Capacitors on factory dash speakers
 

I noticed there is a capacitor soldered to the speaker assembly. I'm guessing it's to filter out the low frequency signals. I've already a set of dayton audio 3" woofers along with a inline 800HZ high pass filter ready to drop in and in the process of mounting them. They are 3" only so require different mounts unless I can adapt the factory mounts.

Anybody have an idea what the specs are? I'm looking to dissect the factory speakers to reuse factory connectors and mounting hardware. If the specs are right I can save my high pass filters for the rear speakers and pick out all the useful components before I chuck them out.

edit: hey are 10uF capacitors. Crossover point at 4ohms is roughly 4000Hz according to this chart. a bit high. I recall reading about someone stuffing an 8 or 6ohm 4" speaker with better results than any tweeter.

delete this mods. gracias.

'better results' is extremely relative.

i run the dayton 3.5" point source drivers in the dashboard location, crossed over at 200hz. i like and prefer the sound, but i also haven't run tweeters in a very long time because i find most designs too harsh sounding.

Good tweeters might be a waste on my ears anyhow. Not sure how much of it i could hear. Other than distortion or other unintended noises, sound quality can depend on who's listening. Only one way to find out is to actually play some music through them.

We'll see how it works with the factory crossover point. If it sounds no better than stock I'll slap on the ones I bought.

I just realized that it was your post that i read about the no tweeter thing. I've been lurking on parts express after reading that post.

if you start feeling different, check out madisound.com as well ;)

Edit: taking it to PM so as not to hijack.

@Griever423 dont worry about thread jack. I'm curious what advice soundman has on these as well.

The 3.5 point source drivers are rated at just 10W rms and 8ohms resistance, tho according to actual users they handle a lot more power (50rms) with very good results. I dont know about powering the door AND dash with 25w rms.. 25w at 4 ohms is roughly 12w at 8ohms. Divide that by 2 for the door speaker, now you have 6.25w to the daytons and 25w for the door's 2 ohm speaker. This does not sound like a recipe for good sound, but who knows? They still might be an improvement over stock. Try it and let us know!

I think these were designed to run in place of tweeters paired with woofers. I wonder how a small full range in place of tweeter in a 2-way speaker set up would sound hooked up to 100 watts.

you're making too big a deal out of this ;)

my daytons are ran off the 'front'(1/2) channel of an alpine pdx v9, a 5-channel amp rated at cea-rated 100x4, and 500x1 RMS.

what kills speakers is heat. plain and simple. many will say distortion kills speakers, but it's not entirely true. distortion is a leading symptom, but not a leading cause.. distortion is what happens when a driver is pushed past the mechanical and electrical limitations of any speaker, and the extra energy has to go somewhere, so it creates heat, and as a side effect, creates audible distortion.

speakers really only take what they need. as long as the physical attributes aren't exceeded by implementing proper crossover points, there's almost no risk of blowing out a speaker.

overall, wattage represents cone control-- the more watts, the better the amplifier can control and manipulate the speaker as it needs to produce the desired result, in this case, clean, undistorted sound.

it's no different than driving a 1200 hp car in traffic-- you're not using even half of that to move up with traffic, you just use as much as you need.

So you're saying its like a miniature conjoined twin to the woofer and amp. It take just a small percentage of the total nutrients consumed. Or a benign tumor?

Under powering has no other downside for the speakers other than less cone control?

I'm just learning this. Most I've done is change out head units and speakers on cars. Appreciate the insight.

i don't know enough about nutrient stuff to know if that's an accurate assessment!

underpowering just means that there's less of everything-it moves the speaker less, and presents less power, so there's less heat potential. it's safer to use less power than more power unless everything is set up correctly.

The technical term for this characteristic is "Amplifier Damping Factor". Here's more detail:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damping_factor

Quick definition: A high damping factor indicates that an amplifier will have greater control over the movement of the speaker cone, particularly in the bass region near the resonant frequency of the driver's mechanical resonance.

