Alright folks, this thread isn't for bashing or for making a fuss over any brand this is to discuss the finer points of audio in lancers, such as getting the most sound out of your speakers, and making your installs nice.

Allow me to introduce myself, My name is Jacob Speers, I'm from Canada, and I've been a car audio nut for a number of years now. For 2 years I did online technical support for Kicker Car Audio, and I've installed many systems in many different vehicles including cavaliers, vipers, camaros, lancers, civics, pickup trucks, vans, and a few others. I am currently working at a custom car audio shop here in Ontario called Maximum Threshold. I have competed in dBdrags for 2 years, and have now moved on to sound quality competition in Iasca. One of the cars in our shop is currently the loudest known vehicle in Canada, at 159.4 on the new TermLab sensor, using 4 entry level audiobahn 12" subwoofers, and American bass amplifiers, in a wall, in a buick reagal.

I own a 2005 Lancer ES (used to own a 2004, but it decidede to kiss an SUV on a rainy day). I am currently installing my system, including a full custom trunk, custom carbon fibre CD playercover / trim / dash insert (I will post pics soon, but I dont' have a digital camera anymore)

Now for the audio discussion.

Speakers in doors:

The lancer doors are actually a very good location for woofers, as long as the tweeters are mounted correctly, the doors can produce excellent midbass and midrange response, as well as imaging well (they represent the left/right images in the music accurately).

The only thing that needs to be done with the doors is to be sealed up and deadened... To do this, the best thing to do is get out some tin snips, a drill, some sheet metal and a rivet tool. before you apply the metal, cover the inside of the outer laer of metal with a layer of sound damping mat such as brownbread, eDead, dynamat etc. Then, and this may sound drastic, but cover every hole in the door with sheet metal, riveted around the edges at 1 1/2" spacing. The large hole at the bottom rear end of the door is best done with 2 horizontal pieces of metal, overlapped 2 inches with 2 rows of rivets holding them together right across the middle.

after you've covered all the holes (remembering to make sure that your doors and door locks still work) begin covering the entire door with at least 2 layers of sound damping mat. this will turn your door into a large enclosure, and will improve your midbass response dramatically.

Tweeters: There are many, many good places in any vehicle to apply tweeters in any vehicle. Often, for high end audio systems, the A Pillars (the pillars between the windshield and the doors) are a prime location, as they create a nice high stage, and make for a relatively easy mount, as you just have to cut a hole, and mould in a tweeter ring to mount the tweeter to.

Other good locations are: in the doors with the woofer, or in the covers in the door for the mirror mount.
Tweeters in the A pillar work well when crossed over at around 2.4Khz

Wiring: the 2005 model doesn't leave much room for running large guage power wire between the battery and the trunk, so holes are required (big holes in my case, 2 1-1/8" holes to be exact) there isn't much of an easy way to get wire back to the trunk, but use your imagination, it's not that hard.

Trunk: The lancer has a great trunk for audio systems, it is entirely possible to mount 2 15" woofers in the trunk, with an amplifier for the subwoofers and one for the high/mids and still have a useable trunk. This is acomplished by mounting a woofer behind each wheel well, there is 20" of useful space between the backmost point of the trunk and the wheel well, and a skilled installer can fit a 15" woofer in each side without difficulty.

For fiberglassing, the trunk of the lancer is ideal, as the plastic that forms the trim/cover over the sides of the trunk will accept resin and matting without any effort at all, and will allow even the most inexperienced amateur to create a perfect fitting mould.

anyways, I'm about tapped out now, so I'll get back to work.

 

So what do you use for mids and highs dude??? Describe to me in detail your signal path and cross over techniques! and how do you avoid overly compressed sound typical of car systems!???

 

RIght now my mids and highs are a DLS Iridium 6.2 componant set, run active from a DLS A7, 5 channel amplifier which amplifies my tweeters, mids and subwoofer seperately. my system has no processing whatsoever, it goes from my Rockford Fosgate/Denon CD transport with no EQ straight to the amplifier which also serves as the crossover for the setup. my subwoofer is a DLS SP12, though I may upgrade to an Iridium 12 sometime soon. The tweeters are capable of handling 60 watts RMS FULL RANGE!!! right now they're crossed over around 3 Khz, and I need to do some switching to get the crossover point down.

the sound is very open, and getting more open as the amp and speakers break in (the amp itself is almost there, only another 2-3 hours of play time and it'll be completely broken in, the speakers need another 20 hours or so) at no volume level are the tweeters piercing or even fatigueing like many are, they stay very smooth and tight at any volume level. Right now they are in the corner of the dash/A pillar, and they sound great from there.

as always, install is everything. even crap gear can sound great if its installed by someone who knows what they're doing. The DLS speakers are, in my opinion, the best speakers out there that are designed for an in-car environment. a lot of people like the focal drivers, but they are designed for in home cabinets, not for the car environment, as they are waaaay too picky about location.

I've had people who are big into home hi-fi gear, and people who have been competing in sound quality competitions for years sit in the car and wonder how I can have such great tonality with so little work, and zero processing, it's the combination of great gear, a simple install, and the willingness to do what it takes to makethe car sound it's best.

