# Is it impossible to achieve decent mid bass in some vehicles?



## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

Like the title implies, are some vehicles impossible to get decent mid bass response in. I have an 09 F150 and my doors are totally sealed up except for the holes that have to be open for the door card to mount. But with the door card mounted I assume those holes are sealed. I have closed cell foam directly behind the mid bass and weatherstripping around the baffle of the speaker to seal around the speaker to the door card. I have 1/2" baffle decoupled with modeling clay as well as the speaker itself. I also used about a pound of the modeling clay around the baffle and speaker to add weight. I have tried different crossover points and different eq settings. I have tried several different mid bass leading up to me recently buying a set of Legatia L6se of the forum. Although they sound incredible, my mid bass is anemic and I know it is definately not the speaker. My wife's all stock 06 Durango has 10 times more mid bass than my truck. I have never wanted to try floor pods in any vehicle because I like my foot room, but I am open to try new ideas. Anybody out there have a newer model F150 and have this problem? Anybody out there have this problem in other vehicles? Anybody figure out a solution? Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to make sure I put all the details out there.


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## Lycancatt (Apr 11, 2010)

unpopular opinion here but..the l6se is a pretty week midbass driver..not a fan of them used in that way at all.

what other drivers did you try? I've found invertaing phase on sub to really help with midbass especially if the sub is downfiring in a truck like yours, plus if you are doing time alinement, you may be creating a phase anomaly riht where you don't want it.


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## crackinhedz (May 5, 2013)

Head unit or DSP with Time alignment or polarity flip? could also try flip wiring on one of your midbasses, see if it helps? 

Also your EQ could play a factor.


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## ca90ss (Jul 2, 2005)

No 6.5" driver will have good midbass, sometimes you gotta go big.


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## SkizeR (Apr 19, 2011)

ca90ss said:


> No 6.5" driver will have good midbass, sometimes you gotta go big.


How do you figure?

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk


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## Bayboy (Dec 29, 2010)

You get more upper bass help from the sub than realized even if you're crossing at 70hz. The front drivers alone are not doing the job. Get the sub & mids tuned right together and midbass will be no issue.


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## Lycancatt (Apr 11, 2010)

Bayboy said:


> You get more upper bass help from the sub than realized even if you're crossing at 70hz. The front drivers alone are not doing the job. Get the sub & mids tuned right together and midbass will be no issue.



plus1


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## ca90ss (Jul 2, 2005)

SkizeR said:


> How do you figure?
> 
> Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk


Well, with all else being equal more displacement = more output.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

cjbrownco said:


> Like the title implies, are some vehicles impossible to get decent mid bass response in. I have an 09 F150 and my doors are totally sealed up except for the holes that have to be open for the door card to mount. But with the door card mounted I assume those holes are sealed. I have closed cell foam directly behind the mid bass and weatherstripping around the baffle of the speaker to seal around the speaker to the door card. I have 1/2" baffle decoupled with modeling clay as well as the speaker itself. I also used about a pound of the modeling clay around the baffle and speaker to add weight. I have tried different crossover points and different eq settings. I have tried several different mid bass leading up to me recently buying a set of Legatia L6se of the forum. Although they sound incredible, my mid bass is anemic and I know it is definately not the speaker. My wife's all stock 06 Durango has 10 times more mid bass than my truck. I have never wanted to try floor pods in any vehicle because I like my foot room, but I am open to try new ideas. Anybody out there have a newer model F150 and have this problem? Anybody out there have this problem in other vehicles? Anybody figure out a solution? Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to make sure I put all the details out there.


Here's what's going on:

In cars and trucks, we've all experienced "cabin gain." You get a big boost in the bass because the cabin is so small.

But there's a catch!

It's rarely discussed, but there's also a NULL that's caused by the same forces. Basically, your woofer produces sound, that sound is reflected by the boundaries of the car, and then it augments the low frequencies. But at frequencies *above* it, there will be some notches caused by the wavelengths being 180 degrees out of phase.

It's a bit tricky to see in the measurements, and the reason it's tricky to see is because the *length* of a sedan is generally about half of the *width* of a sedan. So the null that's created by the reflected longitudinal wave is "filled in" by the wave that's reflected laterally.

*Basically the reflections off the FRONT of the car are 180 degrees out of phase with the reflections off the SIDE of the car.*

To really see this in action, you have to write your own sims, and I probably think too much about this stuff 










Here's Andy's cabin gain graph, from back when he was at JBL. The cabin gain at low frequency is obvious. What's not-so-obvious is a null around seventy hertz. That's the null I'm talking about.



So...

How do we fix it?

The answer is simple:

You use a midbass array. By distributing the locations of the midbasses, you "fill" in that null at seventy hertz.


One of the things that's a bummer about that null is that there's no other easy fix. If you tried to "fill it in" with EQ you could burn up a lot of power and destroy your midbass, because the null is right at the bottom end of the midbass output.
If you tried the brute force approach, and used a really big woofer, that WOULD work. But I'm not a big fan of chopping up cars to fit ten inch midbasses; a couple of four inch midbasses will do the job, you just have to distribute them. (By the way, this is one of the reasons that 95% of the prosound setups are arrays now. They solve a lot of problems, particularly at low frequencies.)

Sealing the door or reinforcing it is also a dead end; the problem is the geometry of the car. The solution to the geometry problem is to distribute those reflections, and the only easy way to do that is with an array. DSP won't do it, or at least it won't do it with a single woofer. (If you wanted to get really wacky, you could indeed use DSP *and* an array, which is also what all the prosound dudes do.)




TLDR: YOU NEED TWO MIDBASSES PER SIDE. Four would be even better. They don't have to be big; you'd be amazed how much output you can generate from four 3.5" woofers. They have the surface area of a 7" woofer and they sound like one, except they don't suffer from those big peaks and dips from cabin gain.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

Oh, one last comment -

it's probably not a good idea to put the two midbasses right next to each other. Because you're trying to distribute the sound at the octave from 80hz to 160hz, you probably want them seperated by somewhere around one eighth to one quarter of a wavelength.

Based on that math, you'd probably want the midbasses spaced about 14-28" apart.

Note - that DOESN'T necessarily mean they have to be different distances. For instance, you could have a 4" woofer in the stock location at the bottom of the door, and another 4" woofer located at the top of the door. While both woofers would be equidistant for your ears, they would be 14" away from each other, which is how you "fill in" that null. The null at 70hz has nothing to do with the distance from your ears, and everything to do with the distance from the boundaries of the vehicle. (The roof, floor, doors, windshield, etc.)

Obviously, I'm putting my money where my mouth is and I am using a midbass array in my current build. (I'm also using a midrange array, and a subwoofer array. The only thing that's NOT an array is the tweeter.)


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## Onyx1136 (Mar 15, 2009)

Patrick Bateman said:


> Oh, one last comment -
> 
> it's probably not a good idea to put the two midbasses right next to each other. Because you're trying to distribute the sound at the octave from 80hz to 160hz, you probably want them seperated by somewhere around one eighth to one quarter of a wavelength.
> 
> ...


What happens if the distance between the midbass drivers in increased significantly? Let's say the distance from the front door location to the rear door speaker location? Or the rear deck even? Is the benefit lost? Does it create a different series of peaks and nulls that ends up defeating the original intention? or does it become a financial matter, with so many channels of independent time delay needed that the necessary number of processors becomes financially untenable for most? 

The idea interests me, but only if I could use locations that would make it easy to install multiple drivers. The rear doors and rear deck would be the most convenient locations for most people, including myself.


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## Kazuhiro (Apr 28, 2015)

Subwoofer should be able to make up a 70hz null if that is your problem.

Make sure you have them not only with the right polarity but in closely matched phase. Use a mic/spl meter and fiddle with delay slightly for max spl without throwing your timing out of whack. 6.5 is a fine size, I have anarchy's which are much cheaper and produce far more than I require. 

Maybe you could post results of each driver and both playing?


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

Lycancatt said:


> unpopular opinion here but..the l6se is a pretty week midbass driver..not a fan of them used in that way at all.
> 
> what other drivers did you try? I've found invertaing phase on sub to really help with midbass especially if the sub is downfiring in a truck like yours, plus if you are doing time alinement, you may be creating a phase anomaly riht where you don't want it.


In this truck I have tried some older Polks I had (unsure of model), some older Alpine type R mids, Image Dynamics mids from ctx set I believe, HAT imagine mids, and now the L6se. I have tried my sub both in phase and inverted and I prefer it inverted. Does perfect time alignment have that much affect on the amount of midbass?


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## truckguy (Sep 2, 2013)

I feel your pain and have no answers. There was another thread out here today that talked the center console causing lots of issues. That might be another culprit.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

Onyx1136 said:


> What happens if the distance between the midbass drivers in increased significantly? Let's say the distance from the front door location to the rear door speaker location? Or the rear deck even? Is the benefit lost? Does it create a different series of peaks and nulls that ends up defeating the original intention? or does it become a financial matter, with so many channels of independent time delay needed that the necessary number of processors becomes financially untenable for most?
> 
> The idea interests me, but only if I could use locations that would make it easy to install multiple drivers. The rear doors and rear deck would be the most convenient locations for most people, including myself.


I'm super eager to try this out in a car, but my dumb install has been dragging on for half a year now.

I've done it at home with subwoofers, and there's absolutely positively no way I'll ever go back. It's one of those things where once you experience it, you ask yourself how you ever lived without it.

At home, I found that it made a couple of differences:

1) I found that the bass notes didn't stand out. For instance, I'd long assumed that "boomy" bass had to do with using vented boxes. But that wasn't it - boomy bass is just the room. It's not the speaker. Fix the room, the speaker is fine.
2) I found that the bass blended way, WAY better than before. Night and day. I found that the bass blended so well, I was raising the low pass frequency on my subs. I'm using a low pass of about 100hz, and I'd move it up to 150hz if my mains weren't so big.

At one extreme I used eight subs, but eventually I whittled it down to three. Eight *did* sound great, but going from three to eight wasn't a huge difference. Going from one to two to three was very noticeable. I would say that three is a minimum.


I'm really eager to get this all built, and then listen to Jon's Magic Bus. In Jon's bus, he's gone to Herculean efforts to absorb reflected energy. And it really works; the bass in there is superb.

But I'd love to hear how the two different approaches would compare with each other. One approach is to ABSORB reflected energy. The approach I'm following is to simply spread out the resonances so that they're not noticeable.

IE, when you have two midbasses located at the same point in your car, you're going to get a strong peak and a strong null at specific frequencies. Distribute those midbasses and you'll still get peaks and nulls, but they won't be as strong because they're not occurring at the same frequencies. The frequencies that they occur at are determined by simple geometry.

One of the big "a-ha" moments that I had at home was noticing that that varying the HEIGHT of the subs was really effective.

For instance, if you have three subs, the obvious thing to do is distribute them around the room. But that only distributes the reflections in one axis. If you distribute them around the room AT DIFFERENT HEIGHTS you've now randomized the reflections in two dimensions. The difference is REALLY audible; simply moving one subwoofer five feet off the ground made nearly as much improvement as going from three to eight subs.



I think for midbass duty there's one Achilles Heel with this setup:

If you're going to do it, you probably need to be running a four way setup. For instance, if you had a three way setup with a subwoofer, four midbasses, and two tweeters, it's going to be really hard to get the pathlengths perfect for the transition from midbass to tweeter. This is because the wavelengths are so short; if your midbass is crossing over to your tweeters at 2700hz, those pathlengths need to be within about 2" of each other.

(And note when I say "pathlength" I'm not talking about how close the drivers are to each other; I'm literally talking about taking a ruler and measuring the distance from the midbass drivers to your ear.)

Now if you with a four way, all of this gets a lot easier.

For instance, I am doing a four way that looks like this:

tweeter : 2000hz - 20000hz
midrange : 400hz - 2000hz
midbass : 100hz - 400hz
subs : 20hz - 100hz


Since my midbasses are only playing to 400hz, I have the luxury of placing them in some strange locations. 400hz is nearly a meter in length. Due to that wavelength being so long, I don't need to have the midbasses right next to each other.

At the moment I'm leaning towards having half the midbasses under the dash, half under the seat, and then using digital delay to line them up. By going this route you get the good impulse response that's necessary for imaging, basically you want the wavefronts to arrive at your ear at the same time. But you're distributing the reflections in the car because they're so far away from each other.

