. It was a truly amazing install job and if I were to pay a shop to do the work, I'm sure it would have cost several thousand dollars in installation alone (my friend did it for only $1000 for all his hard work night after night, he guessed probably 50 hours, and keep in mind, this is what he does for a living). So of course, nothing could be done about the situation I found myself in, and I just learned to accept it (because, OBVIOUSLY, turning the subwoofer around was quite literally impossible unless I destroyed it first to get it out of the car). So I learned a VERY expensive lesson in accoustics: you always want your cones as close to the boundries of your car like corners or at least the rear-end to avoid cancellation. You know, I kind of blamed my installer, Glen, a bit as well. I mean, HE WAS CERTTIFIED for Pete's sake and should have seen this coming. I also let him do the majority of designing the system (I just picked out the components I wanted to use, but I let him have free reign with how the whole thing was to be designed and built. I always wonder if the subwoofers had simply been facing the rear with attractive sub grills and such, if the bass would have been much louder. OR, I now wonder if he had taken more time in sealing the space behind the sub with 1" MDF if those waves could have been prevented from going to the rear, because as he had it, he used just thin 1/8" plywood for facia elements covered in automotive carpet that matched the Maxima's trunk carpet (of course he used 3/4" MDF for the sub enclosure). Now, to be fair, that system did pump out the bass pretty damn well. But in truth it doesn't come close to my two 15"s driven by my 1000 watt Class D I have now. I mean, my system now is TRULY a ground pounder, like none other I've ever owned. But, of course, beyond it's brute force, like I said, it;s SQ is simply AMAZING. Like I said at the begginging, THE BEST system I have ever owned or even HEARD in my life. Well, that was a whole lot of bull**** for no good reason. If anyone has stories about their first systems or how they got into car audio I love hearing those stories. I reallly do because if you're old like me (41), in high-school the **** was 6x9's, a cassette deck and booster EQ. THAT was state of the art in '83 and was what I had in my first car (well, minus the booster EQ, but I did have a cassette deck which was considered "high-end" anda pair of 6X9's. Of course it sounded like crap but we didn't know any better. Anyway, I love stories......please share...... MOSFET |
#11
Posted to rec.audio.car
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Oh man I'm borred.......
See I told ya that you're a ****brick. You're the biggest **** tart on rac in many years. Over the years your advice has changed more then the weather. I don't know who tried to sell your car, must of been one of your fans or someone you ripped off on Ebay. http://tinyurl.com/ysz5gv In article , "MOSFET" wrote: And I just can't help add one more thing. What the hell is it with me that bugs you so much? Why did you try and sell my car on an on-line car sales site, a nasty trick I reported to your IP which might have explained your mysterious three month absense from this group. What have I done to you? I try to be polite and helpful to all. I am NOT an EE and I would certainly not claim to know everything in the world about car audio. And I certainly may make a mistake now and then, and I have absolutely no problem copping to my mistakes. But here's the thing, I HAVE been involved with car audio for over 20 years now. That is absolutely, positively true as my wife would more than attest. I HAVE worked for Phoenix Gold in their marketing department as I have an MBA from the University of Portland, class of '95. All of these facts can be checked out and verified, my name is Nicholas Victor Tanner. Phoenix Gold would be happy to tell you I have worked for them and the University of Portland Business School would certainly be more than happy to verify for you that I got my MBA in 1995, hell, I'll Email you a photo of my degree. They would also tell you I taught a Consumer Behavior class to both graduates and undergrads as an adjunct proffessor, and NO, I don't mean I was a TA, I designed the curriculm, had an office, office hours, the works (I did this in the evenings and was paid quite well, I mean it's a private Catholic school), the students called me Dr. Tanner which was technically incorrect as I don't have a PhD, but YOU KNOW I didn't correct them as I liked the sound of it. What education do you have, just out of curiosity (I want to know the education level of your average troll). I competed in IASCA events for years and have installed DOZENS of systems for friends, family and myself. Again, do I know it all? Of course not. But do I know a hell of a lot about car audio? I think I can honestly say, yes, I do. Certainly enough to help 90% of the questions that come this way. So again, I don't know where all the annimous (do you know what that word means?) comes from. I REALLY don't. But you're blocked so I won't hear any response and frankly, I really don't care. MOSFET "Captain Howdy" wrote in message ... Misfit