Damping Factor is not necessarily related to an amplifier's power output but larger amplifiers usually have a higher (more aggressive) Damping Factor. DF generally only comes into play when dealing with larger, more massive drivers like woofers and subs.

big amp goes WOOF.

little amp goes woof.

i've never claimed to be an expert.

See.. that's what I originally assumed, thinking a 4x50w (more like 4x36w rms)amp would be sufficient for my 100w rms components. Then I did a search for "how to pick the right sized amp" or something to that extent. What I found was a lot of conflicting information, but for the most part they say you should have an amp rated for +50% to double the RMS of your speakers. Just on the crutchfield website they got one article saying one thing and another saying to go 50% of total speaker RMS rating, both articles written by "experts." :iono:

I ended up going with a cheap 100w x4 amp by Dual Audio. I can try 100w per channel first, and if that dont work I could bridge it and push 200w per channel. If it does work, I have the option to add another 200w rms for future expansion without needing another amp.

I guess the only down side is not using your speaker's potential and possibly not sound great. I mean.. you've got to hear the thing first to determine if it sounds good or not. si or no?

pretty much

Cool beans :thumbup:

Soundman did a great job explaining everything. But there are 2 small things I would like to correct just for the sake of anyone reading this thread in the future.

1.) The idea that 'speakers only take what they need' is a bit backwards. They are driven, by an amp of some kind, and thus are open to being given more juice than they can handle. Past that, the breakdown of what this does to the coil, speaker, and so on is very good. Just don't make the mistake of treating this like an electrical circuit where ratings are based on a component's draw. Speaker circuits do not work like this. I have seen many people through my career make this mistake and end up thinking the speakers were trash, when in reality they were just pushing too much juice into them over and over. They will take whatever you throw at them until they fail and short.

2.) Under-powering is okay only as long as there is no clipping. Clipping can just as easily destroy a speaker's cone or coil, as it's essentially a direct DC current sustained over time. Speakers work off AC, and that's why they vibrate. The constant reversal of polarity is what makes it move back and forth. Since clipping scenarios essentially provide straight DC current to the speakers, they stop vibrating and are stuck in a fully extended position until the clipping event is done. If you at any point experience clipping, you are risking your speakers damaging themselves from this over-extension that they are not designed to hold. Turn the volume down when you get this, and look to upgrade your amplifier to prevent it from clipping at higher volumes.

That's what I've read about the clipping and under powering speakers.

I think what soundamn was saying is that as long as the speakers are properly crossed over it's not as much of a risk. I suppose this help prevent 'clipping' along with properly adjusting the gain on your amp?

Crossover really only deals with the filtering of frequencies that make it to your speaker. It's the core concept that keeps bass only going to your sub, and treble only going to your dash. It won't prevent clipping, as that happens way before the crossover. The square wave that occurs during clipping will still go through to your speakers. Crossovers in sub amps are actually somewhat effective in mitigating this due to the nature of the signal, but setups for regular speakers aren't quite the same in that regard.

Proper gain is a step in the right direction. The big reason to try and match your wattage of speakers to the amp is for a signal power that makes sense. High wattage speakers with a low wattage amp lends itself very easily to the user turning the amp up too high to get the power they want, and clipping occurs. Good speakers will always sound like they can take more, but the amp just can't provide it.

If you match low-to-low watts then yes, it will be right in the range you expect, but as Soundman succinctly put, the control is lacking and the sound will easily distort as they can't take as much pushing as high-wattage speakers. High-to-high watts solves all this, but is also the reason pricing on these goes up exponentially as you increase in wattage.

This is a very dumbed down version of all this, and is really starting to get into sound theory that many people, even sound engineers that work on tours and whatnot, don't always dive into. At the end of the day, you make a setup that works for what you want. When you want more out of it, or come across problems, there are always answers based on these principles. They just usually include more dollar signs.

Edit: A good read on all this can be found at http://www.prestonelectronics.com/audio/Speakers.htm

Yeah bro, you gotta dumb it down for me. I would double thank your post if I could.

