Need Audio Guru Input...

Ok guys, i know NOTHING about audio. I need to know if these components will work nicely together, and have a good balanced sound.

A heads up, the truck I'm working on is a 96 Eddie Bauer Bronco. I used to have a Tacoma, and honestly this group is much more in tune with things than the Bronco crowd. They're either old and grumpy, or they want to do a full professional show build, which I'm not interested in. I just want a bit more volume and depth than it currently has.

I've gutted the interior and put down butyl damping tiles @ 25% coverage (Per sounddeadnershowdown.com info) and will be covering with 100% CCF and MLV.



1. Do speaker baffles make a difference? Should i add them when putting in new speakers?

2. Do i bother with new speaker wire? It would be easy to run under the carpet with everything pulled right now.

3. I want to run JL Audio C1-690 6"x9" components in the rear panel, and JL Audio C1-650 6.5" components up front. I will mount the tweeters separately.




4. Will a Kenwood KAC-M1814 drive those 4 speakers well? I don't plan on a subwoofer if i can get decent depth out of the 6.5 and 6x9's. If i did, i would run a single 8" powered sub under a seat.

 

45W with 82dB S/N and that amp would be no go ghost rider for me.

You're much better off with this. https://www.crutchfield.com/p_206PXA3004/Kicker-42PXA3004.html?tp=72998

My preference is this. https://www.crutchfield.com/p_161ACM4300/AudioControl-ACM-4-300.html?tp=72998

Regarding the speakers, if you can't put the 6x9s up front, at least put the larger tweeter that comes with them up front and put the 3/4" tweeters in back. I'm assuming they use the same crossover point when I say that, so maybe check into it.

[EDIT] Looks like the tweeters have a filter instead of there being a two way crossover. That being the case I'd definitely put the larger ones up front.

I’ll get back with you on speaker pods. I ordered some to try out, but I need them for a specific reason.

If you’re installing an amplifier, it makes sense to pull new speaker wire when you run your signal and power.

 

First off cool truck!

Yeah you'll want baffles. Ideally you'll seal up the doors too but that may be more of a project than you're willing to tackle (do not seal the drain holes at the bottom). This will get you much closer to the goal of good bass without a sub.

In a vehicle that old yeah new speaker wire.

I would also put the better comps up front.

Not familiar with that amp but giving drivers at least rated power is usually a good strategy. I'm partial to Alpine & JL class D amps personally but speakers are the most important part of all this so if you're gonna spend more I'd put it there...in the front stage. GLHF!

 

What does the red highlighted part mean? As I said, i have no idea what any of these ratings mean or how they correlate to each other. I know what watts, ohms etc are, but not how they pertain to performance.

I can't fit the 6x9's up front, and i'm not interested in doing custom pods. I can easily put the larger tweeters up front.

Thanks for the amp recommendations, that kicker one is actually smaller than the Kenwood, and i'm looking for compact size, thanks!

 

Speaker size is limited by what can fit in the factory locations, i'm not willing to chop up the factory steel. They're flimsy enough as it is.

I don't plan to seal the doors, 23 year old trucks tend to have items fail where they're hardest to reach... lol. I might need to get back in there. If I can just get away with baffles, great.

The sound deadening was all done to reduce road noise vs audio performance, but one cant hurt the other.

 

I want to see more bronco pictures... there's a few around me that i've had my eye on

 

Mine is an Eddie Bauer with the 5.8. Has every option except the hyper rare turn signal mirrors.

It’s mostly stock right now. 31’s and a leveling puck under the front coil.

Trying to get the interior quiet and comfortable before I start taking it camping etc. I ordered a new center console from Desolate Motorsports, as well as their Stage 1.5 kit for the front. I’ll just do dual Bilstein 5100’s up front and a 5160 in the rear until I can cough up the money for 3” internal bypass King coilovers for it. Going to do custom PRP buckets and new carpet inside with the updated sound system. Should be much quieter, and have better tunes.

 

Man that’s a nice bronco. I used to have a dark blue Eddie Bauer 5 speed. Until
My brother borrowed it and totaled it. I have to worst luck with letting people drive my cars.

 

Ah man that’s a huge bummer. I let my gf drive it for a month, and it stressed me out hard.

 

I have to back it up for a sec here because I was in a hurry and guilty of oversight. To start, Signal to Noise describes how much of the total signal from the amplifier is signal and how much background noise. If Signal to Noise is rated at 100dB, this means that the signal is stronger than the noise by 100dB. All things being equal, a 100dB S/N amplifier would have 10dB more signal than noise over a 90dB S/N amplifier.

1-2dB is really almost imperceptible, but 3dB is where you can definitely tell a difference in volume between two sounds. So if you are looking at two amps, and one has a S/N of 3+dB over the other, you should be able to tell that it is "quieter." Obviously in a vehicle, with all the other noise you'll be hearing on the road, you want to approach purchasing equipment with reason, considering all of these factors.

So where I got ahead of myself, and why I'm going to change my recommendation. This S/N specification can be calculated different ways, and you want to compare apples to apples. The Kenwood claims 82dB S/N and the Kicker 95dB. Well, they were calculating this specification differently, where the Kenwood used the CTA-2006 method (@1 Watt), while the Kicker calculated their amplifier at rated power (it looks like).