I might break down and install woofers in the doors, but I generally try and avoid that. I haven't removed a door panel from any of the last three cars I've owned, it's been about a decade since I put a woofer in a door.


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

Wow, I didn't realize there were this many responses. Thanks a bunch for all the input guys. I'm going to try to reply to each response but my computer is down and I'm having to use my phone.


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## Kazuhiro (Apr 28, 2015)

cjbrownco said:


> In this truck I have tried some older Polks I had (unsure of model), some older Alpine type R mids, Image Dynamics mids from ctx set I believe, HAT imagine mids, and now the L6se. I have tried my sub both in phase and inverted and I prefer it inverted. Does perfect time alignment have that much affect on the amount of midbass?


It effects it a tonne. Flipping phase can work great sometimes, but othertimes it may not change anything at all if the wavefronts are meeting half way. Are you using DSP or headunit for alignment?


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

crackinhedz said:


> Head unit or DSP with Time alignment or polarity flip? could also try flip wiring on one of your midbasses, see if it helps?
> 
> Also your EQ could play a factor.


No stand alone processor, using 80prs for time alignment and eq. I have tried different polarity swaps and time alignment methods. I have had this truck for a while but it's the first F150 I have owned so am trying to find out if it is a problem maybe specific to this vehicle or a lack of knowledge and experience on my part. I know its possible to have enough midbass where you don't even need a sub except for low frequencies, but I haven't been able to make it happen in this truck.


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

ca90ss said:


> No 6.5" driver will have good midbass, sometimes you gotta go big.


If I could fit a bigger mid bass without cutting or fabricating something I would give it a shot


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

Bayboy said:


> You get more upper bass help from the sub than realized even if you're crossing at 70hz. The front drivers alone are not doing the job. Get the sub & mids tuned right together and midbass will be no issue.


I'm crossed at 80 on both the mid and sub and sounds great with both playing but if I ever have to go without a sub and try to drop midbass down to 63 or 50 they just don't have much output at all.


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

Patrick Bateman said:


> Oh, one last comment -
> 
> it's probably not a good idea to put the two midbasses right next to each other. Because you're trying to distribute the sound at the octave from 80hz to 160hz, you probably want them seperated by somewhere around one eighth to one quarter of a wavelength.
> 
> ...


I definitely don't have the funds or the skills to be cutting and fabricating for an array set up, but I would love to hear one.


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## therapture (Jan 31, 2013)

With proper setup - I think you can get good midbass. All of these experts have some great suggestions. TA is a HUGE part, and you might be surprised how far off settings might be. Have you tried to get a mic/laptop/REW setup going so you can see what it going on? 

When you get it right - you'd be surprised at what a simple pair of 6.5's can do.
And if you weren't getting midbass with those HAT Imagines, it's not the speaker, it's something else entirely. 

Once I got things dialed in, I was able to raise both the mid and the sub to a 100hz xover. I didn't lose any midbass at all, in fact, it improved articulation and clarity of the sound while retaining the upfront image.


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

Kazuhiro said:


> It effects it a tonne. Flipping phase can work great sometimes, but othertimes it may not change anything at all if the wavefronts are meeting half way. Are you using DSP or headunit for alignment?


I'm using head unit for everything right now. Maybe I have a cancelation problem since they are in my doors pretty much aiming straight accross from one another. If it was cancelation and I opened my doors just a little, wouldn't I hear an increase in mid bass if that were the problem? I could try making an angled baffle and try to get my alignment better, do you think it would make a big difference?


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## SkizeR (Apr 19, 2011)

therapture said:


> With proper setup - I think you can get good midbass. All of these experts have some great suggestions. TA is a HUGE part, and you might be surprised how far off settings might be. Have you tried to get a mic/laptop/REW setup going so you can see what it going on?
> 
> When you get it right - you'd be surprised at what a simple pair of 6.5's can do.
> And if you weren't getting midbass with those HAT Imagines, it's not the speaker, it's something else entirely.
> ...


this is what i was hinting. if you arent getting acceptable levels of midbass from a competent 6.5, then you most likely have an install or tuning issue. i really cant stress that enough.


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## SPLEclipse (Aug 17, 2012)

I agree with Patrick on this one. My car is walled at the b-pillar and the roof is built down with MDF so the cabin is very small. Because if this I have a huge suck-out centered around 70hz with my midbass located in the kicks (or really anywhere forward of my seating position. After playing around with locations I get much better results with them at the very bottom of the wall in the rear passenger footwell area.

If you have a mic you can set it up in the drivers head location and move a midbass driver around the cabin while playing PN. It doesn't even have to be sealed or anything - you just want to look for the location where your area of suckout starts to go away.


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

therapture said:


> With proper setup - I think you can get good midbass. All of these experts have some great suggestions. TA is a HUGE part, and you might be surprised how far off settings might be. Have you tried to get a mic/laptop/REW setup going so you can see what it going on?
> 
> When you get it right - you'd be surprised at what a simple pair of 6.5's can do.
> And if you weren't getting midbass with those HAT Imagines, it's not the speaker, it's something else entirely.
> ...


I know it's probably something I'm doing wrong. I just wanted to find out if anyone ever came across a vehicle that was just impossible. I just assumed if midbass output was unrelated to TA. From what it looks like from all the responses I more than likely have a TA issue. I don't have a mic/laptop/REW setup. I used a free iPhone app and played pink noise tracks to set my eq curve. 
I have tried some different ways to set my TA but it I'm sure it isn't perfect. The best way I have used is using the calculator linked in ErinH's signature.


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## Orion525iT (Mar 6, 2011)

Patrick Bateman said:


> I'm super eager to try this out in a car, but my dumb install has been dragging on for half a year now.
> 
> I've done it at home with subwoofers, and there's absolutely positively no way I'll ever go back. It's one of those things where once you experience it, you ask yourself how you ever lived without it.
> 
> ...


I think there are other ways to go about this too. My approach was to use my subs to play through the typical ~70-80hz trouble area and position them so that the suck out is higher up in frequency. I then crossed subs to midbass exactly where the suck out would cause issues. Effectively, I am using an array at the crossover point.

So, in my car, the problems start to come in around 120-130hz. But, as Patrick mentioned, I also have varied the height of the subs. I am not sure that varying the height at 50hz in a car would do much but at 130hz, I think things begin to change.












Those are stacks of 8" subs, 4 per side venting IB through the quarter panel.












The non eq'ed measurements of midbass and subs combined. Red is left and blue is right. You can ignore anything above 600hz, because thats were the mids are crossed.


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

SkizeR said:


> this is what i was hinting. if you arent getting acceptable levels of midbass from a competent 6.5, then you most likely have an install or tuning issue. i really cant stress that enough.


Probably a tuning and an install issue  I have only been into this a few years now so I still have a lot to learn.


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## azsean (Feb 13, 2009)

i feel ur pain... i been having the same problem. my doors are fully dynamatted and using fast rings in my tacoma. plan on installing my set of HAT L6SE this weekend and i know after reading this, i may not be too super pleased with my new midbass also.


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## ZMan2k2 (Mar 11, 2014)

I've got an '06 Tacoma that I'm really working on getting some good midbass out of. So far, I'm just using the headunit for T/A and EQ. I don't have plans to go with a DSP, so I'm using what I have. My H/U is an Alpine TuneIt capable unit, so I downloaded the "Alpine Golden Ear" Steve Brown's tune into my deck. The midbass, to my surprise, was dropped on the EQ at 200Hz. Bumping both the bass from 0 to +1 and the 200Hz to +1 on the TuneIt app really improved my response from my Hertz HSK 165's. I currently have the sub crossed over at 63Hz and the midbasses crossed over at the same level with a 6db slope. I'm considering bumping the sub X-over to 80Hz, and leaving the midbasses at 63. I think that might help with the overall presentation.


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

The one thing I still don't understand is how do some vehicles with factory systems have so much midbass when there is no TA or the ability to invert phase or change the EQ?


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## jwsewell01 (May 28, 2015)

Lol. Talking about factory systems.....

My girlfriends Factory JBL system in her Highlander sounded like crap.
Muddy and no attack at all. Fading out the rears until they are almost silent and dropping the bass level on the 3 band EQ does wonders for it.

I could live with it if she would let me add a sub or two in a false floor.
I keep telling her we never use the third row seat so why haul it around.


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## Babs (Jul 6, 2007)

I have to admit I catch myself thinking about those two inviting spots where there's nothing presently in the rear deck. While I remember all the threads on rear-fill I can't help contemplating running some mids I have on shelf TB W6-789E for just midbass duty. Wouldn't take much. Though the statements I've read on how easily you'll muddy up the midbass gives me pause. Might yet still be worth the experiment. Say another bit of 80 or 90hz at 24db LR to somewhere in the 200-300 range maybe. Totally and completely unscientific but very tempting. 


Sent from iPhone using Tapatalk


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## strakele (Mar 2, 2009)

Phase alignment between midbasses and the sub can definitely make a difference and is important. But all this talk about T/A I think is not the answer. Obviously T/A is important and necessary for good sound, but a few extra clicks one way or another is not suddenly going to give you strong midbass where there wasn't any before. If the OP's current T/A setting is anywhere in the ballpark of the 'correct' setting, further tweaking this is not going to solve the problem. It can make subtle differences in tightness and imaging and improve the overall sound and such, but like I said, it's not suddenly fix the lacking midbass issue.

I'd recommend looking more at crossover points and slopes to get the best integration between midbass and subwoofer. Different slopes have different phase shifts, so it's definitely worth experimenting there. On both mids and subs. Try some over/underlap. Try higher/lower points/slopes. Other than that, it's hard to say without measurements. And at the end of the day, 6.5's aren't great for midbass.


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## XSIV SPL (Jun 24, 2014)

strakele said:


> Phase alignment between midbasses and the sub can definitely make a difference and is important. But all this talk about T/A I think is not the answer. Obviously T/A is important and necessary for good sound, but a few extra clicks one way or another is not suddenly going to give you strong midbass where there wasn't any before. If the OP's current T/A setting is anywhere in the ballpark of the 'correct' setting, further tweaking this is not going to solve the problem. It can make subtle differences in tightness and imaging and improve the overall sound and such, but like I said, it's not suddenly fix the lacking midbass issue.
> 
> I'd recommend looking more at crossover points and slopes to get the best integration between midbass and subwoofer. Different slopes have different phase shifts, so it's definitely worth experimenting there. On both mids and subs. Try some over/underlap. Try higher/lower points/slopes. Other than that, it's hard to say without measurements. And at the end of the day, 6.5's aren't great for midbass.


^1 on this!

I was getting ready to post similarly.

The reason midbass is so difficult to achieve in most cars is not because they are playing weak, nor because it's such a hard frequency to produce... NO, it is because most of them are being eaten-up (phase-cancelled) from both ends of their active range.

While Patrick has made some extremely valid points with which I completely agree, this post will relate more to tuning what you already have, rather than optimal planning and placement-

If you have the ability to invert phase and change crossover slopes at high and low pass for all drivers, playing a test tone of the high and low pass frequencies for the midbass against midrange and bass while measuring/adjusting for maximum spl by adjusting crossover slope (within the handling limits of the driver of course) at each end should get you to a point where you will be coupling with both the sub and the midrange drivers with the least (capability-wise) amount of cancellation. One other thing... do this separately from left to right, because your results "might" be dramatically different.

(This is where Timbre-Matching comes into play, especially important if you end up using dissimilar slopes from left to right. I honestly believe Timbre-Matching should have its own thread here.)

If on the same plane, and distance, a 24dB/octave slope will put two overlapping drivers back in phase with each other (although both will be 180 degrees out of phase from the original source, but our ears don't care, as long as they match) but I've yet to find a car so perfectly proportioned as to lend any credence to running all slopes at 24dB/octave. It reminds me of the 1980s guy who gets in your car and wants to set the graphic eq to a certain "shape" no matter the environment... Grrr...

In reality, even though it grates at your understanding of acoustics, sometimes your tuning must match the chaos of your tuning environment.