Great article.
Henry Kloss wrote several books on how to produce clean audio in medium powered systems.
It was mostly based on understanding RLC circuits.
A simple example is
http://techtalk.parts-express.com/fi...0&d=1390494636

To me, the most impressive thing about Henry's design is it's simplicity. He accomplished a very clean sound without having to incorporate any flux capacitors. Keep it simple.

That's a pretty bizarre circuit, at least given my brief experiences with crossover design. I can't tell if you posted that sarcastically or not. It depicts a 2nd-order high-pass filter with an L-pad for the SB29 driver, and a 3rd-order lowpass with a Zobel for impedance smoothing and C3 paralleled with L3 as a notch filter to smooth response, perhaps, for the AnarchyTop driver. Where it gets really strange is that the 2nd-order low-pass network for the AnarchyBottom driver formed by L5 and C5 is in SERIES with the xo circuit for the AnarchyTop driver...resulting in what....some kind of esoteric 5th-order result?! For a low-pass filter for a woofer?!? I don't understand that at all. Don't recognize the RLC circuit paralleled to the source, either..?? If this schematic really did come from Henry Kloss, I'd sure love to learn more about what's going on here. Henry has forgotten more than I'll ever know about this stuff....that's a given. Just don't get this. Did I miss something?

Just for fun... and thread drift... here's two pics of my current project. A three-way center channel speaker based upon a design by Joe D'Appolito. One pic shows the cabinet; if you look inside it closely, you can see one of two tuned ports extending from the back wall and an interior wall of the sealed subenclosure for the tweeter and midrange. The pair of woofers is housed in the main enclosure with two tuned ports. The other pic shows the XO boards for the midrange, tweeter, and pair of woofers respectively from left to right. I've attached the schematic, too, for anyone interested.

Edit... probably should have put this in the "What are you doing during COVID stay-at-home" thread. Apologies.

It was a compliment to Henry, and also a tongue in cheek to say messing with a single component in a system seldom improves performance. Crossover design is almost an art.
I met Henry in the 70s and was in awe of his quick brain and very dry humor.
Few realize his many works.
Gained first fame with speaker development, AR1, KLH, Advent. Then Adapted Dolby to small tapes. Three gun projection TV. Made low power amps with amazing clarity. Produced highly selective FM receivers (still sought after today). And many more.

No arguments at all regarding Henry's brilliance, accomplishments, and contributions. Would love to better understand the topology of that circuit, if you can shed any light on it.

Anything relating to putting together a modest power, hi fidelity system is more than welcome. I'm sure anyone looking for this information in the future would be happy to find this as I am.

Any suggestion were to find dumbed down, but accurate, step by step information in regards to speaker and crossover selection and construction?

I've already gotten all my parts for the front speakers. I tried to make a mini enclosure for my 3" daytons in the dash using 1/4 HDF board (left over laminate flooring) and the packaging off a champion oil filter (cardboard tubes). Not enough clearance with the air duct in the way. So now it's just an adapter.

Playing with the idea of adding enclosures for 6.5" woofer or sub woofer with modest power in the rear side locations. Just to fill in the lowest frequencies that the 6 front speaker's are missing. Might be more work than I'll want to do, unless i get "inspired". lol

The short answer is that, to get very good or better results, there's a lot to crossover and speaker design in general, and there's a finite amount of "dumbing down" possible. Fastidious designers make their own measurements of each individual driver's Thiele-Small parameters, calculate box volumes for best damping and desired low-frequency rolloff Q (in general, sealed enclosures will extend deeper and rolloff more gradually for a given driver, but a well tuned ported enclosure will rolloff much more steeply but the onset of rolloff may be a bit lower), calculate and design the front baffle in order to allow for the effects of the baffle step and diffraction, then using all of that information, begin work calculating and designing a crossover that takes ALL of those parameters into account, trying to incorporate specific rolloff slopes, notch filters, impedance smoothing circuits, phase adjustments, etc., for each individual driver so that the summed response of the integrated speaker system is smooth across the spectrum, phase- and time-aligned, without strange impedance peaks or dips at various frequencies that may provide difficulties to some amplifiers, etc.. there's a LOT to it.