you havent had a DECENT system in all the time that you've been coming here,stop the bull****. Just love the post about your new Alpine speakers a while back, arent you the one that was making fun of Japanese speakers? I love stories too and I would love to share one about a ****brick that has been coming here for many years talking dumb **** as if he knew his face from his asshole just to keep changing his so called facts as time goes by. But I think you already know that story. In article , "MOSFET" wrote: OK, I'm so desperate to talk about car audio that I swear I'm going to start answering questions no one asked in the DESPERATE hope I might start a thread. The problem is right now my car sounds absolutely better than ANY car system I have ever owned, or heard.....EVER. Again, today I spent several hours in my car, absolutely dazzled by the incredible sound quality. The Infinity Kappas driven by my Phoenix Gold amp and my 6.5" Alpine Class R's driven by my Fosgate Punch 225.2 just sound absolutely PERFECT together. I have the crossovers dialed in absolutely perfectly. I swear, even my wife's music I typically hate (soft rock) sounded wonderful and engaging. I really am NOT trying to brag or anything like that, it's just I happen to be VERY pleased at the moment with my system so naturally I want to talk about car audio. I am just VERY INTO CAR AUDIO at the moment. But the problem is that judging from the number of new posts, I feel like I'm the only one (of course I know many of you are heavily into car audio, too). So, answering questions nobody is asking.... What about the old question of "where is the best place to put your subwoofers?'. Let me tell you a little story about how I learned this leason the HARD and EXPENSIVE way. I first got heavily into car audio around 1988. Between 1988 and 1995 I owned 4 different cars and with each car I kept upgrading my system. I mean, my very first car with what I would consider my first DECENT system back in 1988 had as it's front speakers a set of 4" Alpine coaxials driven by the head unit. I call it my first decent system because it was the first system I had ever owned with a SUBWOOFER driven by an outboard amp, a Rockford Fosgate Punch 75. And the sub was a Fosgate 12" punch in a ported enclosure. Although the front stage stunk, I thought I was in heaven as I finally had BASS IN MY CAR!!!!! Oh, and my back speakers were a set of Fosgate 767's 6.5" coaxials, again driven by the HU. I upgraded by first buying another amp to drive the front speakers, an Alpine 3522 (I think that was the model number, I know it ended in 22). The next upgrade was an amp to drive the rear Fosgate speakers, a Denon (when Denon used to make car amps) something, I honestly don't remember the model number but it was RATED at 30X2 but I could immediately tell they were overrated as the much smaller Alpine 3522 could blow this larger Denon away. No wonder Denon went out of business. Now I continued to make improvements, next using a much better quality 6.5" coaxial in front and finally seperates. My first set of seperates were Boston Accoustics Pro series 6.5". Anyway, in 1993 and 1994 I dabbled in competing in several IASCA events in my area. My cars were pretty nice, clean, but my systema were really nothing to write home about. HOWEVER, in 1995 I bought a brand new Nissan Maxima. Now in case you don't remember, this is the year they changed the body style to the more rounded style, they put a much more powerful engine in and was Motor Trends car of the year. It was an SE with beige leather, sunroof, and was this beautiful black/green metalic color. Now this was really the height of IASCA and I desided with this beautiful new car I was going to pull out all the stops and put an award winning, magazine quality system in this car. I had a good friend who was an installer for Magnolia Hi-Fi so I paid him under the table several thousand dollars (and four weeks with no car as it was in his garage as he worked every single day on it after he got home from work, somtimes late into the night) to build an absolute kick-ass system. It was beautiful. It was driven by a single amp, a Soundstream Reference 705, 5 channel amp that had just come out and was hailed by everyone for it's sound quality, features, and high-current abilities (the subwoofer channel was .5 ohm stable, all the other channels were 1 ohm stable). I bought the new at the time, Alpine 7939, the top of the line alpine, not the most attractive HU Alpine has ever built as the control knob looked like a nose and it was frankly a stupid design because although it kind of looked like a knob, it wasn't a knob, you turned the nose and all it accomplished was like hitting a volume up or volume down button, it was like it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a volume knob, or volume buttons, so this was some kind of compromise. Thankfully, Alpine realized what most people want are knobs so they can attenuate the volume up or down as quickly as they can turn a knob, that's the way I like it, so I can INSTANTLY turn the volume all the way down with a quick flick of the wrist. Of course, all models of Alpine's that end in "9" (like the