Sometimes, you may find your best results with left and right channels running different crossover points and slopes because of the environment. (Shh... That was supposed to be my secret). Don't bother inverting phase on your tweeters though... Just sayin'!

A 6dB change of slope will give you 45 degrees rotation of phase, where time correction for most processors is limited to a handful of milliseconds.

I hope this helps a little bit..?


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## aholland1198 (Oct 7, 2009)

Like the OP, I have an F150 and the mid bass is horrible. I have tried countless drivers, and they all graph about the same. The dimensions of the truck seem to be the culprit. I have tried four midbass drivers, one in each door, and that didn't seem to help much. I have flipped phase, changed crossovers, stood upside down for hours, anything you can think of, I've probably tried it. I have a helix pro so obviously I have a good amount of processor power to work with and I haven't been able to get satisfactory results yet. I work on it just about every day, so if I find an answer, I'll be sure to post. Until then, well I dunno


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## I800C0LLECT (Jan 26, 2009)

What if the mid-bass and subs were crossed at 70hz or frequency overlapped? Would a shelf EQ help with this at all?


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## I800C0LLECT (Jan 26, 2009)

Babs said:


> I have to admit I catch myself thinking about those two inviting spots where there's nothing presently in the rear deck. While I remember all the threads on rear-fill *I can't help contemplating running some mids I have on shelf TB W6-789E for just midbass duty. *Wouldn't take much. Though the statements I've read on how easily you'll muddy up the midbass gives me pause. Might yet still be worth the experiment. Say another bit of 80 or 90hz at 24db LR to somewhere in the 200-300 range maybe. Totally and completely unscientific but very tempting.
> 
> 
> Sent from iPhone using Tapatalk


I played with REAL rear fill. It didn't work out with some tracks to be honest BUT I found that I preferred band-limiting my 6x9's for extra mid-bass duties to REALLY help that aspect of system response.

It was a dramatic difference when they were turned off.


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## carlos3621 (Aug 24, 2015)

I had this exact same issue in my Tundra.
And it wasnt phase cancellation, because if i only turned on 1 front door speaker, the midbass was still not there at all.

So, i installed a 2nd set of Dynaudio speakers, on my rear doors, and voila'.

My next purchase is an Audiocontrol DQ61, to time align the front speakers, to the subwoofers, and try to "tighten" up the lower bass response.

Oh, one more thing ive learned thus far: Toyota HU's are noisy as hell!!


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## aholland1198 (Oct 7, 2009)

With the sub on, the midbass comes to life in the F150. The problem I have is getting it all to blend. Crossing at 90 with Bessel 36 degree slopes seems to blend the best but the blooms are worse. LR 4s at 90 work well too, but 80-125 suffer with these slopes. Not from an amplitude standpoint, but placement. The bass doesn't seem to extend below 50-60 to my ears, even though it does on the RTA. 


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## Mic10is (Aug 20, 2007)

Very often vehicles that have taken all the normal steps, like dampening, amplifier power, gain set correctly actually do have sufficient midbass but its masked by too much 300-800hz region. an abundance or peaks around 500-630 will mask midbass response and make it seem very anemic. 
More than likely its actually a tuning issue

Also, midbass should be proportional to the rest of the frequencies. The system should be balanced, Midbass isnt suppose to stick out like a sore thumb


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

I don't subscribe to the notion that 6.5" drivers can't do mid bass. It all comes down to a solid install and most importantly the tune.


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## Bayboy (Dec 29, 2010)

Mic10is said:


> Very often vehicles that have taken all the normal steps, like dampening, amplifier power, gain set correctly actually do have sufficient midbass but its masked by too much 300-800hz region. an abundance or peaks around 500-630 will mask midbass response and make it seem very anemic.
> More than likely its actually a tuning issue
> 
> Also, midbass should be proportional to the rest of the frequencies. The system should be balanced, Midbass isnt suppose to stick out like a sore thumb


^^^^ this! Too many desire or tune to have tons of upper bass, but in reality that is wrong. The hard part is having a delicate blend where that bandwidth presents a full response while not out shining the rest of the system. Same as having the sub too loud.


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## aholland1198 (Oct 7, 2009)

I should also mention I have complicated things by adding a third MB driver. I made a baffle out of the storage tray on the dash. Surprisingly, I don't have a resonance problem, but it doesn't seem to help much. Thinking about replacing the dyn in there with a peerless sls in hopes it will dig a bit lower. 


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## ZMan2k2 (Mar 11, 2014)

strakele said:


> Phase alignment between midbasses and the sub can definitely make a difference and is important. But all this talk about T/A I think is not the answer. Obviously T/A is important and necessary for good sound, but a few extra clicks one way or another is not suddenly going to give you strong midbass where there wasn't any before. If the OP's current T/A setting is anywhere in the ballpark of the 'correct' setting, further tweaking this is not going to solve the problem. It can make subtle differences in tightness and imaging and improve the overall sound and such, but like I said, it's not suddenly fix the lacking midbass issue.
> 
> *I'd recommend looking more at crossover points and slopes to get the best integration between midbass and subwoofer. Different slopes have different phase shifts, so it's definitely worth experimenting there. On both mids and subs. Try some over/underlap. Try higher/lower points/slopes.* Other than that, it's hard to say without measurements. And at the end of the day, 6.5's aren't great for midbass.


I think I'm going to give this a try in my Tacoma. See if I can get a little better response. I can adjust slopes in 6db steps, and cut-offs where the deck is preset, but I'll do what I can. I'm a total n00b when it comes to tuning, I just used to throw a deck in the dash, hook it up, and try my best to match gains. I've learned quite a bit just by lurking here, and searching for answers to questions I have, but this seems to be the answer to my problem.


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

I am open to new ideas on this and will definately revisit TA, phase, and crossover slopes when I get a free day this weekend. Just one last question for now. I can open the passenger door and turn off sub and other door and be on axis with just passenger door playing and the mid bass just isn't there. This should have nothing to do with phase, TA, but possibly slopes when looked at this way, correct? Just out of curiousity, when I get time this weekend I will bring my hi pass on my midbass down to about 40 and mute all but 1 door like I was talking about and measure where the drop off seems to be and go from there.


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## Bayboy (Dec 29, 2010)

Mids & subs work in unison. Turning the sub off will not help unless you know what to look for.


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## aholland1198 (Oct 7, 2009)

In that truck the doors drop pretty fast below 90. Doesn't matter much on either side, but measuring separately, the pass side will go a little lower. I agree with Mic, I got a little off target in my comments, the midbass is lacking as it translations into sub bass and therefore is somewhat difficult to blend. I have a tw5 up firing under the middle of the back seat, so the sub being roughly two feet from me makes things tough because it seems to overtake the midbass drivers. I have crossed everywhere from 50-250 and 90 seems to be the best. I'm getting a little better with the paragraphic eq and I think that is where we will be able to fix the problem. 


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

azsean said:


> i feel ur pain... i been having the same problem. my doors are fully dynamatted and using fast rings in my tacoma. plan on installing my set of HAT L6SE this weekend and i know after reading this, i may not be too super pleased with my new midbass also.


Maybe it will work out better for you. I know the L6se is not the problem because the problem was there with other mids.


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

aholland1198 said:


> Like the OP, I have an F150 and the mid bass is horrible. I have tried countless drivers, and they all graph about the same. The dimensions of the truck seem to be the culprit. I have tried four midbass drivers, one in each door, and that didn't seem to help much. I have flipped phase, changed crossovers, stood upside down for hours, anything you can think of, I've probably tried it. I have a helix pro so obviously I have a good amount of processor power to work with and I haven't been able to get satisfactory results yet. I work on it just about every day, so if I find an answer, I'll be sure to post. Until then, well I dunno
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


What year F150 do you have? Was the original factory setup really lacking mid bass or any bass at all?


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

carlos3621 said:


> I had this exact same issue in my Tundra.
> And it wasnt phase cancellation, because if i only turned on 1 front door speaker, the midbass was still not there at all.
> 
> So, i installed a 2nd set of Dynaudio speakers, on my rear doors, and voila'.
> ...


Did adding the rear midbass pull your stage image to the back? The factory HU on this truck was very noisy as well. When I switched to the Pioneer 80prs I now have zero noise floor.


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## aholland1198 (Oct 7, 2009)

I have an 05 supercrew, full center console. 

Installing rear mid bass drivers pulled my image back, but I didn't run them like that very long. The intention was rear fill mostly. 


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## ErinH (Feb 14, 2007)

MID-bass... as in bass covering a typical 80-300hz region... is very tough to get right in a car. this is a problem with the car's dimensions. There's a transition in frequency where the sound waves exceed dimensions of the car and sound waves essentially start to 'stack' up. That transitions frequency typically starts in the 300-400hz region in most cars and is known as the Schroeder Frequency. (Cabin gain starts when the wavelength is longer than the longest dimension which is typically the length of the car's interior). Unfortunately, the problem isn't remedied by distributed midbass because that pulls vocals to the rear toward the higher end of the spectrum. In a home it works because that transition frequency is considerably lower; additionally homes are large enough to permit large absorption panels or Helmholtz resonators. But in a car the best resolution is good ol' fashion parametric EQ. 

Some simple math to rough in this transition period is to use speed of sound divided by length. 1127(ft/s)*/*dimension(ft). Car width/height is typically one of the shorter dimensions at 4 feet. So, you get about 281hz. This would be the Schroeder frequency. The length is in the neighborhood of 10-12 feet. So, using 12ft you get 93hz (where cabin gain would take over). These are rough numbers; remember you have odd shapes to the car and seats/etc in the volume that don't make this a simple rectangle calculation.
*note what I said about distributed midbass in a home working better because the dimensions are larger which means the midbass is playing less of a localizable vocal range; for example the smallest dimension of most rooms is 8 feet (ceiling); 140hz. 



I wrote about this in my build log but also copied over to the Essentials of Sound Quality thread. To save you trouble, here's the posts:



ErinH said:


> *Measuring "Right"*
> 
> Now you're obviously asking how you measure the "right" way, or "listen right". Well, truth be told, it's not very easy to relay over the internet. It really takes time and practice. Luckily there are a few sources already that I think do a good job of illustrating the methods of measuring and listening. Here's some links:
> 
> ...





ErinH said:


> *Analyzing the Data*
> 
> As mentioned earlier, one problem with measurements is the incorrect use of the results. Once you achieve your measurements through the aforementioned methods, here’s some things you should ask yourself before heading straight to the EQ:
> 
> ...


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

Thank you Erin for posting all this information. I am kind of stuck at the moment with just graphic EQ and really no measurement tools, just some noise tracks and a free app on my iphone.


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

Bayboy said:


> ^^^^ this! Too many desire or tune to have tons of upper bass, but in reality that is wrong. The hard part is having a delicate blend where that bandwidth presents a full response while not out shining the rest of the system. Same as having the sub too loud.


I agree with Mic and you both. With the sub on I have a fairly blended system but my sub is picking up the slack where my front is lacking. On some music, but not all, this seems to make my sub stick out instead of disappearing into the stage.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

cjbrownco said:


> Thank you Erin for posting all this information. I am kind of stuck at the moment with just graphic EQ and really no measurement tools, just some noise tracks and a free app on my iphone.


All you need is a mic, a soundcard and a laptop.

Here's some links:

Preamp: 
Audio Buddy Preamp
by M-Audio
4 offers from $84.99

Mic: http://www.amazon.com/Behringer-ECM8000-BEHRINGER/dp/B000HT4RSA

Software: 
HOLM Acoustics

The options above are what I am personally using. You could probably save yourself some money and hassle and use a USB mic. I am not using a USB mic so I can't comment on what is good or what works. I'm willing to bet that the one from miniDSP would work nicely.

I know it's a $150 investment, but you will seriously use it for the rest of your life. Besides my speaker building projects, I also use my mic to set the response curve on my home stereo.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

If you really want to do it cheaply, get a free RTA app. And then use the screen capture on your phone or tablet to get those four measurements.