Having said that, you can have a lot of fun and actually achieve listenable results (if your standards are commensurately realistic) using readily available published specs for common drivers, freeware crossover and box-design programs, and just diving in. I don't mean to sound discouraging... that's how I got my start almost thirty years ago... although without the software... did the comps long hand back then. After my first pair built and designed from scratch (still in use in my youngest son's house), I dug a bit deeper, learned more, built a few more systems, and in general just enjoyed myself. The only truly GREAT speakers I've built were based upon other people's designs, with only very slight tweaks in the fabrication of the enclosures and slight changes in crossover component selection based upon availability or lack thereof of various parts.

Having said all of THAT... try this..

https://www.parts-express.com/resources

..and just start clicking around the various articles. A lot of it is kind of geared towards selling their products; you can't blame them for that, and their customer support is excellent. There's a lot of good introductory information in those links, and you might enjoy reading through that stuff.

If you want to get a bit more serious, I HIGHLY recommend Vance ****ason's
"The Loudspeaker Cookbook."

EDIT: .. OK, the filter algorithms hate his name. His last name is RICHARDason only "RICHARD" is the nickname that rhymes with "Rick".... as in "Rickason" with a D.

The book is not what what the title sounds like.. it's not just a collection of "recipes" for specific speakers, but rather a great introduction to all of the various aspects of speaker design. When I bought my first copy twenty five years ago, it was kind of a hard slog to get through... if you're starting with zero or extremely limited knowledge of this stuff, you'll still be able to slowly work your way through it, but there's a lot to digest. He writes and explains it all about as clearly as anyone can, and I still refer to that book.

https://www.amazon.com/Loudspeaker-D...5152574&sr=8-1

It's quite expensive on Amazon now... not sure why. Maybe your local library can source a copy for you? It really is just about the best balancing act between over-the-top-technical and too-basic-to-be-useful that I've found.

I'm just wondering how much of the home hi-fi stuff can be applied to car audio. Besides limitations in space and road noise, I dont see how it can be different. A speaker is a speaker regardless where you put it.

For speakers I've ordered exclusively from parts express. They have nice graphs and charts for every speaker. Makes me feel like I've made an informed choice after staring at the specs before buying even if I don't fully understand what I'm looking at.

If I'm super satisfied with the sound quality (I doubt it) of the 2 way components and the dayton 3" with a 800hz high pass, I might not look into it any further. I already have several sketches and designs for side or spare tire enclosure. "just in case" I decide to go that direction. lol I honestly like the way my car dives with more weight in the back anyhow.

They got a few used ones on sale of that book. Thanks for the recommendation!

peni5

edit: I mean PENI5 cough..

it really comes down to the 'room'. overall, with home audio, the room acoustics are pretty straightforward and easily controllable, so the emphasis is more on enclosure and crossover design based on how everything interacts. designs tend to be more passive solutions due to the history of the hobby.

in car audio, the 'room' is a fixed but generally poor design, that cannot be significantly altered, and speaker enclosure design is difficult without a ton of work re-shaping door panels. the emphasis is more on the acoustics of the space and location of speakers than crossover or enclosure design. overall installs tend to be more electronic processing to make everything work within the environment.

speakers are speakers, but many parameters are still important. off-axis frequency response for starters is very important to understanding what it will actually sound like when installed in less-ideal positions.

i'm not an extreme 'number' kind of guy(i end up google-searching diymobileaudio every time for the specifics), but there's also multiple ways to use the t/s parameters to better understand how specific speakers will also handle not being in a tuned enclosure (very simply--part of enclosure design is to provide a specific amount of resistance against cone movement to alter it's response). certain speakers handle that better than others based on mechanical design.

According to this "You can never have too much power" referring to amp power..

By Alan Lofft supposedly:
Ill just have to try both ways and decide for myself. lmao

You think its a better option to go with something like this than this? Or would a headunit with these functions suffice?