famous 7909) indicate they have no internal amplifier of their own and require outboard amps. My front speakers were the Boston Accoustics Pro Series seperates and what was cool about the SE series with the Bose system was that it CAME with A-pillar pods for the Bose tweeters with grills that, of course, matched everything so I simply used those for my Boston tweets and the midbass speaks went in the factory door spots, however with much Dynamat added to the doors and trunk. In fact, funny story, when I first got the car and you pushed the trunk button on the remote the trunk quickly poppped completely opened. I had so much Dynamat applied to the trunk that when you pushed the trunk button, it simply unlocked and elevated a pathetic 1/4", my wife wasn't real happy about that. I had Boston Pro 6.5" midbass drivers (no tweeters) for rear fill, run in mono (I thought it helped anchor my center image better in mono). I had fake burled wood trim on the inside put in, had the ENTIRE "premium" Bose system ripped out (never saw more than 2 hours of use, don't think the cassette deck of the double DIN CD/Cassette player was EVER used). Had a burled wood push out spare compartment to fill the DIN space left behind after the double DIN unit was removed. He built a beautiful amp rack with amp, a Phoenix Gold 15 band EQ (EQ15 something, don't remember the model number but they were very popular EQ's at the time and for years afterwards) and two Monster Cable .5 farad caps tied together by two Monster gold plated buss barrs. The cool thing was that the Phoenix Gold EQ and Monster caps all had lots of white and blue (and blue matched the amp of course) and all the wiring was hidden in a pull-out compartment under the subwoofer so all the visable components seemed to match with this blue and white theme. When the amp rack was in it's compartment under the sub, I had two fans in a push/pull configuration to wash air over the entire affair but it was nearly impossible to SEE those fans ( however, you bet I fricken MADE the IASCA judges see those fans). I had an Optima Yellow top, Phoenix circuit breaker (as I still do today), and unlike now (I have Phoenix Gold RCA's and speaker wire now as I sold the stereo with the Maxima as the stereo was completely "built-into" the car so there was more value in selling the stereo complete with the car rather than picking this thing and that out of it because obviously the subwoofer/amp rack was built into the car) I had all Monster Cable high-end RCA's and speaker wire throughout. Anyway, the subs. I had a pair of Soundstream SPL12's, 12" subs in their own 1.5 cuibic foot sealed enclosures. Now the enclosure was obviously in the trunk, but the subs faced forward so when you put the rear seat arm-rest down you saw half of each sub, right there nearly at the opening. There was really no need for grills (although IASCA knocked some points off at one event which ****ed me off) as there was no way you could accidentally damage one as you would have to reach through the arm rest hole to touch them and of course nothing could accidentially fall back there or anything. ANYWAY, it was truly a work of art. I mean it was beautiful. And I certainly accumulated my share of trophies for the next few years. The largest being this RIDICULOUS 5 foot high trophy I won at a Magnolia Hi-Fi event, I won best of show, of course I think part of the reason I won that is that every component in that car was bought from store that sponsored the event, it certainly couldn't have hurt. And I did well in the IASCA circuit competing in Tacoma, Seattle, and Portland. As I recall, I ALWAYS placed (1st, 2nd or 3rd) competing in the amature 250-500 division I believe (which was actually a good division as the 150-300 watts division was MURDER as I recall and there were always many more competitors in that catagory). I had enough points to go to nationals my first year but it was out of the question as I couldn't take that much time away from work, nor did I want to have to rent a trailer or, of course, put several thousand miles on the car to drive to Daytona. Also, I knew enough about the real HEAVY HITTERS like Dave Rivera and Steve Brown who were already doing things with 'glass and Rivera's ridiculous fishtanks he incorporated in all his installs to know I didn't stand a chance against these SPONSORED (unlike me) multi-kilobuck systems. Anyway, I'm actually finally getting to my original point which was how I learned some important lessons about bass. Basically, it started when I realized just by chance one day that when the trunk was open the bass increased SUBSTANTIALLY. At the time, I had no idea why this was so. I really didn't. So I believe I actually asked the question here nearly 15 years ago about why the hell my bass got so much louder when the trunk was open. Like I said, I did not know the things I know now and I just couldn't wrap my head around this frankly annoying phenomena (I wanted this substantially increased bass ALL THE TIME). And of course someone like Manville Smith explained to me that what was happening was that as my subwoofer cones were bassically at the center of the car and that bass is going back (as well