alright, here we go again...I'm still a newb compared to all of you, though I'm learning, so bare with me...

1) first thing's first: a long while back my rear passenger side speaker blew out, so I faded all the volume to the front. when I finally replaced them, it was all fine and dandy til I realized that my rear driver side speaker was playing incredibly softly. I thought maybe it was my new speaker, so I plugged in the one from before that was still good, but I had the same problem. I'm pretty sure it's all connected to my HU alright, so the only thing I can think of is maybe a wiring problem. the only thing is, if it was a wiring problem, I can't imagine why I get a signal at all. any suggestions?

2) second off: I'm thinking about selling and re-doing my whole system, which may or may not include speakers. at the moment I have no idea what's in my front doors, but in the back doors I have 2 5x7's Polk audio EX357 speakers. 180w peak and 60 continuous, 91 dB. will these do? so far I haven't had any complaints with them, mostly because I can't really hear them with much detail through all the bass. if these are no good, I'll get rid of them. any suggestions? I'm not looking to spend a whole hell of a lot for these, simply because this whole process is gonna be expensive, so reasonably priced good speakers is what I'm after. I was thinking in the way of infinity or alpine? any input would be appreciated...


well, I'll leave that as "all" for now, but dont' worry, I'll be back with more questions...

 

first off, i have the same driver side problem... in a way.

i noticed it doesn't play as loud, especially in certain high frequencies. i replaced my head unit, compared it to stock and another head unit, same problem all around. i'm hoping its the speaker, but not that you have the same problem, its making me think its a wiring issue. i plan on amping and wiring the whole system sometime, though only God knows if i'll ever be able to afford it now.

5x7's won't fit the lancer, unless you plan on doing some custom cutout or adaptor work. i reccommend infinity speakers if you're going to redo them, or the new pioneer rev series. all of the speakers are 6 3/4 in size. you can get the rev online now for around 70 a pair, and i think they sound great. or, pioneer makes a sweet little 4-way that you can get for about 50 bucks a pair, if you know where to look. if you want any more info on anything, let me know here, or pm me.

 

yea yea I'm the outcast here at the lancer forum, seeing as how I don't drive one. but this is the most educated audio forum I've found...but man, a pair of really nice 6 3/4 speakers for $50-70!? I need to find out where you people shop...my 5x7's were like 80 I think, and they aren't even all that spectacular. but then again, when I bought them, I was a silly uneducated audio shopper, and got them from circuit city or something...

anywayz, keep the suggestions coming...

 

All feel free to correct me if you think I'm wrong.

IMO, your problem is a wiring problem. I kinda had a similar problem wiring a system. One speaker was playing louder than the other one and my problem was in the wiring.

Either the + and - are touching somewhere
Either the + and - are connected on the wrong terminal

One other possibility would be different wire gauge (which I really doubt). Make sure the hole end of the wire is connected to the terminal. It could be as easy as that.

If I find some more possibilities I'll let you know.

 

suggestion? scrap the rear speakers entirely. it messes up imaging anyway.

as for why your system isn't working properly, i'd need a lot more information, i can't picture how anything is set up. is it amped? aftermarket headunit? etc. perhaps when you replaced them you wired them out of phase. try that.

 

yeah, i also think it might be wired out of phase. or it might be that the wire is pinched or badly bent somewhere.

what kinda car do you drive by the way?

 

This sounds like a job for, dah dadata... HiggityHank

 

alright, a few of you threw out some car lingo I'm not familiar with. if I wired out of phase, what exactly did I do wrong? I'll check the pos-neg thing, who knows, I might've connected them wrong. but I took the stupid speaker out a million and 2 times trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with it...

I have a kenwood KDC-419 headunit, and none of my speakers are amped. I drive a ford contour (blah, my first car...it was nice and affordable, what can I say...). I asked my dad if it could be that the wire was pinched or crimped somewhere way back when I first replaced the speakers and he looked at me like I was a moron...I'm hoping it isn't the wires themselves because my rear speakers are located in the doors, and that would be a huge pain in the *** to rewire, even though I do believe I kept the wires the new speakers came with (they were the same as the ones already in there).

as for cupOZnj's suggestion to scrap the rear speakers, I have to ask why? I have a hard enough time hearing the words over the bass in some songs as it is, but losing 2 speakers would make it rediculous. what benefits would I get from removing the back speakers?

like I said, I'm still a half-newb to car audio, to bare with me.

 

cup only suggested scrapping them for, well, audiophile reasons.

wiring backwards and out of phase are the same thing.

if you can, try the same speaker in a different position that you know works. that way, you'll be able to eliminate the speaker as the problem. if the speaker works fine somewhere else, and you are sure you've wired ALL speakers correctly, its something else. i'd start here for simplicity sake.

 

removing the back speakers to clear up imaging is a good idea. that way you wont hear the back speakers first before the front speakers. thats what is ment by imaging. In all my vehicles that I have owned I have always gotten rid of the back speakers. Because they will mess up imaging unless you know how to set up your system right. or you get lucky and the back speakers have a low db rating to offset them.

out of phase is simply hooking up the + to the - instead of + to +. that could mean wiring in series but that is in the next lesson. Since I assume you did not rewire your speakers completely you could have done this. or that channel in the head units internal amplifier is half way burnt out.

Ask as many questions as you like. All of us were noobs to stereos at one point

edit.

 

I know it isn't the speaker, I hooked up an old one and it produced the exact same thing...really really quiet signal...I'll try just swapping the + and - and see how that works...I'll try to do it now, but it looks like rain, so we'll see

as for scraping the back speakers, if it's just the dB rating that causes this problem, if I were to get 4 of the same speakers (for some reason I think the front speakers are 5x7 too) would that get rid of the problem? if not, what would you suggest to make up for lost noise? tweeters? just really loud front speakers?

 

alright, not the pos-neg connection, I switched them and I got silence...any other suggestions?

 

Run a wire from the HU directly to your speaker and see how it does. No need to hide the wire right now. Just let it hang from the HU to the back. If everything comes to normal, then run the wire thru wherever you want.

 

as for defending my suggestion:

most of the music you listen to (if not all, unless you listen to super audio or dvd audio) is 2 channel, left and right. when you go to a concert, there are speakers on stage, left and right. when you listen to a cd, for perfect clarity, the left "image" should reach your ear at the same time the right "image" does, and they cancel each other out and it sounds like it is coming from the center. if you add more sources, this increases the chance that different images will reach your ears at different times. instead of 2 locations to listen from, you now have 4, each with a different distance. it may sound "cool" having it surround you, but it terms of clarity and accuracy, there's nothing better than having 2 perfectly seperated sound sources for stereo imaging.

if the bass is overpowering the rest of the music, you should A. turn down the bass B. turn up the treble
either give your higher frequency drivers more power, or turn the power down on the subwoofer. it's really a matter of how you like your own music to sound.

ok, as far as your system not working....
to me sounds like a problem with your headunit if you tried all different combinations with the speaker. perhaps a wire came loose, or the internal amp channel is bad. hook up a different channel to a different speaker, try a couple things, and let us know.

 

cup, it seems as though you may think I have an amp hooked to my speakers. the only amp I have in my car is for my subs, my speakers are just running off the HU. I've never wired speakers before, so blaze_125's suggestion will take me til tomorrow night at the earliest to figure out, even if I have the wire in plain sight. it's not a matter of getting to the wiring, it's a matter of figuring out how I'm going to reach the wires behind the HU. I can barely reach them to plug them into my HU, let alone see what the hell they are...I dunno how the person who put it in there managed...