tescoking wrote:If you haven't do it then please don't do it. DO NOT put a sub in the car with you, it is seriously sh*t. I did that before and I knew it.
This is what I first did. Cost me a lot for this stupid design, less leg room for my passager, very bad surrounding sound effect, and it cost a lot because of the design of difficulty.
Now this is what I am having in my boot. The sound is perfect, cost 3 times less than the first one (from a different shop), better look and my passager can be more comfortable.
This is not true.
The reason why you're sub didn't sound good is probably because it's in a tiny box that is nowhere near big enough for the sub, and hence it has zero low end extension. I toyed around with a sub in the footwell with my NA6 when I had it - I could only find one 8" sub that had decent could work in a small enough enclosure while still having good low end extension.
Most audio shops won't even bother to model out a particular sub in the available space - in fact most shops won't even measure the volume of the enclosure they are making. They will just make anything that fits and then slap it in. This will produce garbage results no matter where the box is place, in the boot or in the cabin.
I've known of past installs with subs in the footwell which sounded perfectly find. If anything it should sound better because the sub is in front of you and close to your speakers - less phase / timing issues.
When the roof is down then yes it will sound crap, but no worse that it will with the sub in the boot (and roof down). Basically as long as the roof is down it's going to sound like garbage unless you have a suitable ported box (in which case it will sound crap when the roof is down, and your power handling will be poor).
dmad_dood wrote:Great photos of the install thanks for that! That looked like quite a big sub in the first set up?? And it was also pointing more or less at you so it would be louder once again no?
Im not going for outright power of the sub its only going to be like 100-150watt and if i was going to mount it, it would be behind the seat rather then in front so the seat would muffle a lot of it.
Nope.
Whether or not a speaker is pointing at you only matters once at frequencies beyond the point of beaming. For a 6" midwoofer beaming usually starts to occur around 1.2khz - 1.6khz and for an 8" sub it would likely start closer to about 800hz. If you are running a sub you would likely be crossing it no higher than 150hz so beaming would well and truly be a non factor. Hence the direction of the speaker (whether it's facing you, whether it is covered up) would make no difference.
dmad_dood wrote:Then for speakers i'm going to have to listen to some speakers and see what i want but i'm thinking maybe the alpine type s 6.5" splits (and no i'm not an alpine fanboy hahah). They come in at around $120.00 - $130.00 and they seem to get great write ups, but ill need to listen to them in person to get a better idea.
I've heard the Type S, they are pretty terrible. I guess for the price you probably can't complain, but they are ear-splitting harsh at high volumes and sound like glass breaking. I wouldn't go too much off reviews - most people (including the 'professionals' who do reviews) do not have a clue in the world about sound. I would recommend either getting advice from a boutique specialist store with a good reputation (you will find a list of those over on Mobile Electronics Australia forum) or from one of the members on that same site.
In all honesty there's not much you can get for a $150 or so budget though. Maybe talk to WES Components in NSW (Ashfield) and see if they have any of these left:
http://www.europe-audio.com/Product.asp?Product_ID=5226I went there once about 2-3 years ago and they had a stack of the Definition 5 (5" version) there going for something like $150. They used to be the Australian distributer for Peerless (I think they still are) so they still have a lot old stuff that nobody else has, you might get lucky. These would quite honestly destroy anything else out there for a <$200 budget.
If you do call you may need to quote the Peerless part number (822001) for them to find it in their system.
dmad_dood wrote:Ive already sound deadened the door
And the worst part is i cant really notice any difference, the bass probably kicks a bit harder but the doors still rattle and buzz?
People will universally have me for saying this, but sound deadening (of the traditional car audio type) is grossly overrated. So many people have this view that just adding a sheet of sound deadening will make their system sound twice as good. Most sound deadening (of the Dynamat type) is just an aluminium sheet attached to a heavy, sticky base. It works by adding weight to the surface, hence lowering the resonance frequency so that panel vibrations (etc) theoretically become less annoying and audible.
Somehow many people seem to believe it improves your sound in the midrange, etc. This is amusing given that the outer surface of sound deadener is usually aluminium. Anyone want to take a guess at what aluminium does to sound waves? Yes, they bounce and reflect off it like glass.
There can be some gain achieved by adding sound deadening, but ultimately you'd want to add a combination of normal deadener (like Dynamat / Focal Plainchant) to add weight, and then some acoustic foam (like this:
http://www.ebay.com.au/bhp/acoustic-foam) on top to actual absorb back-waves and improve midrange response.
In most car doors this would be impossible due to lack of depth, but since the MX-5's have titanically deep doors it's actually perfectly realistic. That said it's not exactly the most weight-friendly design, but then no sound deadener is.
The absolute bare minimum you would need to go to for any reasonable improvement would be a sound deadener that also has an outer layer of acoustic foam, such as Focal plainchant:
http://www.focal-america.com/wp-content ... .thumb.jpgAny less than this and you are (IMHO) pretty much wasting your time. I didn't bother with sound deadening in my MX-5 for exactly that reason - the acoustic benefits would be so minor that it wouldn't be worth the cost/effrort.
tescoking wrote:When you choose a sub that place in your car, depends on model. NA probably can go for anything from 6-10inch, then NB propably should go for anything above 8inch since the car is bigger and more space in the boot.
Doesn't matter which model of MX-5, any sub from 8" upwards would be fine so long as the box is properly designed and is the right size. I wouldn't go below this as you'd be wasting your time - you may as well just put some good midbass drivers in your doors and go without a sub.
I would try to find something with decent sensitivity (at least 85dB @ 1w/1m) and something that will play relatively low in a small sealed box.
Sensitivity essentially is a measure of how 'loud' a speaker can go off a given input power (i.e. how many dB of sound does it output for each W of input power). The lower a speaker's sensitivity, the more power it needs to be dríven to set level of output. Every 3dB loss in sensitivity means you need twice as much power to reach the same output level. For example lets say speaker A has sensitivity of 87dB and is running off 150W. and Speaker B has sentivity of 84dB. Speaker B would need 300W of input power in order to reach the same loudness as speaker A off 150W. A higher sensitivity is always beneficial, but especially so when it's in a project like this where you are running smaller subs (less thermal power handling) and are don't have a lot of amplifier power
The Image Dynamics ID8 would be perfect, as they have reasonable sensitivity and can play nice and low in about 10L of volume, and 'usable' in as little as about 7L of volume. They also have decent power handling and excursion for an 8" sub. They might be a bit pricey for your application though, being up around the $300 RRP mark. Based on what I've read in here thus far I'm of the impression you probably didn't want to spend that much.