as forward), bouncing off the rear-trunk, then going forward, this extra distance of travel causing these waves to become 180 degrees out of phase and when those waves catch up to the waves going forward in the first place, they cancel out a substantial portion of my bass. Of course, I've spent thousands, this enclosure and amp-rack drawer are built into the car (I mean, when you opened my trunk, NOTHING would tell you there was a stereo there (except for the fact you might think it was a very small trunk for a car that size), EVERYTHING was completely stealth and built in AS IF it had come with the car. It was a truly amazing install job and if I were to pay a shop to do the work, I'm sure it would have cost several thousand dollars in installation alone (my friend did it for only $1000 for all his hard work night after night, he guessed probably 50 hours, and keep in mind, this is what he does for a living). So of course, nothing could be done about the situation I found myself in, and I just learned to accept it (because, OBVIOUSLY, turning the subwoofer around was quite literally impossible unless I destroyed it first to get it out of the car). So I learned a VERY expensive lesson in accoustics: you always want your cones as close to the boundries of your car like corners or at least the rear-end to avoid cancellation. You know, I kind of blamed my installer, Glen, a bit as well. I mean, HE WAS CERTTIFIED for Pete's sake and should have seen this coming. I also let him do the majority of designing the system (I just picked out the components I wanted to use, but I let him have free reign with how the whole thing was to be designed and built. I always wonder if the subwoofers had simply been facing the rear with attractive sub grills and such, if the bass would have been much louder. OR, I now wonder if he had taken more time in sealing the space behind the sub with 1" MDF if those waves could have been prevented from going to the rear, because as he had it, he used just thin 1/8" plywood for facia elements covered in automotive carpet that matched the Maxima's trunk carpet (of course he used 3/4" MDF for the sub enclosure). Now, to be fair, that system did pump out the bass pretty damn well. But in truth it doesn't come close to my two 15"s driven by my 1000 watt Class D I have now. I mean, my system now is TRULY a ground pounder, like none other I've ever owned. But, of course, beyond it's brute force, like I said, it;s SQ is simply AMAZING. Like I said at the begginging, THE BEST system I have ever owned or even HEARD in my life. Well, that was a whole lot of bull**** for no good reason. If anyone has stories about their first systems or how they got into car audio I love hearing those stories. I reallly do because if you're old like me (41), in high-school the **** was 6x9's, a cassette deck and booster EQ. THAT was state of the art in '83 and was what I had in my first car (well, minus the booster EQ, but I did have a cassette deck which was considered "high-end" anda pair of 6X9's. Of course it sounded like crap but we didn't know any better. Anyway, I love stories......please share...... MOSFET |
#13
Posted to rec.audio.car
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Howdy, you CHANGED your Email address...NUTJOB, PSYCHO!
Like I told you more then likely someone you ripped off on ebay tried to sell
your worthless car. You know all about crooks and how they do it, being one yourself. In article , "MOSFET" wrote: Here's yet another example of your very weird obsession with me. And EVERYONE can see this for themselves to prove my point. I had you blocked but you CHANGED YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS JUST SO I WOULD SEE WHAT YOU POSTED. Your address WAS and I blocked you and now your address is . I have blocked that one as well but I'l bet you'll CHANGE IT AGAIN. If this doesn't prove you're like some crazy stalker I don't know what does. OBVIOUSLY anyone who would go through this much trouble would certainly pull a stunt like try and sell my car online, I mean duh. And BTW, you can change your Email address as many times as you like you psycho nut-job, I'm NOT going to read anything of yours and just add your new addresses to my blocked list. CRAZY! CUCKOO!!! STALKER!!! NUTJOB!!! But hell, go ahead and just keep trying things. I'm curious to what lengths a crazy, obsessed Internet stalker will go to try to dis me or make my life miserable or whatever your crazy, ****ed up mind thinks you are doing to me. The REAL answer is nothing, except mild amusement and subtle bewilderment. But changing your Email speaks VOLUMES about your psychotic nature. MOSFET "Captain Howdy" wrote in message ... See I told ya that you're a ****brick. You're the biggest **** tart on rac in many years. Over the years your advice has changed more then the weather. I don't know who tried to sell your car, must of been one of your fans or someone you ripped off on Ebay. http://tinyurl.com/ysz5gv In article , "MOSFET" wrote: And I just can't help add one more thing. What the hell is it with me that bugs you so much? Why did you try and sell my car on an on-line car sales site, a nasty trick I reported to your IP