Now you have to do some math because the difference is significant. To get the value for 1 Watt on the Kicker you have to multiply the rated value's (50 Watts) log by 10. Then you have to subtract the result (about 17dB) from 95dB to see the 1 Watt value. Turns out, the S/N of the Kicker is WORSE than the Kenwood (78dB) when you do that. So, while the THD% is comparable between the two, the Kenwood is 45 Watts, and the Kicker is 50 Watts, but because the S/N of the Kicker is worse, that extra 5 watts doesn't translate into more actual signal volume.

If you perform this calculation with the Audio Control amplifier I linked, you get 85dB S/N, 3dB better than the Kenwood, but also its THD is rated at 0.01% compared to +/- or = 1% of the Kenwood. Like signal to noise, small differences are inconsequential, and generally you need to hit the 1% threshold to even hear it. I'm an audio dork though, so I'll choose the 0.01% THD every time unless there is some other disqualifying factor.

What is THD? It's essentially a comparison of the input and output signals, and the number represents the % deviation between the two. All amplifiers will add harmonic distortion, you just don't want it to become an egregious amount, and you want to consider how THD will stack up as the signal travels from the source unit, through any kind of processor, and finally at the amplifier output.

That said, if your source unit has a ton of THD and shit S/N, it makes no sense to buy high end amplifiers. Just try to keep it reasonable while obtaining your goal (good, fast, cheap).

So, after the second look I just had, I'd look at the AudioControl first, Kenwood second, and forget the Kicker, it sucks. That doesn't mean these are your only options, keep shopping and you might find just the right thing for your project. A ton of other amp manufacturers are out there. If you're aware of the differences in how they calculate these specifications you'll definitely be able to find something satisfactory and probably the Kenwood will work just fine, I just wish it had a little more power, like 60 Watts.

 

Of course I shouldn't have expected you to know this, but usually when the doors are 'sealed', there is a service hatch built in. The goal with sealing is separating the front and rear waves - preventing the two from interfering with one another and, to make a long story short, greatly improving bass and midbass response.

 

I think i comprehended MOST of that lol... That AudioControl seems to be the leader in stats, but will i REALLY notice the difference in performance to justify the doubling in price?

 

Probably not in this case.

 

Cool, i appreciate the honest answer. It makes a difference when a single component costs as much as potentially the whole system i intend to buy.

Do you have any thoughts on the LJ C1 series? I saw somewhere that a lot of people prefer soft dome tweeters vs metal due to sharpness of sound. The C1 series is listed as being aluminum. Good/bad/won't notice?

 

If you listen to music with a lot of horns, acoustic guitar and female vocals you might notice. There’s a fine line between butter and ear fatigue. When the sibilance is too hot you’ll feel uneasy in the same way everything tastes like shit when you have the flu. No matter what you eat nothing tastes nourishing and you end up never playing your stereo loudly.

With easy going tweeters everything borders on sounding liquid rather than mechanical shimmer, especially up in the “air” region (10K+). It’s harder to get chill with metal diaphragms and typically the compromise is roll off. You lose the really subtle things like echoes from finger noise on the string, or that one note that rattled a little bit, or pick noise and especially breathing that would have some reverberation in a large room.

One thing you won’t lose is electro-voice. That’s what I call it when you can hear the electrons better than the organic tone of someone’s voice. I kind of like this effect though I’m not sure it’s entirely intentional. You can really hear electro-voice in today’s female pop artists. It’s like a layer of vocal icing air coming out as they sing softly. It kind of sounds like it lives at the back of your throat.

These are things you may or may not care about, may or may not have the kind of stereo you’d hear the difference anyway, and if you listen to MP3s or stream using Bluetooth, it completely doesn’t matter what your tweeters are made of.

You know it sounds good when you can’t turn it up loud enough, and when you get back in your car later and the stereo resumes, you’re like damn that’s loud AF.

So it’s your call. I trust JL enough to try them out. It’s not like you will be rolling high power where the stakes are greater and small things are more noticeable.

If you decide on 70+ Watts, maybe reconsider.

 

fantastic info, thanks man!! I've spent weeks on facebook trying to get this kind of info from other Bronco owners, and a 50k+ member audio group, and nobody has even remotely broke it down like you did.

Thanks a ton!!

 

Glad I could help, and I’m glad you managed to decipher what I was saying. I kind of go wild sometimes and describing audio is tough because it’s either overly subjective or boringly technical. There’s no real universal terminology for describing sounds so I just wing it with references I feel convey well conceptually.

Keep us up to date. Broncos are rare anymore so it’s cool to see someone doing one up.

 

Ya very cool. Seen this one?

 

Well I was able to read around until the “Your iPhone Has Been Compromised” ad popped up. I hate that shit. So many sites ruined for mobile users with incredibly invasive screen blocking adware.

 

Ya it's run by the same gerbils who run this site but they do a much better job with tw. It's best viewed on a pc with a good ad blocker.