Looking for Audio advice!!

[KrayzieFox]

Ok guys, I don't know where to post this since this entire forum doesn't really have any serious audio discussion, so I'm gonna try my luck here.. feel free to make suggestions if you know of other sections of the forum that are more actively involved in audio discussion.

To make a long story short, I hate the sound system in my MP3. The biggest problem is that the entire system is dominated by the rear deck speakers. I can't really hear the fronts at all, and the sub gets drowned out pretty bad too. I thought better front speakers would do the trick, so I picked up some Pioneer 6.5" 4-way coaxials to replace what I thought were stock MP3 Kenwood speakers, but it turned out the previous owner already upgraded them to 6x8 3-ways.. so they made virtually no difference at all.

Here is my current setup:

• Pioneer DEH-3200ub headunit
• Pioneer 6x8 TS-A6870R 3-way coaxials in the front doors (tried Pioneer 6.5" TS-A1684R 4-way coaxials as well)
• Stock MSP/P5 tweeters (tapped into the front speaker wiring)
• Stock 6x9 Kenwood rear deck speakers
• JL 8W3v2D4 8" sub in the trunk powered by the stock MSP Kenwood amp

I would appreciate any advice you audio gurus can give me. What would be the best course of action here? I would like a more "complete" setup as opposed to 90% of the sound coming from the rear deck.. especially since those speakers aren't really that good to begin with. Is it possible that the wiring is somehow backwards and that the rears are getting the juice that's intended for the fronts? Or should I just ditch the rear deck speakers and put some 6.5"s in the rear doors instead?

I'm also not completely opposed to adding an amp to the setup, but I honestly feel it shouldn't be necessary to generate "decent" sound. I'm not an audio fanatic, I just want a more complete overall sound. My wife's stock 06 Altima speakers sound amazing, and they're just some cheap off-brand stock speakers being powered by the stock Nissan head unit.. I don't see why I shouldn't be able to generate the same type of sound (or better) in the Protege.

 

[YouDontGnomeMe]

Obvious question: have you tweeked the settings on the unit itself? I replaced my rears with 550 watt speakers, and they put out most of the sound, so I adjusted the fade and bass settings on the unit (I have my fade at +2), and that solved the problem satisfactorily. Either that or just getting an amp for the fronts would help give them a bit more power.

 

[BOOSTR]

yep try adding more fade to the fronts. i'm no fanatic either but it seems to sound better that way.

 

[tweety2300]

I had to do the same thing with mine along with turn the sub up, I ended up ditching it for 2 12s though

 

[KrayzieFox]

Yeah I've definitely tweaked all the settings and sure fading towards the fronts makes the rears quieter but the fronts are still so damn weak. Is it just bad Mazda design that prevents us from getting good sound out the front doors or do they really need amplifying?

 

[tweety2300]

Could just be the head unit, I have an old kenwood Kdc-138 and just transferred some power to the front and it did fine for me

 

[YouDontGnomeMe]

Are the two in the rear passenger doors working? Mine weren't when I first got my car, and I got them hooked up and it made a world of difference. They're considered "front" speakers by the deck, so the front settings apply to them as well. I swapped the front ones out with Kenwood 240 watt ones (turned out the fronts were already 220 watt haha), no idea what the passenger door ones are, I haven't messed with them. I had to do some finaggling with mine as well, it didn't have the sub in it when I bought it, so I don't know anything about how good the stock sub is. Probably not the greatest, I'd imagine.

 

[tweety2300]

The mp3 only had the rear deck and front door speakers, the rear doors don't have a speaker in them

 

[KrayzieFox]

^Yeah, what he said. MP3's came with rear deck speakers but nothing in the doors, and MSP's came with rear door speakers but nothing in the rear deck (to make room for the rear sub enclosure).

So speaking of rear speaker options, which would you guys say is a better setup? Rear doors or the rear deck? The rear deck provides a nice direct sound as it gets deflected off the rear window, but they're overpowering. Would rear door speakers with a sub in the trunk (stock MSP setup) be more effective?

 

[YouDontGnomeMe]

I'm not sure, the door speakers tend to send sound towards the center of the back mainly, as opposed to the deck speakers that send it up, and as you said, deflect into the vehicle. I think if you just had subs in the back, and speakers in the door, you might be disappointed.
You may want to try switching the front speakers to 2-ways. The 3-way anc up speakers actually tend to be more muffled/distorted without amps, due to more components of the speaker being in the way of the main speaker sound. If that makes sense. The stock Kenwood fronts in my MSP were 2-way, I changed them only because the 5-ways I put in the rear deck massively overpowered them. The plus side is if you swapped the fronts for 2-ways, you can take your current ones and put them in the back door panels, since you already have them, and put in the 2-ways in the front.

 

[KrayzieFox]

Yeah, that's not a bad idea. How would you suggest running the wiring to the rear doors? Splice into the rear deck speaker wiring or front door speakers? And would I need higher gauge wiring since I'm now powering two sets of speakers instead of one? Sorry if that's a noob question.. car audio isn't really my specialty.

 

[YouDontGnomeMe]

Your head unit should have an outlet option for running to rear door speakers. If not, I'm not sure. I've never actually wired one (which is weird, because i'm an aircraft electrician lol). If you did it yourself and tried the splice option, you shouldn't need bigger gauge wires. There'd be no point in splicing in bigger gauge anyways, unless you re-ran the whole wiring run (i.e if it's 22ga coming out of your deck to the front speakers, splicing in 20 ga to run to the rear doors would be pointless).