Definitely not as good as using a measurement mic, but it's better than trying to do this by ear.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

ErinH said:


> MID-bass... as in bass covering a typical 80-300hz region... is very tough to get right in a car. this is a problem with the car's dimensions. There's a transition in frequency where the sound waves exceed dimensions of the car and sound waves essentially start to 'stack' up. That transitions frequency typically starts in the 300-400hz region in most cars and is known as the Schroeder Frequency. (Cabin gain starts when the wavelength is longer than the longest dimension which is typically the length of the car's interior). Unfortunately, the problem isn't remedied by distributed midbass because that pulls vocals to the rear toward the higher end of the spectrum. In a home it works because that transition frequency is considerably lower; additionally homes are large enough to permit large absorption panels or Helmholtz resonators. But in a car the best resolution is good ol' fashion parametric EQ.


Erin, thank your for the epic post. I agree that midbass is probably the most difficult thing to get right in a car. Your post is probably the best step-by-step guide to fixing it with EQ.


BUT...

I don't agree that distributed midbasses won't fix this.

Here's why:










In your own measurements, *we can see that there's a persistent series of peaks and dips in the two octaves from 125hz to 500hz.*

A typical car cabin is about ten feet long; that's 112.5hz
A typical car cabin is about five feet wide; that's 250hz

The reason these peaks and dips are so persistent is because they're being generated by the geometry of the car. IE, you won't see these types of persistent peaks and dips at 1000hz, because 1000hz is just 13.5 inches long. A peak or dip at 1000hz might go away if you move your seat forward two inches, *but a peak at 100hz will not go away.*

And when I say "persistent", I mean that it's the type of resonance that exists across most of the cabin. It's not due to some spurious reflection off the dash or something, this resonance is tied to the geometry of the cabin.

So we know the cause of the peaks and the dips, and we know they sound terrible. But we also know that it's a bit of a fools errand to try and "fill in" a six decibel deep dip in the frequency response. To increase the output by six dB requires a quadrupling of power; I really don't want to dump four hundred watts into my midbasses.

There's a better way - just distribute the energy. If you take the energy that you're putting into ONE midbass and you put it into TWO midbasses, you reduce the severity of those peaks and dips. Instead of a six dB peak at 250hz, you have something like a 3dB peak. And the nulls are the real problem; distributing the midbass smooths that out too.

I'm not 100% certain that I'd want my midbasses *behind* me, but there's plenty of room up front for multiple midbasses. I think the easiest option is to simply put two under the dash, and another two that are closer. (Side note - these frequencies are HUGE. There is absolutely no need to "aim" a midbass, I intend to literally cram my midbasses under the dash. No need to point them up, down, left right, it simply doesn't matter. Find a couple of liters of space under the dash and cram that midbass up there.)

Naturally, this requires DSP delay to line up the wavefronts, but a miniDSP is under a hundred bucks, this is a no-brainer.

Of course, I'm a mad scientist and I'd really like to do this with about four midbasses per side...



Also, in regards to dragging the image backwards, that is a valid concern. In my own experiments with multiple subs, I've generally found that the use of multiple subs doesn't destroy the imaging cues, it just makes them more diffuse. For instance, when I listen to my main speakers, I can tell that the soundstage is coming from them. But the low frequencies seems to surround me. I like the effect; I much prefer it too how things uses to be, when the subwoofer's location was more obvious. I can't pinpoint where the low frequencies are coming from now. It's not that they're behind me, or in front of me. They're everywhere. But the mids and the highs are still coming from the speakers, and that gives me all the imaging cues I need, without the distraction of "noticing" the low frequencies.


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

Patrick Bateman said:


> All you need is a mic, a soundcard and a laptop.
> 
> Here's some links:
> 
> ...





Patrick Bateman said:


> If you really want to do it cheaply, get a free RTA app. And then use the screen capture on your phone or tablet to get those four measurements.
> 
> Definitely not as good as using a measurement mic, but it's better than trying to do this by ear.


Thanks a bunch for the links and ideas. I almost bought the mic on the miniDSP site when I used them a few years back. I would like to try miniDSP again now that my HU is not so noisy.


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## aholland1198 (Oct 7, 2009)

What is your current sub setup?


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## SSSnake (Mar 8, 2007)

> There's a better way - just distribute the energy. If you take the energy that you're putting into ONE midbass and you put it into TWO midbasses, you reduce the severity of those peaks and dips. Instead of a six dB peak at 250hz, you have something like a 3dB peak. And the nulls are the real problem; distributing the midbass smooths that out too.


True but with attendant problems. First is how far do you have to distribute these drivers. Hint - It ain't a couple of inches. So let's say you do put them 1+ feet apart. Now you have critical vocals coming from multiple points in the car (not good). 

I subscribe to Dr Geddes distributed sub approach in the house but in the car the ballgame changes because the physical distribution distance is small compared to the wavelength of the offending frequencies. If not, you cross over into the vocal ranges and have to deal with a whole different set of issues. The main reason distributing subs works in the house is that they operate below localization frequencies. Midbass does not fit that model.


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

aholland1198 said:


> What is your current sub setup?
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Currently it is 1 Dayton 12" HO up fired under rear seat powered by a Zapco st-1000xm.


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## LaydSierra (Aug 20, 2009)

If you don't want to spend the extra money on an expensive mic you could get the Dayton imm-6 & Audio Tool app on your phone/tablet & start there. Each mic has it's own calibration file that you can download. 

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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

LaydSierra said:


> If you don't want to spend the extra money on an expensive mic you could get the Dayton imm-6 & Audio Tool app on your phone/tablet & start there. Each mic has it's own calibration file that you can download.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk


I seen those a while back and wondered if they worked any better than just using the mic on the iPhone. Have you used it?


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

SSSnake said:


> True but with attendant problems. First is how far do you have to distribute these drivers. Hint - It ain't a couple of inches. So let's say you do put them 1+ feet apart. Now you have critical vocals coming from multiple points in the car (not good).
> 
> I subscribe to Dr Geddes distributed sub approach in the house but in the car the ballgame changes because the physical distribution distance is small compared to the wavelength of the offending frequencies. If not, you cross over into the vocal ranges and have to deal with a whole different set of issues. The main reason distributing subs works in the house is that they operate below localization frequencies. Midbass does not fit that model.


For the most part, I agree with you. We want the resonances spread out where it will do a lot of good, but we ALSO want them close enough together that we don't screw up the midrange.

For instance, I think the most troublesome octaves are 125hz to 500hz, and the measurement from Erin seems to illustrate that. I've posted some measurements myself, where I took a sealed midbass, recorded it in three different locations in the car, and posted the results. (In this case I was physically moving the midbass instead of moving the mic.)

125hz is nine feet long, and 500hz is 2.25 feet long.
If we took the midpoint of those two frequencies, that's 250hz, and that's 4.5 feet long.

Now let's say we use the midpoint as the "target." That's 4.5 feet.

You bring up a good point that we don't want the midbasses so far apart that they're going to screw up the midrange, but we also want them far enough apart that we'll get some of the benefits of smoothing out the response.

That would probably be about one quarter wavelength, or 13.5".

In a car I think that's pretty easy to do; just put a midbass in the door and another under the dash.
Or put a midbass in the BOTTOM half of the door, and another at the top.

And keep in mind that we can make these midbasses pretty darn small; a couple of 5" woofers are easy to hide, with a depth of about 2".

On a side note, I wonder if some of the positive reviews of the Bose wave radios is simply because the front and the back wave are seperated by about the same distance. IE, a wave radio will do the same thing that a pair of midbasses will do, for the most part. One "bonus" with a wave radio is that the output of the rear driver will be low passed by the enclosure, which will ALSO keep the rear output from screwing up the midrange output.

Here's some quotes about the wave radio:

_" The audio in these Bose radios is all encompassing--the bass is deep and rich, while the tenor sounds are clear and distinct. I just love them!!"

"We have had this Bose wave radio for almost 10yrs now & it still works perfectly. The sound is that amazing, rich, Bose exclusive sound. (example: You can hear the deep bass in Russian choral music without it sounding like buzzing or growling. _

Heck, that might be the simplest solution to distributing the bass in a car.



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## LaydSierra (Aug 20, 2009)

cjbrownco said:


> I seen those a while back and wondered if they worked any better than just using the mic on the iPhone. Have you used it?


I have & it does indeed give you a different graph than the stock mic on my S5 & Tab4. With the calibration file, the curve on my phone & tablet are very close. I no longer have access to a real true RTA so I can't compare to that.

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## LaydSierra (Aug 20, 2009)

Hmm...this thread has got me thinking...1 Anarchy in each front door then 1 under each front seat... You would want them on the same channel for T/A & EQ to treat them as a single driver? 

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## SSSnake (Mar 8, 2007)

Agreed, you can do that. It WILL smooth the response. It will also smear/broaden the image audibly. If imaging is not a concern for you then this might be worth the effort. However for most imaging is something they want as well as good FR.

There are also the issues associated with dash mounted midbasses (rattles primarily). Rattles that close to the listeners become obnoxious quickly. They are also fairly tough to deal with in the dash because of all of the wires and vents and other items hidden behind the dash. Also getting a decent enclosure volume on the passenger side is tough because of the AC fan housing. If you are not afraid of a dash rebuild then these can be overcome. For me there were too many problems with too few benefits.


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## SSSnake (Mar 8, 2007)

Floor mounted midbasses do tend to help. IMO you want them on separate channels so that you can ta and eq them separately. I would also suggest limiting their pass band to the frequencies you are having issues with. This limits the potential degradation of the image substantially. This was the final fix to my previous car. It worked fairly well. No rattles and the vocal image did not wander on all but the lowest male voices. 

This is however a fairly pricey fix in terms of both cost and real estate.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

SSSnake said:


> Floor mounted midbasses do tend to help. IMO you want them on separate channels so that you can ta and eq them separately. I would also suggest limiting their pass band to the frequencies you are having issues with. This limits the potential degradation of the image substantially. This was the final fix to my previous car. It worked fairly well. No rattles and the vocal image did not wander on all but the lowest male voices.
> 
> This is however a fairly pricey fix in terms of both cost and real estate.


That's a really important point here:

*No matter what you do with delay and phase adjustment, the location of your midbass is (mostly) going to sound like where your midbass is located.*

IE, if you put a midbass on the floor of your car, it's going to narrow the stage, because the floor is closer to the center of the car than the doors are.

I found this out the hard way; I used to run 8" midbasses that were in very very shallow sealed boxes placed against the firewall.

BUT - there's good news! It's fairly easy to relocate where the sound is using something like this:










If you placed the enclosure on the floor, you want one hole on the side, instead of a pair. Basically the sound exits the hole, so you can have the midbass on the floor but the apparent source is on the edge, which makes the soundstage wider.









I'm using bandpass enclosures for my midbass, with the ports exiting at the edge of the enclosure, so the width is nearly at the edge of the car itself. (It's that grey thing under the seat there.)


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

LaydSierra said:


> Hmm...this thread has got me thinking...1 Anarchy in each front door then 1 under each front seat... You would want them on the same channel for T/A & EQ to treat them as a single driver?
> 
> Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk


Think small... You don't need an F3 of 40hz or 50hz, you need an F3 of about 80hz. There are tons of 5" woofers that will get you down to 80hz in an enclosure small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.

Even the big JBL concert arrays use 2" drivers.

I am using 3.5" woofers for midbass, and that's probably overkill because I plan on using four.


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## LaydSierra (Aug 20, 2009)

Patrick Bateman said:


> Think small... You don't need an F3 of 40hz or 50hz, you need an F3 of about 80hz. There are tons of 5" woofers that will get you down to 80hz in an enclosure small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.
> 
> Even the big JBL concert arrays use 2" drivers.
> 
> I am using 3.5" woofers for midbass, and that's probably overkill because I plan on using four.


I already have the 4 6.5s. I was originally thinking of 2 per door in fiberglass enclosures but if I could achieve the same results just by moving them apart I would do that

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## strakele (Mar 2, 2009)

Patrick Bateman said:


> I am using 3.5" woofers for midbass, and that's probably overkill because I plan on using four.


I understand what you've been saying about using arrays to distribute and smooth response and it's certainly an interesting concept. But at the end of the day, what about overall output? Four 3.5" speakers (I'm assuming you mean 4 per side, 8 total) still have less cone area, less excursion, and therefore less Vd than even a modest 6.5" speaker - even something with ridiculous excursion for a 3 inch like the Aura NS3. So sure, your response curve might be nice and smooth, but if they can't move as much air as a 6.5" which is already on the small and weak side for midbass, what's the point?


