2 or 4 speakers?

[Rafiano]

hi...just went to AutoAcoustic and the guy told me to ditch my rear speakers and use only 2 component speakers and 1 subwoofer...Whats the rationale? I have heard this before, it is the same as playing stereo but no surround right? I listen to instrumental guitar (flamengo) most of the time...

[Kwongwing]

If you have nothing already installed - you can play along i.e. just install the front and worry about the rear later.

If rears already in, then just retain them and don't bother to change.

For the gurus, when one is into imaging, etc. the rear speakers tend to be a distraction - when you are in the font seats, effectively you are NOT supposed to be hearing your rear speakers UNLESS you are into a surround sound set-up then it is a different scenario altogether.

[Rafiano]

oic...but i have already purchased a JL audio 2 way speaker...because my punto has small rear speakers at the back..

[Kwongwing]

The JL Audio spkrs are co-axial 2-way or 2-way component spkrs?

If it is the latter just use them for the front lol

Ultimately, the choice is yours. Come tonite and listen to our simple front component systems.

FYI, my 2 pairs of rear speakers are all totally disabled, until I re-install my own HU - you can try out my system just for fun! See ya!

[Rafiano]

its 2 way coaxial speakers....

[Kwongwing]

Since you already got it then just install lol!

Like I said, come tonite and listen to various setups then make your decision.

[Ae86]

Normal practice is to have the front speakers as main imaging speakers and the rear speakers are used to add ambience.The sound coming out of the front rear speakers will create the correct soundstage, width and depth when tuned correctly.sad to say in many cases the rear speakers tend to spoil the sound stage by pulling the whole image more to the rear as the rear speakers are mounted higher than the front speakers and the sound from the rear will reach the listener first as the path length is shorter.Time alignment, tuning and eq as well as changing the placement of the front speakers can solve this problems.

[Hyun]

dear guru ae86,

 

i donno how to tune rear speakers leh. :~( short of letting some processor do the DTS or whatever cineleisure theatre effect, i'm just shooting in the dark. so far i tried to first get the TA distribution right by facing front but listening to rears only and trying to achieve a similar spread of TA only for the rears.

 

then comes the trick of timing it with the front. u mentioned ambience, i suppose u'd expect a delay from the back. and how much, is just a matter of taste? any science? and any preference for output volume ratio compared to the front?

[Toalson]

My ride's rear speakers are mounted at the door, same as the front. I only find the rear starts to distort the sound at higher volume. Thus I had faded a little more to the front and there was improvement but not when there is a lot of bass. The rear speakers then became rather irritating.

 

Was advise to get at least co-axial that give similar characteristic as the front so that it wont cause so much distort when driving at higher volume. Although ideal is to get component for the rear as well.

 

I prefer a more surround feel thus not keen to totally fade or remove the rear speakers.

[Rafiano]

thanks for the reply..just wondering whetehr u cna recommend me any installers near my place..yishun...thanks

[Ae86]

Actually I read over the net on an issue about sound stage and imaging states that the singer should sound like standing on your car's bonnet performing to you and the music must stretch beyond the 2 passenger seat,the correct placement and angeling of speakers plays an important part in achieving good and realistic sound stage, the use of ta,eq and x-over points are just to help with fine tuning.1 of my friend asked me why i did'nt install a dsp unit which i think you still need to spend alot of time in the car for tuning. Alot of installers used the isaca sound test cd or the sheffield lab sound test cd to tune the staging but I ever tried listening to certain cd on head phone or hi fi and try to note down the stage image and then play the same cd in the car and try to get as close to the staging i heard earlier as possible through trial and error which is a very diffcult and time consuming thing to do. There is'nt any theory on how much to delay the rear speakers you have to keep adjusting the ta until the wohle sound hope that this helps.

[Hyun]

it's relatively easy to try to analyse how front positioning and tuning can affect soundstage, but rears are cheeminology. the rear sound might not even travel direct to the ears, with all those seats blocking, and the low positioning of some rear speakers.

 

since speaker positioning can hardly be played much in most setups, we're down to levels, fading, EQ and TA. i suppose it's all trial and error from there.

 

and many setups can't even adjust individual rear levels and EQ, which sort of simplifies matters to just fading and TA.

 

and when it comes to TA, with 2 variables in play, the rear left and rear right, even finding a correct ballpark "starting value" to begin is tough enough. we could rely on just physical distance with respect to the fronts and start from there, but with the fader usually turned towards front, it must be awfully hard to even listen to the rears or try to imagine the reverb or some other effect it's generating. and all this while we might worry about sound cancellation.

 

thought maybe someone might have a systematic method of figuring out rear tuning ...

[Bobcatsysop]

Hi Bro,

 

<< Actually I read over the net on an issue about sound stage and imaging states that the singer should sound like standing on your car's bonnet performing to you and the music must stretch beyond the 2 passenger seat,the correct placement and angeling of speakers plays an important part in achieving good and realistic sound stage, the use of ta,eq and x-over points are just to help with fine tuning.>>

 

I very much agree with that and I tried very hard to get this ideal soundstage of mine where my centre ionizer is my "invisible" centre speaker where the centre vocal comes out from just at the centre spot front windscreen and the soundstage goes beyond the 2 front passengers seat. Am trying to get there.. Perhaps one day during the Wed ICE meetup, you could try to listen to my 2-way passive setup. I have my stock clarion rear 6x9 coaxial speakers as my rear fill and one 10" shallow sub-woofer at the boot.