which might have explained your mysterious three month absense from this group. What have I done to you? I try to be polite and helpful to all. I am NOT an EE and I would certainly not claim to know everything in the world about car audio. And I certainly may make a mistake now and then, and I have absolutely no problem copping to my mistakes. But here's the thing, I HAVE been involved with car audio for over 20 years now. That is absolutely, positively true as my wife would more than attest. I HAVE worked for Phoenix Gold in their marketing department as I have an MBA from the University of Portland, class of '95. All of these facts can be checked out and verified, my name is Nicholas Victor Tanner. Phoenix Gold would be happy to tell you I have worked for them and the University of Portland Business School would certainly be more than happy to verify for you that I got my MBA in 1995, hell, I'll Email you a photo of my degree. They would also tell you I taught a Consumer Behavior class to both graduates and undergrads as an adjunct proffessor, and NO, I don't mean I was a TA, I designed the curriculm, had an office, office hours, the works (I did this in the evenings and was paid quite well, I mean it's a private Catholic school), the students called me Dr. Tanner which was technically incorrect as I don't have a PhD, but YOU KNOW I didn't correct them as I liked the sound of it. What education do you have, just out of curiosity (I want to know the education level of your average troll). I competed in IASCA events for years and have installed DOZENS of systems for friends, family and myself. Again, do I know it all? Of course not. But do I know a hell of a lot about car audio? I think I can honestly say, yes, I do. Certainly enough to help 90% of the questions that come this way. So again, I don't know where all the annimous (do you know what that word means?) comes from. I REALLY don't. But you're blocked so I won't hear any response and frankly, I really don't care. MOSFET "Captain Howdy" wrote in message ... Misfit you havent had a DECENT system in all the time that you've been coming here,stop the bull****. Just love the post about your new Alpine speakers a while back, arent you the one that was making fun of Japanese speakers? I love stories too and I would love to share one about a ****brick that has been coming here for many years talking dumb **** as if he knew his face from his asshole just to keep changing his so called facts as time goes by. But I think you already know that story. In article , "MOSFET" wrote: OK, I'm so desperate to talk about car audio that I swear I'm going to start answering questions no one asked in the DESPERATE hope I might start a thread. The problem is right now my car sounds absolutely better than ANY car system I have ever owned, or heard.....EVER. Again, today I spent several hours in my car, absolutely dazzled by the incredible sound quality. The Infinity Kappas driven by my Phoenix Gold amp and my 6.5" Alpine Class R's driven by my Fosgate Punch 225.2 just sound absolutely PERFECT together. I have the crossovers dialed in absolutely perfectly. I swear, even my wife's music I typically hate (soft rock) sounded wonderful and engaging. I really am NOT trying to brag or anything like that, it's just I happen to be VERY pleased at the moment with my system so naturally I want to talk about car audio. I am just VERY INTO CAR AUDIO at the moment. But the problem is that judging from the number of new posts, I feel like I'm the only one (of course I know many of you are heavily into car audio, too). So, answering questions nobody is asking.... What about the old question of "where is the best place to put your subwoofers?'. Let me tell you a little story about how I learned this leason the HARD and EXPENSIVE way. I first got heavily into car audio around 1988. Between 1988 and 1995 I owned 4 different cars and with each car I kept upgrading my system. I mean, my very first car with what I would consider my first DECENT system back in 1988 had as it's front speakers a set of 4" Alpine coaxials driven by the head unit. I call it my first decent system because it was the first system I had ever owned with a SUBWOOFER driven by an outboard amp, a Rockford Fosgate Punch 75. And the sub was a Fosgate 12" punch in a ported enclosure. Although the front stage stunk, I thought I was in heaven as I finally had BASS IN MY CAR!!!!! Oh, and my back speakers were a set of Fosgate 767's 6.5" coaxials, again driven by the HU. I upgraded by first buying another amp to drive the front speakers, an Alpine 3522 (I think that was the model number, I know it ended in 22). The next upgrade was an amp to drive the rear Fosgate speakers, a Denon (when Denon used to make car amps) something, I honestly don't remember the model number but it was RATED at 30X2 but I could immediately tell they were overrated as the much smaller Alpine 3522 could blow this larger Denon away. No wonder Denon went out of business. Now I continued to make improvements, next using a much better quality 6.5" coaxial in front and finally seperates. My first set of seperates were Boston Accoustics Pro series 6.5". Anyway, in 1993 and 1994 