 

what's up Jacob? the similarity in our front stages is amazing. have you ever seen pics of my install? (besides the sub in the front stuff) i'm running Diamond Audio components, but would like to upgrade someday. i mean, i really enjoy them, but they are not the best out there by any means. i have my doors sealed, though not as elaborately as you have described and my tweeters are at the bottom corner of my A pillars. i used to have them in pods that i fabricated on the mirror mount covers, but wasn't happy with the appearance of them...so i tried the current location. it's amazing how much that small move improved the imaging. of course you know about my 6W0...so i have the midbass (ok, subbass ) covered up front.

i'd really like to see pics of your setup btw...it sounds sweet!

 

it's a nice setup... should have pics soon.. .no digital camera, so I have to get old fashioned film developed grrrrr

 

Good Sound = 80% install + 15% equipment + 5% beer : )

I really like your setup and can't wait for some pics. I've been seeing a lot of people using DLS recently, I'll be in the market for a new front stage or at least a set of tweeters soon, I guess I'll have to give them a look.

Did you say you have to break-in your amp??? It has no moving parts and, unless the circuits change chemical properties, nothing should change in your amp after its built and the glues and paints dry. Check this little article out: http://www.soundsolutionsaudio.com/f...showtopic=3193

 

all IC's have a burn in period before they're stable. most people don't realize that amplifiers change in sound while they're playing for the first 24-48 hours until the IC's and transistors have broken in completely. it makes almost no difference, but when competing, it's unwise to set all your levels and crossover points until the amp ios completely broken in.

 

I know amps have a short warm-up time every time you turn them on. Maybe you could explain to me what needs to be broken in inside a transistor or IC. Since they have no moving parts, like a sub that does have a break in period, there is no groove that any amplifier components must settle into(unless you really wanna fight about smoothing out the RCA jacks).

 

when transistors are formed, they are raw crystals, they are usually installed without any current having run through them. once they are powered up, thee current makes some minor changes to the chemical composition and to the transfer regions of the IC. it's not a big change, it's a very minute change, but it is a change nonetheless. and one person's opinion doesn't make truth, I'd like to see some scientific testing to prove/disprove this.

 

It sounds like you are assuming the 1st time an amplifier sees power is when you first installed it. By the time you get your amp, any possible break-in time would be over anyway with all the testing done by reputable companies.If there was a break-in time, then that would make it possible to have an over-borken-in amplifier. Wouldn't that also sound different? By now, someone would have called up Richard Clarke with 2 of the same amps (1 broken-in one brand new) and claim that $10Grand he's had up for years.

 

noones's ever claimed that prize, even with tube and solid state amps, which DO have a different sound. I'm assuming nothing about the amp's power status, I'm jsut saying that many manufacturers state that their equipment has a break in period. but I guess you know better than the engineers who design the amplifiers.

I'm not saying that it's a profound difference, but in a competition system any tiny difference makes a difference.

 

Sassmaster,

You sound like you know your stuff and have a good attitude! You set up does sound interesting to me even though i do things very differently! Do you have that 8volt rockford headunit that is os rare???? What is your total wattage of that system ? because at low power levels frequency response is very simple but when you get up in the thousands of what and high volume processing is imperative to maintain linearity, hence the huge cabinets of preamps and EQs and spacializers used for concert sound reproduction! (and some CDs are recorded like shti)my guess is you keep you volume low?!?! Not that anything is wrong with that!

I agree with your view on the subject of equipment break in time! I have had many amps and speakers over the years and I can tell you that break in is critical to accurate tuning of the system! It have been my experiance that I have to tune then re tune after about 100 hours then again after 500 hours then it is done. The frequency response of speakers changes as the surrounds change form and latent forces change structures! I think you can look at amp breaking in as a form of tempering the amp as it will become more resistant to high operating temps. over a period of gradual adjustment from low to moderate to high volume play over time!

 

thanks for the kind words excess. My current output is sitting at 840 VA RMS, I'm not sure what the wattage output from the speakers is, as I hanv't figured out my phase angles yet. I used to do concert sound, and I find it difficult to listen to most concerts unless I'm in the sound booth (usually the place with the best sound lol) my rockford deck is the Titanium series, it's the one with the 5 volt output, and balanced output. a VERY nice sounding unit. There are some pics of most of my gear on my sounddomain page
www.sounddomain.com/id/sassmastersq
I have a 31 band stereo EQ in my car right now, but it's just for looks, since it's not even hooked up. I try to keep the volume in the 80 dB range, but the tweeters really shine at about 90 dB so the volume usually ends up cranked, which means that I'll probly damage my hearing, but it sounds so darn good!!! the biggest problem is that the tweeters are so smooth, they don't get piercing at any volume level, so you never realize just how loud it is.

currently, I'm not sure about my sub, I may have to upgrade before world finals in october, but I really like the output of the DLS SP12, very sensitive woofer!

 

I was just about to ask you abou that 1 Behringer GEQ3102 Equalizer. I saw on your page! Why is it not hooked up?????? You have it just for looks??? what?
Do you suffer any mid and high end decay when the sub draws a high current from the amp? that is a comon problem with 1 amp systems unless the amps has seperate power supplies inside!

That deck looks nice though!

 

the amp has 2 power supplies, burr brown IC's for the high/mid channels. the EQ has a tiny noise problem, there's some barely audible noise when the Iasca 0-bit track plays.