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## SSSnake (Mar 8, 2007)

> but if they can't move as much air as a 6.5" which is already on the small and weak side for midbass, what's the point?


I don't disagree but consider the solution that Patrick mentioned about ducting the sound. Getting a 6.5" in an enclosure in front of the seats with an exit for sound at the door is pretty easy to do. 

Again I would suggest you have a main midbass that is well integrated with the other drivers in terms of location then run the floor mounted midbass with a very narrow passband only augmenting the sound at your null or nulls. Fairly doable in most cars. The issue becomes when you start moving the seats a lot. My wife is considerably shorter than I am so an enclosure in front of the seat will either have to be movable with the seat or easily removable for her to drive. In my case I was able to mount the box to the seat side of the seat frame rails and used a pad under the carpet to really wedge it into place with the seat in my normal listening position. You have to be careful with this approach as the brain will sense the vibration and localize the sound to where you feel the vibe coming from. With the seat in her driving position this was a problem. With it in mine the pad under the carpet wedged the enclosure enough that it wasn't a problem. Also once you start porting the sound out to the edge of the car phase matching becomes much more difficult. I would suggest that you only implement this with a processor that let's you adjust phase in small increments (not 0 and 180 degrees).


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

strakele said:


> I understand what you've been saying about using arrays to distribute and smooth response and it's certainly an interesting concept. But at the end of the day, what about overall output? Four 3.5" speakers (I'm assuming you mean 4 per side, 8 total) still have less cone area, less excursion, and therefore less Vd than even a modest 6.5" speaker - even something with ridiculous excursion for a 3 inch like the Aura NS3. So sure, your response curve might be nice and smooth, but if they can't move as much air as a 6.5" which is already on the small and weak side for midbass, what's the point?


B&C 8NDL51 is probably the best (single) midbass I've ever used.
That was the driver that got me realizing that an efficient driver with relatively limited displacement and low power compression is (probably) where it's at.

It rolls off pretty early - about 150hz in the sealed box I used! But throw in a little cabin gain and you're F3 drops by almost an octave, and now you're putting out 94dB with just one watt of power.

To put that in perspective, an Anarchy puts out 85dB with one watt. That's a nine decibel difference! I'm not the biggest proponent of high efficiency drivers, but I'd have a difficult time getting the SPLs I want out of Anarchy.

Denovo Audio Anarchy woofer DIY Sound Group

Four Dayton ND91s aren't as efficient as a B&C. Four of them put out 87dB with one watt. But they're more efficient than an Anarchy.

I think 87dB is on the low side, and that's why I threw them in bandpass boxes, to 'push' the efficiency up into B&C territory.

You could do the same thing with the Anarchy, but you'd have to find three or four cubic feet 

TLDR: Yes, output definitely matters. Dayton ND91 is on the low side. If there was a good, small woofer with an efficiency around 85dB I'd probably use four of them for a total efficiency of 91dB total.

By the way, all of my stuff is hugely influenced by how Danley does things. Back when I was on the bass list he was talking about how the labsub was designed, where you're basically taking ONE woofer and you're subdividing it into two.

And if you look across the line, they're basically just piling on more and more drivers to get to the output level that they want. The reason that you don't want to use ONE giant driver is because ONE driver won't have the right parameters. The Exodus Anarchy is a great example of this. It's a great sub driver, but the efficiency is way too low for a midbass. 81dB? That's painfully inefficient. But if you want to make a REALLY small sub, it's really attractive.









To give you an idea of what I mean, this speaker puts out 125 dB. It has two 8" midbasses.









This one puts out 127dB. It has two 12" midbasses. *Note how much it takes to get that additional two decibels.* The box is basically twice as big and heavy.









This is the big Kahuna. It puts out 148dB(!) Is has SIX 18" midbasses. This thing weighs nearly as much as a car.

The interesting thing is that the response curve on all three boxes is fairly similar. Going up to a higher weight class gets you more sheer output, but NONE of them using a single woofer for a midbass. Most use four, some use two, some use six. None use one.


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## Sine Swept (Sep 3, 2010)

I always like to think guitar and bass when it comes to this region. A regular 4 string bass has a low note of 40hz (E) and an electric 6 string guitar in standard tuning is one octave up at 80hz. The first note of "Nothing Else Matters" is an E at 80hz. I believe that the very pleasing midbass I am craving is all north of 100hz. 

A good listen is the beginning of "Journey to the end of the east bay" Rancid.


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## strakele (Mar 2, 2009)

Patrick Bateman said:


> Four Dayton ND91s aren't as efficient as a B&C. Four of them put out 87dB with one watt. But they're more efficient than an Anarchy.
> 
> I think 87dB is on the low side, and that's why I threw them in bandpass boxes, to 'push' the efficiency up into B&C territory.
> 
> TLDR: Yes, output definitely matters. Dayton ND91 is on the low side. If there was a good, small woofer with an efficiency around 85dB I'd probably use four of them for a total efficiency of 91dB total.


Even with higher efficiency, ultimately you still have less Vd. So it's still not going to match a 6.5 in midbass output. 

It looks like if you moved up to three of the 4" ND105's, you could about match the output capability of a 6.5-7" driver. That to me seems like the 'break even' point.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

strakele said:


> Even with higher efficiency, ultimately you still have less Vd. So it's still not going to match a 6.5 in midbass output.
> 
> It looks like if you moved up to three of the 4" ND105's, you could about match the output capability of a 6.5-7" driver. That to me seems like the 'break even' point.


I'm just taking *one* driver and subdividing it into four drivers.

For instance:

A single Peerless 6.5" woofer has an efficiency of 89dB, an FS of 46hz, a VAS of 22 liters : http://www.parts-express.com/pedocs/specs/264-1092--peerless-hds-p830875-spec-sheet.pdf
Four of the Dayton ND91s have an efficiency of 87dB, an FS of 74hz, a VAS of six liters : Dayton Audio ND91-4 3-1/2" Aluminum Cone Full-Range Driver 4 Ohm

One has an xmax of 4.6mm, one has an xmax of 5.3mm. 

They're pretty evenly matched. One of them will move 15% more air than the other. Will that be audible? Probably not. One of them is cheaper than the other.

Distributing the voltage over four voice coils will reduce power compression quite a bit.


I could totally understand your line of thinking about using an array of 3" drivers *if those drivers had an xmax of 1mm.* But these aren't inexpensive 3" drivers; these are made to move a lot of air and take some punishment.

I'm using a very specific set of criteria to get an array of four small drivers to behave like one larger driver. Similar to how four of the Exodus Anarchy woofers could replace the output of a inexpensive 15" woofer. Are there 15" woofers that would beat a quad of Anarchies? Yes, they're definitely are. But four of the Anarchies could keep up with your *average* 15" woofer. And there's some applications where you need the advantages of an array. Midbass duty in a car is one of them.


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## strakele (Mar 2, 2009)

4x Dayton ND91 has an efficiency of 87dB, a combined cone area of 120 cm2, and a xmax of 4.6mm for a Vd of 55 cm3 and costs $115.

The Peerless you linked to has an efficiency of 89dB, a cone area of 143 cm2, and a xmax of 5.3mm for a Vd of 76 cm3 (38% more, which I would argue would be noticeable) and costs $60. So I see 1/3 better performance for 1/2 the cost. The response smoothing aspect being the only benefit of the ND91 option.

And assuming you can't fit an 8" midbass which would be even better, for the essentially the same price as 4x ND91, you can get an Usher 8945 or 8948 which are outstanding low distortion drivers with 88dB efficiency, 150 cm2 of cone area, Klippel verified 6+ mm xmax, for a Vd of 90 cm3 - almost twice the 4x 3-inch driver setup.

I'm trying not to just be argumentative lol. But I do think for this to be a good option it should meet or exceed the output capability of a single larger speaker.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

strakele said:


> 4x Dayton ND91 has an efficiency of 87dB, a combined cone area of 120 cm2, and a xmax of 4.6mm for a Vd of 55 cm3 and costs $115.
> 
> The Peerless you linked to has an efficiency of 89dB, a cone area of 143 cm2, and a xmax of 5.3mm for a Vd of 76 cm3 (38% more, which I would argue would be noticeable) and costs $60. So I see 1/3 better performance for 1/2 the cost. The response smoothing aspect being the only benefit of the ND91 option.
> 
> ...












The problems that Erin is seeing in his Civic are similar to what I saw in my Accord. Big peaks and dips in the two octaves from 125 to 500hz.

IMHO, there are three ways to fix this:

*1) The Brute Force Approach*
In this approach, you use a midbass with so much power handling and displacement, you can use liberal amounts of EQ to fix it. For instance, Richard Clark's JBL midbasses could generate nearly twenty decibels more output than your typical 6.5" midbass. With the brute force approach, *you have the luxury of applying six decibels of boost to fill in that dip at 190hz.*

*2) The Room Treatment Approach*
In this approach, you treat the car with Helmholtz traps to treat the resonances. Jon Whitledge's Magic Bus is a four ton, six figure testament to this approach.

*3) Distributed Resonance Approach*
In this approach, you distribute the midbasses to reduce the severity of the peaks and the dips. For instance, four Dayton ND91s distributed about the cabin will reduce the intensity of the peaks and the dips in the midbass. While a single 6.5" midbass may move a little more air, you need to move a LOT of air to overcome those peaks. In order to 'fill in' that six decibel dip at 190hz, you have two options:
a) replace your 6" woofer with a 12" woofer with the same amount of power
b) replace your 6" woofer with an 8" woofer with double the power
c) find a 6" woofer with four times the power handling (good luck with that...)


TLDR: it's not that I think that arrays are the ONLY approach. To this date, an 8NDL51 is still my favorite midbass. But I think there's a better way. Plus, I *really* want bass that's in the ballpark of the Magic Bus, and there ain't no way I'm spending six figures on my stereo :O


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## chithead (Mar 19, 2008)

The the multiple driver approach here is quite intriguing. I've read something similar in home audio, where they experimented with smaller subwoofers in each corner of the room, versus one large subwoofer. The general consensus was, that the multiple subwoofers were much more, "dispersed" - smooth, even bass, no matter what part of the room you stood in. Plus they each could be turned down and not work as hard to achieve the owner's desired output.

However, the single, large subwoofer, was able to extend deeper in the frequency range, and was noticeably louder on those lower notes. Guess it's a toss up. Granted, this was in a controlled listening environment, and not the confines of an automobile, and it was subwoofer frequencies, not midbass. But it still raises curiosity about the implementation of your suggested theories. Seems like it could work.


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## Focused4door (Aug 15, 2015)

chithead said:


> The the multiple driver approach here is quite intriguing. I've read something similar in home audio, where they experimented with smaller subwoofers in each corner of the room, versus one large subwoofer. The general consensus was, that the multiple subwoofers were much more, "dispersed" - smooth, even bass, no matter what part of the room you stood in. Plus they each could be turned down and not work as hard to achieve the owner's desired output.
> 
> However, the single, large subwoofer, was able to extend deeper in the frequency range, and was noticeably louder on those lower notes. Guess it's a toss up. Granted, this was in a controlled listening environment, and not the confines of an automobile, and it was subwoofer frequencies, not midbass. But it still raises curiosity about the implementation of your suggested theories. Seems like it could work.



There is a really good Harman white paper about multiple subs which might be what you are referencing.

I am likely going to put in a single bass array setup in our home theater setup, don't quite have a good setup for a double bass array. 

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Bass_Array&prev=search


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

I really wish I had more time lately. During the Christmas break I'd hoped to run some experiments to find out if my theory pans out. Basically I was going to run a set of polars like Erin did. But one set was going to be done with a midbass array, and one without. To find which is smoorher. And more importantly, how much is enough? One per side? Two per side? Four?


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## eststang (Nov 28, 2010)

Just an idea, what if one builds vented box to the lower part of the front door so that the midbass element is placed in the front lower corner (as usual) but the vent exit is placed in the rear lower corner of the door, firing somewhere against the side of the seat cushion. I am thinking it could achieve almost similar results as double midbasses?


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

eststang said:


> Just an idea, what if one builds vented box to the lower part of the front door so that the midbass element is placed in the front lower corner (as usual) but the vent exit is placed in the rear lower corner of the door, firing somewhere against the side of the seat cushion. I am thinking it could achieve almost similar results as double midbasses?


