Speaker placement: It's as important as wich speakers you bought in the first place.
In this section we will cover where to place your speakers, why and how to cross them over,
phasing and tips on correct directional placement.
Where to place your speakers is the easy part; fitting them in there is the problem. In an ideal world we would all have cars
that are sized by the golden ratio. This never happens and cars are full of nooks and crannies that compound our plight...or do they?
It is in these nooks and crannies that we can find clever places to hide subwoofers, fuse blocks and the like. So, when you are looking at your car
thinking: Where in the heck am I going to fit my sub or amp or whatever? Look at the cars dips and recesses and think: What can I fit in here?
You should try to install subwoofers in the rear portion of your vehicle if at all possible. This is done for two maing reasons: space and distance.
Space because most vehicles have a trunk, hatchback, bed or storage compartment in the rear of vehicle that will have the best possible chance of holding our
subwoofer enclosure. On average, subwoofer enclosures (I say enclosure as nowadays enclosures are not just boxes they can be cylinders or formfitted to your car)
have an external displacement of 1 to 10 cubic feet. That is a lot of room! Especially if you consider that a washing machine only takes up about 19 cubic feet.
The distance reason will be stated more in-depth in the bass chapter but for now, suffice it to say that, if you sit to close to your sub, you will have less of a chance
to hear the best possible bass from it. No, I am not insane! Just wait until I get to that section to explain myself.
Midrange/Midbass drivers
In most instances, these are the drivers that reproduce most of what we hear. And, all too often, they are overlooked. People will add tweeters and subwoofers and keep there
stock full ranges as "fill-in" between them I refer to these as "BOOM tinkle systems". I am a big supporter of using full range speakers, as you can tell from the other sections of this website. However, if you are
using full range drivers in your car they should still be treated like Mids in there placement and supplemental tweeters are still a must due to the absorption properties your
upholstery has on high frequencies and tweeters directionality.
With that said, proper placement of mids would be either in the doors (most common), in kick panels or in under dash pods.
Fitting them in doors can be tricky but, usually
poses no real problem unless you put larger than standard drivers in them. I will say that you should make sure your doors are damped correctly and that you make provisions
for moisture proofing as much as possible. A good idea is to put a pad of felt on the door skin directly behind the driver. It is also advisable to get a set of foam baffles
that are the correct size for you speaker and cut them in half. Place the half-baffle on the top side of the back of your speaker and seal it to the door. This will prevent
rain from running right down on top of your speaker and also help reduce noise coming through the speaker cone.
Kick panels can be somewhat more complicated but also have the added benefit of allowing you to aim your drivers better. The most common way to install kick panels is to have
them custom formed from fiberglass but, you can get premade ones also. Premade ones, however, do not allow for custom aiming.
Under dash pods, while fairly easy to build, take up a lot of leg room and can be a pain to install properly without wrecking your dashboard and they have a better chance at getting
knocked loose than door speakers. The real advantage to them is imaging. You can aim them exactly where you want them and you can even incorporate tweeters in them in an MTM configuration.
Which brings us to the probably the most controversial of all components: Tweeters.
Why you ask? Because most people do not realize what they are missing in their audio experience not having a properly installed and positioned set of tweeters in their car. You lose a great
deal of "presence" in the music from absorption, reflection and just plain not having the range in your current speakers.
Go find the best quality tweeters you can afford and add 25% to that and get those. This is a tongue-n-cheek statement but is also a pretty good guidline. Cheap tweeters sound - well, cheap!
You will find that better tweeters come with better mounting devices and will not sound as harsh or metallic. Also, you will need to move them around alot in testing so cheap ones may
break. Try to get tweeters that are specifically design for car audio or you will find yourself having to fabricate mounts for them in many cases...NOT FUN!
Now that you have gotten your tweeters, you need to run wire to the output of your source, be it the xover, directly to the amp, or in many cases to the head unit.
Next, if you are installing them in where the dash speaker openings are, take a piece of metal banding (the kind on a role from the hardware store with all the holes in it), and cut a piece just
large enough to span between two opposing screw holes in the opening and screw it in place. Next take a piece of double stick tape and tape the tweeter to the middle of this strap. Now play
some of your favorite music and try twisting the band around until you get the best imaging. Also, play with the phasing of the tweeter. Reverse the + and - connections at the source and see if
this improves the imaging. I generally find that I get a better sound stage running my tweeters out of phase with the rest of the system.
If you just can't get the tweeters to aim right, you can remove the banding and try mounting them using the supplied cups to the A-posts. These are the posts between your doors and windshield.
Mount them so that they are pointing as much toward you as you can and as close to ear level as you can. It seems alot easier to me to do the installation in this manner than in the dash.
Although hiding the wire can be a *&%$#!
As a last thought on this subject, take your time! Speaker placement/aiming is one of the more tedious tasks in mobile audio, but, a very necessary one.
With proper placement and aiming, the imaging in your car can be just as good or better than the imaging in your home.