 

[YouDontGnomeMe]

Actually, now that I think about it, the head unit harness SHOULD have wires for the mid speakers (rear doors). They should just be capped off on the harness. In which case you can just splice in normal speaker wire to them and run them to the doors.

 

[KrayzieFox]

Ok, I'll look into that.. although I kind of doubt it since that would imply 3 sets of speakers (front, mid, and rear) and the HU only has controls for front and rear. Would the mids be treated as fronts then?

I actually just pulled off the rear door panel, and it looks like the rears were cut out for a round speaker.. except that the speaker mounts are in the shape of a triangle?! What the hell kind of speaker is supposed to fit back there? I figured I'd put the 6.5"s back there since I already have them, but I don't know if they'll fit..

 

[YouDontGnomeMe]

In that case, you could probably splice wires into it at the head unit, but I'm not positive how that'll sound.

I don't know, that's definitely weird. I've never seen triangular shaped speaker mounts before...

 

[dieseldriver]

Get an Alpine MRP-F300 4 channel amp and mount it underneath the passenger seat. Splice speaker wires from back of head unit using twisted Monster XLN's to amp. Adjust power output to two front channels higher than the rear speakers. Send me PM if you'd like to discuss further.

Ok guys, I don't know where to post this since this entire forum doesn't really have any serious audio discussion, so I'm gonna try my luck here.. feel free to make suggestions if you know of other sections of the forum that are more actively involved in audio discussion.

To make a long story short, I hate the sound system in my MP3. The biggest problem is that the entire system is dominated by the rear deck speakers. I can't really hear the fronts at all, and the sub gets drowned out pretty bad too. I thought better front speakers would do the trick, so I picked up some Pioneer 6.5" 4-way coaxials to replace what I thought were stock MP3 Kenwood speakers, but it turned out the previous owner already upgraded them to 6x8 3-ways.. so they made virtually no difference at all.

Here is my current setup:

• Pioneer DEH-3200ub headunit
• Pioneer 6x8 TS-A6870R 3-way coaxials in the front doors (tried Pioneer 6.5" TS-A1684R 4-way coaxials as well)
• Stock MSP/P5 tweeters (tapped into the front speaker wiring)
• Stock 6x9 Kenwood rear deck speakers
• JL 8W3v2D4 8" sub in the trunk powered by the stock MSP Kenwood amp

I would appreciate any advice you audio gurus can give me. What would be the best course of action here? I would like a more "complete" setup as opposed to 90% of the sound coming from the rear deck.. especially since those speakers aren't really that good to begin with. Is it possible that the wiring is somehow backwards and that the rears are getting the juice that's intended for the fronts? Or should I just ditch the rear deck speakers and put some 6.5"s in the rear doors instead?

I'm also not completely opposed to adding an amp to the setup, but I honestly feel it shouldn't be necessary to generate "decent" sound. I'm not an audio fanatic, I just want a more complete overall sound. My wife's stock 06 Altima speakers sound amazing, and they're just some cheap off-brand stock speakers being powered by the stock Nissan head unit.. I don't see why I shouldn't be able to generate the same type of sound (or better) in the Protege.

 

[Dermen]

I would disconnect the stock tweeters. The speakers are 3-ways which means they already have 2 tweeters on the speaker that are way better than the stock ones. Also the headunit is designed to run at 4 ohms, wiring in extra speakers will change that. If you wired them in series it increases resistance (ohms), which gives you less power. Which might be what you are experiencing.

A lot of people (including me) take the rear speakers out of their car. I don't ride in the back of my car so I don't care if my rear seat passengers have quieter music. It makes adding an amp really easy, a 4 channel with the front 2 channels for the front speakers, and the rear channels bridged to a subwoofer. Anyway adding more rear speakers or moving them from the deck to the doors isn't going to solve your problem.

 

[tweety2300]

He has an mp3 so he doesn't have the tweeters

And subs sound like s*** when you use an amp meant for door speakers to push them, your entire statement tells me you're a cheap ass. Who the hell removes the rear speakers because " they don't sit back there" he is trying to make his system sound good not bad.

 

[YouDontGnomeMe]

Actually in his OP he stated he has the tweeters.

 

[Dermen]

He has an mp3 so he doesn't have the tweeters

And subs sound like s*** when you use an amp meant for door speakers to push them, your entire statement tells me you're a cheap ass. Who the hell removes the rear speakers because " they don't sit back there" he is trying to make his system sound good not bad.

OP said he hooked up stock tweeters.

A sub will sound fine off a multi channel amp if it is matched for the power. They have very limited power compared to monoblock/sub amps so you obviously can't be running a high power sub.

His current 8" sub can handle up to 250w, but is being supplied 120w. Adding a decent 4 channel amp will give more power to the fronts and give his sub 200-250w. Power the rear speakers off the headunit.

As for the rear speaker statement, I said that wrong. A lot of people don't remove them, but they will just run stock or real cheap speakers off the HU power while getting nice front speakers and amping them. The point of it is to spend your money on better front speakers since that is what matters most when you are in the front seat.