I think it *might* work with transmission lines, tapped horns, and back loaded horns. Hornresp lets you isolate the output of the front and the rear wave, and in those types of enclosures, the output from the back wave is fairly wide in bandwidth.

In a vented box, the output from the port is very narrow.

If you look at the CSD of these boxes, they're quite poor, so there's got to be *some* reason why they sound so good, and possibly that reason may be that they're distributing room modes. TBH, I don't think I've heard a tapped horn, transmission line or back loaded horn that sounded "bad." I've heard tons of vented boxes and front loaded horns that sound terrible. (Not all, but some.)

Back loaded horns in particular really seem to 'punch above their weight class.' I'm at CES today, and I've generally found that a lot of those ultra-simple boxes with a full range speaker in a back loaded horn sound better than half of the multi-way boxes at the show.


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## seafish (Aug 1, 2012)

I understand that distance between drivers is critical in a speaker array, but do the drivers in a mid bass array need to be pointing in the same direction??

... would a mid bass array still work correctly if one of the drivers was located in the lower door pointing towards the center console and the other located in the firewall pointing back towards the listeners??

In my truck, the distance between those locations is almost exactly 28" and I could relatively easily mount an SI M65 in each location and add another amp for a gain of 6db??

Another obvious question, Is it correct that each driver in the array should be in the same sized enclosure??


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

You only need to aim drivers if the wavelength they're playing is shorter than the driver. 

For instance, 2000hz is 6.75" long. If you're crossing over below 2000hz, and the driver is 6.75", no need to aim it.


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## seafish (Aug 1, 2012)

Patrick Bateman said:


> You only need to aim drivers if the wavelength they're playing is shorter than the driver.
> 
> For instance, 2000hz is 6.75" long. If you're crossing over below 2000hz, and the driver is 6.75", no need to aim it.


PERFECT…the driver is 6.5" and I will likely be crossing no higher then 1800hz, probably even much lower.

Am I correct in assuming that each of the four drivers should also be in an equal sized enclosure??


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## Pitmaster (Feb 16, 2010)

sqnut said:


> I don't subscribe to the notion that 6.5" drivers can't do mid bass. It all comes down to a solid install and most importantly the tune.


Absolutely, and tuning is everything. Any driver especially midrange on down needs proper install to realize it's potential. A solid foundation is the best place to start, but often overlooked.


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## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

Brute force !


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## Hillbilly SQ (Jan 26, 2007)

I didn't read the whole thread, but have you tried adding distance to the whole front stage to delay the sub? I've gotten pretty good at dialing in the sub-midbass transition in a quadcab truck and have gotten tons of compliments about it. I'd be happy to help you out with it since you're semi-local. I promise I won't oversleep this time


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

Hillbilly SQ said:


> I didn't read the whole thread, but have you tried adding distance to the whole front stage to delay the sub? I've gotten pretty good at dialing in the sub-midbass transition in a quadcab truck and have gotten tons of compliments about it. I'd be happy to help you out with it since you're semi-local. I promise I won't oversleep this time


I have gotten a bunch of ideas from this thread that I want to try but have to find time. I am actually equally addicted to home audio as well, it's a sickness. I may take you up on your offer if I still can't get it to sound right.


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## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

As much as good tuning as correct phase is and helps, there's no tuning out of a cancellation. I would suggest those that are on the tune your way out of anything gang are probably just lowering the output of the rest of the system and making at least one compromise, volume for bass output(not sub bass) this is where the old loud control really make things better at low volumes


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## XSIV SPL (Jun 24, 2014)

oabeieo said:


> As much as good tuning as correct phase is and helps, there's no tuning out of a cancellation. I would suggest those that are on the tune your way out of anything gang are probably just lowering the output of the rest of the system and making at least one compromise, volume for bass output(not sub bass) this is where the old loud control really make things better at low volumes


Actually, if you're running all active and have enough processor to get the job done right, you can pretty much tune your way out of (or into, for that matter) just about any any mess you can imagine.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

oabeieo said:


> As much as good tuning as correct phase is and helps, there's no tuning out of a cancellation. I would suggest those that are on the tune your way out of anything gang are probably just lowering the output of the rest of the system and making at least one compromise, volume for bass output(not sub bass) this is where the old loud control really make things better at low volumes


Agreed. When you have two speakers in phase, you get a peak that's six decibels loud.

But when you have two speakers out-of-phase, you get nothing. Nada. Zilch. Doesn't matter if you're applying ten watts or ten thousand. You get no output.

This makes it *really* difficult to fix dips in the response.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

I find it funny when a some of the competitors say things like a 6.5" can never give you the impact on a kick drum and that you need 8-10" woofers. Hear most floor standers with a sub, much?


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## niceguy (Mar 12, 2006)

Just a thought re OEM systems...I too used to feel discouraged thinking my stuff didn't sound as impressive as some stock systems but I realized that 1) stock systems are eq'd and boosted like crazy to cover the sub and midbass duties and while some do sound decent, 2) they are just that, decent, ok for basic sound reproduction but not great at anything in particular be it highs, midrange, midbass or sub bass . They also can't cover the sub and midbass duties with any considerable volume without falling apart sound wise though are some very good and expensive oem setups out there.

You may be expecting too much out of the midbass range? As mentioned, you still need some help from the subs. Imo lol


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## strakele (Mar 2, 2009)

sqnut said:


> I find it funny when a some of the competitors say things like a 6.5" can never give you the impact on a kick drum and that you need 8-10" woofers. Hear most floor standers with a sub, much?


Most floor standers can't do it either. Mine have ported 8's, and can kinda almost do it. I listened to everything I could find sold in a physical store, and few if any tower speakers I heard with 7" or smaller bass drivers really had any impact. Any speakers can benefit from a sub.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

strakele said:


> Most floor standers can't do it either. Mine have ported 8's, and can kinda almost do it. I listened to everything I could find sold in a physical store, and few if any tower speakers I heard with 7" or smaller bass drivers really had any impact. Any speakers can benefit from a sub.


I agree that any normal floor stander can benefit from a sub, unless you're using something like the CV SL-15. My point was that a 6.5 mid bass with a sub will get the job done, both at home and in the car.


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## strakele (Mar 2, 2009)

sqnut said:


> My point was that a 6.5 mid bass with a sub will get the job done, both at home and in the car.


And my point that was if you're looking for realistic levels of volume and impact, a 6.5" midbass isn't going to cut it in the car or at home. For the average user, sure. Though I wouldn't necessarily consider this a forum for average users.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

strakele said:


> And my point that was if you're looking for realistic levels of volume and impact, a 6.5" midbass isn't going to cut it in the car or at home. For the average user, sure. Though I wouldn't necessarily consider this a forum for average users.


Five years ago al lot of the top cars (82+ scores at finals) used 6.5-6.75" mid bass drivers and they sounded incredible. Today I guess most competitors are swayed by the trend of larger mid bass drivers as they will get louder on more power. But in terms of SQ 85 five years back with a 6.5" woofer and a sub is the same as 85 today using a 10" midbass and sub......


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## strakele (Mar 2, 2009)

The only thing scores from competitions should be used for is to roughly compare the performance of cars judged by the same person(s) on the same day. Comparing scores over years is completely pointless. The TV that Consumer Reports gave a 92% rating to this year looks a hell of a lot better than one they gave a 92% to 5 years ago. Same concept. I've had 10 point swings with the same tune and the same judge on different days.

Not to mention SQ comp judging material isn't exactly what you'd call punchy. If you're basing all of your comments on the scores made with the music used at competitions, then sure, all you need is a 6.5. But in real life with real music, that's not really the case.


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## claydo (Oct 1, 2012)

Lol, I'm afraid a pair of 6.5s for midbass wouldn't last long in my car. Pretty sure I'd destroy them........hell, I'm rough on my 10s....lol.

I started out with 6.5s, the allure for more clear volume took me to 8s.....the same desires lead me to a 10......I don't know where it goes from here?


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

niceguy said:


> Just a thought re OEM systems...I too used to feel discouraged thinking my stuff didn't sound as impressive as some stock systems but I realized that 1) stock systems are eq'd and boosted like crazy to cover the sub and midbass duties and while some do sound decent, 2) they are just that, decent, ok for basic sound reproduction but not great at anything in particular be it highs, midrange, midbass or sub bass . They also can't cover the sub and midbass duties with any considerable volume without falling apart sound wise though are some very good and expensive oem setups out there.
> 
> You may be expecting too much out of the midbass range? As mentioned, you still need some help from the subs. Imo lol


I think you nailed it right here, I totally agree. I probably am expecting too much out of the midbass in this truck. It sounds nice and blended. It's just that thinking that we all get, that it's never quite finished or good enough.


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## bugsplat (Nov 7, 2014)

My cars all lacked mid-bass. Tried larger drivers and more power. Neither solved my desire for the chest thumping kick-drum I wanted. The bass felt anemic and muddy. I dropped a couple 6.5 silver flutes into small .3cf enclosures inside the cab and boom, I had my kick. Tight accurate bass from 80hz-1000hz. I don't care what people say "sealing" a door is never going to happen unless you fiberglass a pod on the door. Its full of holes or at the very best has a very weak seal. People get all religious sealing the drivers well to its surface but there are still openings for air to get around. I stopped using my doors all together. Too many variables to try and fight when a small pod worth $3 of supplies at Home Depot will do. TA and phase alignment from a DSP will put that sound where ever you want anyway.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

^^ Couldn't agree more.

I've been getting really good results 3D printing enclosures, and then making a CLD sandwich. It's amazing how inert it is with CLD. Like tapping a piece of marble.


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## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

claydo said:


> Lol, I'm afraid a pair of 6.5s for midbass wouldn't last long in my car. Pretty sure I'd destroy them........hell, I'm rough on my 10s....lol.
> 
> I started out with 6.5s, the allure for more clear volume took me to 8s.....the same desires lead me to a 10......I don't know where it goes from here?


Lol so true!!
Once you get 80 hz to play at the volume that you want, do you just want more of it makes it so you can turn your sub up louder and actually have it blend I love my tens but I'm actually thinking 12 right now


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

strakele said:


> Comparing scores over years is completely pointless. The TV that Consumer Reports gave a 92% rating to this year looks a hell of a lot better than one they gave a 92% to 5 years ago. Same concept.


Not really, in the case of the TV, technology has under gone quantum changes over the past 5 years. In the case of the car, quantum jumps only happen when either technology takes a jump in tuning tools or if there is a wave of Jordan level tuners. Technology has inched along and the top 10 Jordans of tuning five years ago are still in the top 5-6 today.

Sure there will be cases of variances as you mentioned, but when you factor in thousands of car judged by 100's of judges and look at the big picture, the correlation will be there.


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## ErinH (Feb 14, 2007)

These are all based on my needs as a listener....



sqnut said:


> My point was that a 6.5 mid bass with a sub will get the job done, both at home and in the car.


I disagree.




strakele said:


> And my point that was if you're looking for realistic levels of volume and impact, a 6.5" midbass isn't going to cut it in the car or at home. For the average user, sure. Though I wouldn't necessarily consider this a forum for average users.


I agree.



sqnut said:


> Five years ago al lot of the top cars (82+ scores at finals) used 6.5-6.75" mid bass drivers and they sounded incredible. Today I guess most competitors are swayed by the trend of larger mid bass drivers as they will get louder on more power. But in terms of SQ 85 five years back with a 6.5" woofer and a sub is the same as 85 today using a 10" midbass and sub......


When's the last time you competed in MECA? What did you think of the cars you got to hear 5 years ago and recently? Did you get to high enough for your liking on the volume knob?


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

ErinH said:


> When's the last time you competed in MECA?
> 
> What did you think of the cars you got to hear 5 years ago and recently? Did you get to high enough for your liking on the volume knob?


Never, but since you do, can you really say that cars that score 85 at finals today are much better than cars that scored 85, 5 years ago with smaller mids? Mind you, better at 85-90db not at 120 db. I've already said the smaller mid will not be as clean at 120, and occasionally I will feel like I need more volume. Maybe 1-2 times a year. For the balance 343 days, no issues the 6.75 does the job. How well the mid is installed and isolated also goes a long way.


