I setup my different speaker options and played a number of songs back to back. I've figured out what I like and don't like. Even with good tonality it drives me crazy to have a low sound stage and poor imaging; apparently I've become a music snob.
Keep in mind I've done all of my testing so far with passive crossovers. My thought is to get things a close as I can before committing to the number of amps and installing my Helix DSP Pro processor. I plan to build an amp rack out of 1-5/8 tubing so I only want to build it once.. Famous last words.
All of the center dash baffle options were too focused at center. I tried adding a second set of 1" tweeters firing straight up on the corners of the dash by the A-pillars and it helped bring the center vocals right in front of me where I wanted them but the sound wasn't as clean and imaging seemed smeared across the dash if that makes sense. Instrument and vocals lost some of their definition in placement. That option is definitely out so I went back to just tweeters in the center dash.
The center mounted tweeters with shallow or deep waveguides seemed to have very similar imaging. I've gone back and forth on the two versions thinking one or the other moved vocals more directly in front of me then I would think the opposite as it changed depending on the song and appears to be somewhat affected by volume. The waveguide may be a complete waste of time as it's not a real engineered waveguide. The mouth exit diameter is 4.3" (wavelength of 3100Hz) but the taper and depth is based on space required to fit my AC vent and the e110 wire frame dome protection won't allow me to bring the guide all the way in to the edge of the dome. Regardless, the image is too focused at the cowl hood scoop.
I disassembled the e430 center channel and placed the e430's in small test enclosures in the kick panel door hinge access cutout pointing up at the rear view mirror. I retained the center mounted deep waveguide e110's along with the e650's for midbass achieving the best results so far. The e430's brought the image from center to directly in front without smearing the imaging. I still noticed a slight rainbow affect with male vocals on certain songs, although not as pronounced as without the e430's in the kicks, and I think I can clean it up some by tweaking crossover points. This looks to be the best compromise without cutting into the car. If I didn't have glass and a final painted dash installed I might have been up for fabricating dash mount recessed tweeter locations but I'm well past that now.
I have to cut the old Focal tweeter locations out of the Screamin' Performance fiberglass kick panels so it looks like I'm going to mock up the e430's in their place. We'll see if I can come up with enough energy to do something this weekend.
Here's the deeper center mount I tested with.
Untitled by
Ryan Erickson, on Flickr
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