I dabbled in competing in several IASCA events in my area. My cars were pretty nice, clean, but my systema were really nothing to write home about. HOWEVER, in 1995 I bought a brand new Nissan Maxima. Now in case you don't remember, this is the year they changed the body style to the more rounded style, they put a much more powerful engine in and was Motor Trends car of the year. It was an SE with beige leather, sunroof, and was this beautiful black/green metalic color. Now this was really the height of IASCA and I desided with this beautiful new car I was going to pull out all the stops and put an award winning, magazine quality system in this car. I had a good friend who was an installer for Magnolia Hi-Fi so I paid him under the table several thousand dollars (and four weeks with no car as it was in his garage as he worked every single day on it after he got home from work, somtimes late into the night) to build an absolute kick-ass system. It was beautiful. It was driven by a single amp, a Soundstream Reference 705, 5 channel amp that had just come out and was hailed by everyone for it's sound quality, features, and high-current abilities (the subwoofer channel was .5 ohm stable, all the other channels were 1 ohm stable). I bought the new at the time, Alpine 7939, the top of the line alpine, not the most attractive HU Alpine has ever built as the control knob looked like a nose and it was frankly a stupid design because although it kind of looked like a knob, it wasn't a knob, you turned the nose and all it accomplished was like hitting a volume up or volume down button, it was like it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a volume knob, or volume buttons, so this was some kind of compromise. Thankfully, Alpine realized what most people want are knobs so they can attenuate the volume up or down as quickly as they can turn a knob, that's the way I like it, so I can INSTANTLY turn the volume all the way down with a quick flick of the wrist. Of course, all models of Alpine's that end in "9" (like the famous 7909) indicate they have no internal amplifier of their own and require outboard amps. My front speakers were the Boston Accoustics Pro Series seperates and what was cool about the SE series with the Bose system was that it CAME with A-pillar pods for the Bose tweeters with grills that, of course, matched everything so I simply used those for my Boston tweets and the midbass speaks went in the factory door spots, however with much Dynamat added to the doors and trunk. In fact, funny story, when I first got the car and you pushed the trunk button on the remote the trunk quickly poppped completely opened. I had so much Dynamat applied to the trunk that when you pushed the trunk button, it simply unlocked and elevated a pathetic 1/4", my wife wasn't real happy about that. I had Boston Pro 6.5" midbass drivers (no tweeters) for rear fill, run in mono (I thought it helped anchor my center image better in mono). I had fake burled wood trim on the inside put in, had the ENTIRE "premium" Bose system ripped out (never saw more than 2 hours of use, don't think the cassette deck of the double DIN CD/Cassette player was EVER used). Had a burled wood push out spare compartment to fill the DIN space left behind after the double DIN unit was removed. He built a beautiful amp rack with amp, a Phoenix Gold 15 band EQ (EQ15 something, don't remember the model number but they were very popular EQ's at the time and for years afterwards) and two Monster Cable .5 farad caps tied together by two Monster gold plated buss barrs. The cool thing was that the Phoenix Gold EQ and Monster caps all had lots of white and blue (and blue matched the amp of course) and all the wiring was hidden in a pull-out compartment under the subwoofer so all the visable components seemed to match with this blue and white theme. When the amp rack was in it's compartment under the sub, I had two fans in a push/pull configuration to wash air over the entire affair but it was nearly impossible to SEE those fans ( however, you bet I fricken MADE the IASCA judges see those fans). I had an Optima Yellow top, Phoenix circuit breaker (as I still do today), and unlike now (I have Phoenix Gold RCA's and speaker wire now as I sold the stereo with the Maxima as the stereo was completely "built-into" the car so there was more value in selling the stereo complete with the car rather than picking this thing and that out of it because obviously the subwoofer/amp rack was built into the car) I had all Monster Cable high-end RCA's and speaker wire throughout. Anyway, the subs. I had a pair of Soundstream SPL12's, 12" subs in their own 1.5 cuibic foot sealed enclosures. Now the enclosure was obviously in the trunk, but the subs faced forward so when you put the rear seat arm-rest down you saw half of each sub, right there nearly at the opening. There was really no need for grills (although IASCA knocked some points off at one event which ****ed me off) as there was no way you could accidentally damage one as you would have to reach through the arm rest hole to touch them and of course nothing could accidentially fall back there or anything. ANYWAY, it was truly a work