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## ErinH (Feb 14, 2007)

they've all gotten better. across the board. 

You're talking about two things, though. Do you want to hinge your argument on person's desires for their daily enjoyment or what a person needs to win a competition?


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## Hillbilly SQ (Jan 26, 2007)

Why not just run the sub up to around 100hz and let smaller midbass drivers cruise along? I know I'm lucky with the sub location in my truck so I can get away with more than people with trunk cars so...but if the sub is underhung or xbl2 it should have no problem staying planted firmly on the hood with everything else crossed at 100hz. Even my standard Arc 10 holds its own crossed higher and it's nothing special.


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## claydo (Oct 1, 2012)

I don't know the technical answer to why.....but my subs aren't happy crossed over high........they sound funky. I used to run a fifteen that didn't mind 100hz at all, but my lil 8s don't like it, lol.


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## Hillbilly SQ (Jan 26, 2007)

Could just be they aren't able to play clean that high. Eventually I'm going to see if I can get my hands on the new AP Ram 10. I hear it's pretty clean up high.


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## strakele (Mar 2, 2009)

sqnut said:


> Never, but since you do, can you really say that cars that score 85 at finals today are much better than cars that scored 85, 5 years ago with smaller mids? Mind you, better at 85-90db not at 120 db. I've already said the smaller mid will not be as clean at 120, and occasionally I will feel like I need more volume. Maybe 1-2 times a year. For the balance 343 days, no issues the 6.75 does the job. How well the mid is installed and isolated also goes a long way.


Yes, cars today are better. And as you began to allude to, output matters for real music. Especially with the engine on driving on the highway. No, it's not going to make a huge difference at background music levels. But as I've been saying, if you want REALISTIC REFERENCE LEVEL playback, you need to move some air. A standard bass drum is 20-24" in diameter and is played by literally kicking a pedal attached to a lever into the drum head. Think about the amount of force that is and how dynamic that event is in the movement of air. Then look at a little 6.5" speaker...

If you ask a competitor for a demo of their car, they're probably going to play something fun and exciting. Nobody demos with the judging disc. The MECA disc has very little midbass content. So if all you want is to win shows, you're probably alright. Heck I won finals with 6.5" midbasses (supplemented with the front mounted sub). 

It can't have been a very long time period you're talking about where everyone used smaller mids. Most of the well known old school cars used large format midbasses. And for the past several years, all the top competitors have as well. Kirk Proffit, Steve Cook, and Scott Buwalda have won basically everything there is to win SQ-wise in the United States. Multiple times. All use lots of power and lots of cone area. There's a reason.


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## strakele (Mar 2, 2009)

claydo said:


> the same desires lead me to a 10......I don't know where it goes from here?


A pair of ported JBL 2206H... duh.


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## claydo (Oct 1, 2012)

strakele said:


> A pair of ported JBL 2206H... duh.


Yup, have already looked into that.....lmao, as if I had anywhere to put them......


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## strakele (Mar 2, 2009)

claydo said:


> as if I had anywhere to put them......


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## gregerst22 (Dec 18, 2012)

sqnut said:


> Never, but since you do, can you really say that cars that score 85 at finals today are much better than cars that scored 85, 5 years ago with smaller mids? Mind you, better at 85-90db not at 120 db. I've already said the smaller mid will not be as clean at 120, and occasionally I will feel like I need more volume. Maybe 1-2 times a year. For the balance 343 days, no issues the 6.75 does the job. How well the mid is installed and isolated also goes a long way.


It should be apparent to anybody that playing Jazz music at 90db vs rock at 110+db are two different animals. The latter needs more midbass displacement and power to do it right. By that I mean realistically and cleanly. I listen to rock music at that level or higher just about everyday which is the main reason I use the 18WU and with ample power on them. A typical 6.5" mid with 4mm peak xmax might work for somebody else but wouldn't suffice for me. I guess what I'm getting at is isn't the debate about using an 6.5" - 10" midbass all go back to just meeting one's individual goals?


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## Kazuhiro (Apr 28, 2015)

So what I've collected from these replies is that 6.5 is insufficient strictly as a typical 80hz midbass for enjoyable listening even with ideal install? Good game. 

Sent from my HTC_PO582 using Tapatalk


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

gregerst22 said:


> It should be apparent to anybody that playing Jazz music at 90db vs rock at 110+db are two different animals. The latter needs more midbass displacement and power to do it right. By that I mean realistically and cleanly. I listen to rock music at that level or higher just about everyday which is the main reason I use the 18WU and with ample power on them. A typical 6.5" mid with 4mm peak xmax might work for somebody else but wouldn't suffice for me. I guess what I'm getting at is isn't the debate about using an 6.5" - 10" midbass all go back to just meeting one's individual goals?


Plenty of ways to skin a cat. It ain't cheap, but a pair of these will move as much air as a JBL 12"

Faital Pro 8PR200 Speakers - Faital Pro 8PR200 mid-bass, bass guitar speaker and subwoofer 8" speaker that has a lightweight neodymium magnet - Faital Pro 8PR200 400 watt 8" efficiency of 95dB SPL woofer for all high power mid-bass applications. Fa


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

I am sure KP, Cook et al cars are 20% better today than they were 5-7 years ago, it's not more than that and you'll probably get similar numbers if you ask them. Ninety percent of that gain is down to two factors. First, scary as the thought is, as great as they were 7 years ago they all got better at tuning over time. Next, the resolution on the dsp improved and we now TA in 0.01 m/s and eq in 0.01db steps. Big difference from say 0.02 on TA and 0.3db on eq, which was considered best in class in the past. 

The balance 10 % comes from playing with placement / install tweaks / equipment selection etc. The contribution of the 10" mids they run today towards that 20% jump in SQ is only a small fraction of the 10%. The bigger mids just makes the blow away experience say 5 db louder and we're blown away way more.

The top guys would still be at the top if all they could use was the smaller mid while everyone else competed with 10" woofers. The larger woofers are great for hearing it louder and louder blow away demo's. 

I can understand a lot of the competitors and non competitors using bigger mids to get it louder, but I have a huge problem with the section claiming that you can't get visceral midbass out of a 6.75 that is well enclosed and isolated, at normal listening levels. If we leave the competitors aside for a bit, there's a decent crowd here following this topic across multiple threads, hoping to shoe horn in 10" for that magical midbass. For this crowd, if you can't tune a 6.75 to blow away mid bass impact levels.....just dropping in 8's may not be the best solution. Tune the 6.75's right and you're good to ~ 100-110 db levels. Then worry about 8's to turn it up to 125db .


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

gregerst22 said:


> It should be apparent to anybody that playing Jazz music at 90db vs rock at 110+db are two different animals. The latter needs more midbass displacement and power to do it right. By that I mean realistically and cleanly. I listen to rock music at that level o


Not sure what sort of jazz you're talking about, but the one I listen to has a ton of mid bass content.


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## Alextaastrup (Apr 12, 2014)

Fragile by Cassandra Wilson has even more midbass 

Love to ejoy this music during driving - applying 6,5'' in front (63Hz, 2.order) + sub in a trunk (40Hz, 1.order). Unusual? With correct TA it gave me the most clean sound around the crossover point.


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## gregerst22 (Dec 18, 2012)

sqnut said:


> Not sure what sort of jazz you're talking about, but the one I listen to has a ton of mid bass content.





Alextaastrup said:


> Fragile by Cassandra Wilson has even more midbass
> 
> Love to ejoy this music during driving - applying 6,5'' in front (63Hz, 2.order) + sub in a trunk (40Hz, 1.order). Unusual? With correct TA it gave me the most clean sound around the crossover point.


Do you listen at 110db - 120db? Is it still clean? I'll go back to what we're trying to individually achieve. For me it's clean, realistic sound up to live rock band levels. I've mostly had 8's or 9's like the ZR800's with lots of power so I had gobs of midbass to misuse and abuse at my fingertips. But I've learned that less can be better. Steeper slopes and cutting back the bloat in the upper midbass region tightens and cleans it up. 

I don't think it's absolutely necessary to use big midbass drivers but from experience I understand their benefits. They can make tuning that region much, much easier. There's a lot more leeway and flexibility to play with so you can dial in your tune to suit your vehicle, other system components and needs. 

At higher volume they can handle demanding passages and dynamics of any music with aplomb where a 6.5" can struggle and won't be able to play it as cleanly and maybe bottoming out. One can certainly get a 6.5" perform at 120db but in all likelihood comprises would need to be made to crossover and eq so that it doesn't hit it's more constrained limits, compromises that don't need to be made when more capable midbass drivers are used.

When competing in anything it's natural to want to seek any advantages available to us. If I can use 8" drivers that I know will play better in every regard over a 6.5' I would certainly choose to do that.


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## claydo (Oct 1, 2012)

Sqnut.....yer so hard headed you don't even see you're arguing different points than everybody else. By now it's obvious you're arguing because you run 6.5s and feel that's more than enuff woofer for everyone, thank you very much. You're also arguing that a 6.5 can be tuned accurately, well no **** sherlock, of course it can. What you're really arguing tho is listening preference. Can you tune 3.5" speakers to play accurately in a near field environment.......why yes, yes you can.......can you tune a concert pa to play accurately in a large venue......why yes, yes you can. Now what's the difference between these two setups, hey, they both play acurately.....right? I'll tell you the difference.......volume preference. That's is of course an extreme picture I'm painting, but at its heart it's the same arguement everyone is giving you.....yet you keep arguing yer own little view of how a 6.5 should please everyone. Given the choice between the concert pa crammed in my living room, or the near field 3.5s.......my wife would gladly choose the 3.5s......she likes her music at or below conversational volume........now being I have 10" midbasses in the car.....care to take a wild guess which one I'd choose? One man's "loud enough" does not make everyone happy.....never has....never will. If it did this hobby would be mighty boring.......


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## claydo (Oct 1, 2012)

Ok....so maybe hard headed was too harsh....let's go with stubborn. Don't wanna start any name calling, lol.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

gregerst22 said:


> When competing in anything it's natural to want to seek any advantages available to us. If I can use 8" drivers that I know will play better in every regard over a 6.5' I would certainly choose to do that.


But you're only being judged at what, 85-90db levels? At that level is your 8" giving you any advantage over my 6.75? Assuming same tuning skill and that is a HUGE variable.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

claydo said:


> Sqnut.....yer so hard headed you don't even see you're arguing different points than everybody else. By now it's obvious you're arguing because you run 6.5s and feel that's more than enuff woofer for everyone, thank you very much. You're also arguing that a 6.5 can be tuned accurately, well no **** sherlock, of course it can. What you're really arguing tho is listening preference. Can you tune 3.5" speakers to play accurately in a near field environment.......why yes, yes you can.......can you tune a concert pa to play accurately in a large venue......why yes, yes you can. Now what's the difference between these two setups, hey, they both play acurately.....right? I'll tell you the difference.......volume preference. That's is of course an extreme picture I'm painting, but at its heart it's the same arguement everyone is giving you.....yet you keep arguing yer own little view of how a 6.5 should please everyone. Given the choice between the concert pa crammed in my living room, or the near field 3.5s.......my wife would gladly choose the 3.5s......she likes her music at or below conversational volume........now being I have 10" midbasses in the car.....care to take a wild guess which one I'd choose? One man's "loud enough" does not make everyone happy.....never has....never will. If it did this hobby would be mighty boring.......


Find me one post where I have said that if you want to play it 120+ loud AND clean you can get there with a 6.5, you can't. But that doesn't mean at 100-105db which is _my_ ref for loud, the 10" gives you any advantage over a well enclosed and isolated 6.5. At a 100db the car with the better tuner would win. Raise that judging bar to 110db, now Car A with 10" and car B with 6.5" and tuners of equal skill, the car with the 10's would stomp the the one with the smaller mid.

That is the sum total of my argument. 

[edit] OTOH almost everyone seems to be saying that you can't get real experience without 8-10" mids, really? Not even at more moderate 100db levels? In any case real is a qualitative term not quantitative. Just ignore me and carry on, I'm out of here in any case.[edit]


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## ca90ss (Jul 2, 2005)

sqnut said:


> Find me one post where I have said that if you want to play it 120+ loud AND clean you can get there with a 6.5, you can't. But that doesn't mean at 100-105db which is _my_ ref for loud, the 10" gives you any advantage over a well enclosed and isolated 6.5. At a 100db the car with the better tuner would win. Raise that judging bar to 110db, now Car A with 10" and car B with 6.5" and tuners of equal skill, the car with the 10's would stomp the the one with the smaller mid.
> 
> That is the sum total of my argument.


Even at 105db with all else being equal a larger driver will be more efficient and have lower distortion.


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## strakele (Mar 2, 2009)

sqnut said:


> I am sure KP, Cook et al cars are 20% better today than they were 5-7 years ago, it's not more than that and you'll probably get similar numbers if you ask them. Ninety percent of that gain is down to two factors. First, scary as the thought is, as great as they were 7 years ago they all got better at tuning over time. Next, the resolution on the dsp improved and we now TA in 0.01 m/s and eq in 0.01db steps. Big difference from say 0.02 on TA and 0.3db on eq, which was considered best in class in the past.


You sure talk with a lot certainty about people and cars you have never met or heard. The processor KP uses was released in like 2004. .02ms delay, .5dB EQ steps. Last I knew what Cook was running, it's going on 6 years old. There is no processor with EQ/level adjustments in .01dB steps so idk what you're smoking there.



sqnut said:


> The bigger mids just makes the blow away experience say 5 db louder and we're blown away way more.


THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN TRYING TO SAY LOL. The larger midbasses make for a more impressive listening experience. Done. You just said it yourself. That is the whole point.




sqnut said:


> I can understand a lot of the competitors and non competitors using bigger mids to get it louder, but I have a huge problem with the section claiming that you can't get visceral midbass out of a 6.75 that is well enclosed and isolated, at *normal listening levels*.



I think part of the disconnect here is what you consider to be normal listening levels. That varies from person to person. I'm in my car for 10 minutes on the way to work, and 10 minutes home. During that 10 minutes, I like to listen to music. My normal listening level is as if I were watching it live. It's not background music, I'm not trying to hold a conversation with anyone, I'm not talking on the phone etc. It is realistic, live, reference level volume. Bigger speakers do that better than smaller ones. Especially when the road isn't the smoothest and my car isn't Rolls Royce Phantom quiet on the inside.



sqnut said:


> If we leave the competitors aside for a bit, there's a decent crowd here following this topic across multiple threads, hoping to shoe horn in 10" for that magical midbass. For this crowd, if you can't tune a 6.75 to blow away mid bass impact levels.....just dropping in 8's may not be the best solution. Tune the 6.75's right and you're good to ~ 100-110 db levels. *Then worry about 8's to turn it up to 125db* .


So everyone should have to go through a 'rite of passage' tuning their 6.5's to sound good before just getting what they should have gotten in the first place based on their listening preferences and goals? I'll admit, I'm a lot more about the destination than the journey, but I certainly would have skipped half a dozen old installs and gone straight to what I have now, had I known what I know now.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

I said I was going to stay out but that didn't last too long thanks to you



strakele said:


> You sure talk with a lot certainty about people and cars you have never met or heard.


After seven years I have decent sound, but if I listen closely, I can still hear differences between the sound in my car and that of my 2 ch. So I can just imagine the sound in those cars. That's why I keep referring to them, as a benchmark.



strakele said:


> The processor KP uses was released in like 2004. .02ms delay, .5dB EQ steps. Last I knew what Cook was running, it's going on 6 years old. There is no processor with EQ/level adjustments in .01dB steps so idk what you're smoking there.


Agree on the eq, not sure what I was thinking. I think the finest resolution is ~ 0.25 db on the helix pro.





strakele said:


> I think part of the disconnect here is what you consider to be normal listening levels. That varies from person to person. I'm in my car for 10 minutes on the way to work, and 10 minutes home. During that 10 minutes, I like to listen to music. My normal listening level is as if I were watching it live. It's not background music, I'm not trying to hold a conversation with anyone, I'm not talking on the phone etc. It is realistic, live, reference level volume. Bigger speakers do that better than smaller ones. Especially when the road isn't the smoothest and my car isn't Rolls Royce Phantom quiet on the inside.


Agreed, its down to listening levels. I normally don't go much past ~105 db even while on the road, but yes if I wanted to go louder and stay clean, I would use larger mids. 





strakele said:


> So everyone should have to go through a 'rite of passage' tuning their 6.5's to sound good before just getting what they should have gotten in the first place based on their listening preferences and goals? I'll admit, I'm a lot more about the destination than the journey, but I certainly would have skipped half a dozen old installs and gone straight to what I have now, had I known what I know now.


The dude who can't get his 6.5's to sound good will most likely not optimize the performance of the 8's.


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## strakele (Mar 2, 2009)

The Mosconi can actually do .1dB steps if you go into the little menu for each band. It's .5dB from the standard screen. I don't think many people know of or use this feature though.

Either way I think we're sorta starting to reach an agreement here. There are benefits to be had from larger midbass speakers, and they become more and more apparent the higher you crank the volume knob. 

You're right that someone who can't tune a smaller speaker to sound good probably isn't going to have much better luck with a larger one. But if it's midbass output they're after, I'd be willing to bet the larger speaker gets them closer to what they want 'out of the box' than the smaller one would, before starting the tuning process.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

claydo said:


> Ok....so maybe hard headed was too harsh....let's go with stubborn. Don't wanna start any name calling, lol.


 you just assumed I hadn't heard / tuned a car with an 8" mid lol. It's all down to listening levels imho.


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## sqnut (Dec 24, 2009)

strakele said:


> The Mosconi can actually do .1dB steps if you go into the little menu for each band. It's .5dB from the standard screen. I don't think many people know of or use this feature though.
> 
> Either way I think we're sorta starting to reach an agreement here. There are benefits to be had from larger midbass speakers, and they become more and more apparent the higher you crank the volume knob.
> 
> You're right that someone who can't tune a smaller speaker to sound good probably isn't going to have much better luck with a larger one. But if it's midbass output they're after, I'd be willing to bet the larger speaker gets them closer to what they want 'out of the box' than the smaller one would, before starting the tuning process.


^^^ convergence and closure, finally


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## gregerst22 (Dec 18, 2012)

sqnut said:


> But you're only being judged at what, 85-90db levels? At that level is your 8" giving you any advantage over my 6.75? Assuming same tuning skill and that is a HUGE variable.


You're right at that volume the 8 isn't the huge advantage but if I'm competing at a high level I would still choose the 8 because I wouldn't leave it to chance. Maybe the guy next to you wins because he's using an 8 and his midbass is just tiny bit better, enough to sway a judge. 
In the real world if my system can't play cleanly at 115-120db I consider it a fail. That's just my mentality. If I'm investing a lot of time and money into my system I want it to do everything really good.


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## ErinH (Feb 14, 2007)

The one thing that got lost in this debate over who has the biggest midbass is the simple fact that midbass in the car is tough. I covered it earlier and I don't want that to get lost in the shuffle. At the least a good parametric EQ is needed to help remedy what placement choices cause. From there, it's integration of the midbass with the rest of the system. And that isn't easy, either.


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## SSSnake (Mar 8, 2007)

Linked is Dr Geddes paper on audio in small rooms. It provides discussion on modal response and free wave regions. His insights are very good and I would suggest most should review them in depth (I know several in this thread are very familiar with his work).


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## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

SSSnake said:


> Linked is Dr Geddes paper on audio in small rooms. It provides discussion on modal response and free wave regions. His insights are very good and I would suggest most should review them in depth (I know several in this thread are very familiar with his work).


Got a unzipped? Or a link ? I'm intrested


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## Alextaastrup (Apr 12, 2014)

oabeieo said:


> Got a unzipped? Or a link ? I'm intrested


No problems with unzipping with the help of WinRAR. Windows 7


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## SSSnake (Mar 8, 2007)

This is the link to the original brief:

www.gedlee.com/downloads/Audio%20Acoustics%206%2012%2005.ppt

This one is also pertinent to this topic:

www.gedlee.com/downloads/OptimalBassPlaybackinSmallRooms.pptx

I think the first paper was earlier in his career. He went from being an advocate of acoustic treatments to address room modes to being an advocate of distributed low frequency drivers to create more frequent modes which helps to smooth the overall freq response. We likely can't do the room treatments in a car for these freqs so the distributed drivers is interesting. In a car and at low bass freqs I am an advocate at midbass freqs it becomes much tougher due to localization cues. I have expressed that earlier in this thread so I will quit beating the dead horse.


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## oabeieo (Feb 22, 2015)

SSSnake said:


> This is the link to the original brief:
> 
> www.gedlee.com/downloads/Audio%20Acoustics%206%2012%2005.ppt
> 
> ...



Thx !

That's a very good read thx for posting .


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## 1FinalInstall (Oct 13, 2013)

Probably the most educational thread I've read! Holy sh#t that's a lot of info.


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

SSSnake said:


> This is the link to the original brief:
> 
> www.gedlee.com/downloads/Audio%20Acoustics%206%2012%2005.ppt
> 
> ...


Thank you for posting this information, I just now had a chance to read through all of it. I am definitely a fan of multiple subs in home audio because my wife would never go for acoustic wall treatments anyway I don't have a dedicated HT room, just a living room used as HT/ listening room.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

SSSnake said:


> This is the link to the original brief:
> 
> www.gedlee.com/downloads/Audio%20Acoustics%206%2012%2005.ppt
> 
> ...


Thanks for that! Here's a subjective review:










AudioKinesis Swarm Subwoofer System | The Absolute Sound

_"It will no doubt be somewhat disconcerting to the makers of large monolithic subwoofers to report the truth here: The Swarm, in fact, worked better than one or two subwoofers, even when those were DSP-adjusted. The effect could itself no doubt have been pushed further along the road to perfection via DSP correction itself or with even more subs. And optimal results depended on some experimenting with position. But even a relatively simple sort of randomization and an adjustment of overall levels gave surprisingly convincing results—by any standards of bass performance in rooms. (The bass amplifier supplied allows a single parametric EQ as needed, usually to eliminate the floor-to-ceiling boom.) The amplifier can also be used to provide a high-pass crossover to the main speakers if desired. I mostly worked with the main speakers running full-range. (I tried PSB Alpha B1s, Infinity P363s, and Stirling Broadcast LS3/6s.)

This idea of multiple woofers giving multiple drive points for bass really did strike me as the way to go in practice. I think this is the future of bass in rooms. Period. In the practical world, I think there won’t be any doubt in your mind, once you have heard the Swarm system, that for the true seeker of ideal bass, multiple woofers are the way to go._"


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

ErinH said:


> The one thing that got lost in this debate over who has the biggest midbass is the simple fact that midbass in the car is tough. I covered it earlier and I don't want that to get lost in the shuffle. At the least a good parametric EQ is needed to help remedy what placement choices cause. From there, it's integration of the midbass with the rest of the system. And that isn't easy, either.


I think I figured out what one my main problems are. I should have never sold my miniDSP I ordered a cheap calibrated Dayton mic from parts express (I was using just a free app and iPhone mic to measure) and downloaded audiotool and found out I have a few nulls falling between bands on the graphic eq on my 80PRS. I plan to add a miniDSP back in or another form of PEQ when cash flow gets a little better. I know this did kind of end up an argument on what size midbass is the best, but I did learn a lot of information in the process. Thank you Erin and everyone else for advise, ideas, and info.


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

I know this thread is starting to get pretty old but I feel the need to update it. I ended up purchasing Jl audio zr800 8" mids and finally got them temporary installed in my doors. I am blown away by the midbass output I have now. I dropped my crossover down to 50 and turned off my sub just messing around and it sounds awesome even without the sub. I haven't got my miniDSP or new amps hooked up yet. Can't wait to get everything put together and cleaned up. I have never had this much midbass in a vehicle, my sub always has to pickup the slack. Also, I didn't have to cut any metal, very very pleased


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## aholland1198 (Oct 7, 2009)

When you have a chance, would you mind sharing your RTA results of the new jl drivers? 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## cjbrownco (Apr 30, 2014)

Yes, I will definately share. It may be a while before I get everything finished up and ready for measuring and tuning. I'm having to work on it a little bit at a time with very little spare time. I picked the wrong time of year to completely redo my system


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