of art. I mean it was beautiful. And I certainly accumulated my share of trophies for the next few years. The largest being this RIDICULOUS 5 foot high trophy I won at a Magnolia Hi-Fi event, I won best of show, of course I think part of the reason I won that is that every component in that car was bought from store that sponsored the event, it certainly couldn't have hurt. And I did well in the IASCA circuit competing in Tacoma, Seattle, and Portland. As I recall, I ALWAYS placed (1st, 2nd or 3rd) competing in the amature 250-500 division I believe (which was actually a good division as the 150-300 watts division was MURDER as I recall and there were always many more competitors in that catagory). I had enough points to go to nationals my first year but it was out of the question as I couldn't take that much time away from work, nor did I want to have to rent a trailer or, of course, put several thousand miles on the car to drive to Daytona. Also, I knew enough about the real HEAVY HITTERS like Dave Rivera and Steve Brown who were already doing things with 'glass and Rivera's ridiculous fishtanks he incorporated in all his installs to know I didn't stand a chance against these SPONSORED (unlike me) multi-kilobuck systems. Anyway, I'm actually finally getting to my original point which was how I learned some important lessons about bass. Basically, it started when I realized just by chance one day that when the trunk was open the bass increased SUBSTANTIALLY. At the time, I had no idea why this was so. I really didn't. So I believe I actually asked the question here nearly 15 years ago about why the hell my bass got so much louder when the trunk was open. Like I said, I did not know the things I know now and I just couldn't wrap my head around this frankly annoying phenomena (I wanted this substantially increased bass ALL THE TIME). And of course someone like Manville Smith explained to me that what was happening was that as my subwoofer cones were bassically at the center of the car and that bass is going back (as well as forward), bouncing off the rear-trunk, then going forward, this extra distance of travel causing these waves to become 180 degrees out of phase and when those waves catch up to the waves going forward in the first place, they cancel out a substantial portion of my bass. Of course, I've spent thousands, this enclosure and amp-rack drawer are built into the car (I mean, when you opened my trunk, NOTHING would tell you there was a stereo there (except for the fact you might think it was a very small trunk for a car that size), EVERYTHING was completely stealth and built in AS IF it had come with the car. It was a truly amazing install job and if I were to pay a shop to do the work, I'm sure it would have cost several thousand dollars in installation alone (my friend did it for only $1000 for all his hard work night after night, he guessed probably 50 hours, and keep in mind, this is what he does for a living). So of course, nothing could be done about the situation I found myself in, and I just learned to accept it (because, OBVIOUSLY, turning the subwoofer around was quite literally impossible unless I destroyed it first to get it out of the car). So I learned a VERY expensive lesson in accoustics: you always want your cones as close to the boundries of your car like corners or at least the rear-end to avoid cancellation. You know, I kind of blamed my installer, Glen, a bit as well. I mean, HE WAS CERTTIFIED for Pete's sake and should have seen this coming. I also let him do the majority of designing the system (I just picked out the components I wanted to use, but I let him have free reign with how the whole thing was to be designed and built. I always wonder if the subwoofers had simply been facing the rear with attractive sub grills and such, if the bass would have been much louder. OR, I now wonder if he had taken more time in sealing the space behind the sub with 1" MDF if those waves could have been prevented from going to the rear, because as he had it, he used just thin 1/8" plywood for facia elements covered in automotive carpet that matched the Maxima's trunk carpet (of course he used 3/4" MDF for the sub enclosure). Now, to be fair, that system did pump out the bass pretty damn well. But in truth it doesn't come close to my two 15"s driven by my 1000 watt Class D I have now. I mean, my system now is TRULY a ground pounder, like none other I've ever owned. But, of course, beyond it's brute force, like I said, it;s SQ is simply AMAZING. Like I said at the begginging, THE BEST system I have ever owned or even HEARD in my life. Well, that was a whole lot of bull**** for no good reason. If anyone has stories about their first systems or how they got into car audio I love hearing those stories. I reallly do because if you're old like me (41), in high-school the **** was 6x9's, a cassette deck and booster EQ. THAT was state of the art in '83 and was what I had in my first car (well, minus the booster EQ, but I did have a cassette deck which was considered "high-end" anda pair of 6X9's. Of course it sounded like crap but we didn't know any better. Anyway, I love stories......please share...... MOSFET |