When properly set up is the key. You can get a massive amp and then just keep the gain turned way the hell down. But then, why spend the money on the massive amp?

Excess power always carries the potential for damage. Big amplifiers absolutely can cause damage when not set up properly.

Arcing across the cabin from left channel to right channel ...
woo

Only works when plugged into the 240V charging station though.

Makes sense. I think the reasoning behind recommending 50% or 100% more power than the speaker can handle is to ensure you have cushion in available power to adjust to where there is no possibility of clipping due to under power or too much power. There is no way for you to achieve that setting with an amp that only puts out 50% of the total RMS of the speakers.

I don't regret trading in the 4x50w for the 4x100w (even the restocking fee). I've got 100w rms components and 30w rms fullrange. I can do 130w rms per channel if I hook up the dash speaker to the amp instead of headunit power. Or I can port 200W per channel against 100w or 130w rms of speaker. I have a lot of flexibility to try different ways of hooking up to the amp.

Appreciate it fellas! :cheers: I have good feeling about my 'corona sound system' upgrades.

i'd be lying if i said i hadn't considered teslacoil tweeters from time to time!
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UECWVlMTI3I[/ame]


it looks like my past...

so i started off with a set of 5-1/4" pioneer REV-series components(TS-C130's). first car, first sound build, first job making any sort of money. i actually went into a car audio shop knowing nothing and told them to give me the best speakers they could for $300... in a convertible, driven by a "300 watt" obscure thrift store amp, through the passive crossovers like in your second link.

things went well until i was doing 60mph(lol) on the highway and tried turning it up. the tweeters distorted horribly. i dealt with it(and blew up 2 or 3 amps tinkering).

it wasn't until i installed the same component speakers into my 2nd car, and then started seriously chasing the gremlins that caused that distortion that i really looked into it further. at the time, i fully believed that it was a signal issue, so everything up to the passive crossovers was changed. new hu, new interconnects (monster audio zn6's instead of walmart versions even!) new amp power wire, different amps, and a 6v preamp on top of all of it to feed an overly-healthy signal into all the amps. it's safe to say i sort of went "thor's hammer" on the problem. and the distortion still persisted.

that was when i came to the realization that the issue was that the matching pioneer-supplied crossovers had too low of a tweeter crossover point. so the tweeters were attempting to play below their frequency range...

this conclusion brought me to purchasing your first link-- the clarion mcd360 3-way crossover, was somewhat new to the market.

i special-ordered it through a friend's friend that ran a small audio shop. 3-way networks were relatively new in the early 2000's outside of serious show rigs, so most places didn't even bother stocking such a product.

that was the point that i went full-active, specifically so i could adjust the tweeters crossover point to something higher than what the passive crossover had.

i was very happy with the clarion crossover. it did everything i needed it to with the frequency multiplier on the 1-2 channel. but it's a pain to adjust.
a typical adjustment session went like this: listen, get out, run around to trunk, adjust, run back, sit down, decide it's not enough of an adjustment, run back, etc, etc.

now i've moved on from the clarion crossover to head unit or bluetooth versions that do all that and more!
my car uses a pioneer 80prs and it's built-in crossover controls.
my pickup truck uses a pioneer 80prs that feeds a dayton dsp-408(with the bluetooth dongle so i use my phone to do what i want when i want from the listening position).





after that long path i took, i highly recommend starting with either the dayton dsp or the minidsp alternative. i specifically chose the dayton version because it was cheaper, and i really only needed/wanted the crossover and eq controls. there's been some debate here and there that the minidsp has a better sound, though some of it i believe is audio elitism (the religion that fundamentally, something cheaper cannot ever sound better than something more expensive)

dsp's are stupid-powerful, don't cost much more than the clarion crossover-only, and it gives you a ton of options well and above what most could ever need to tinker with later, which is exactly where i prefer my equipment to be-- where i'm not immediately using every available feature to their fullest extent.

@soundman98 how long have you been running the dayton dsp? Seems a few people have had it go out on them after some use.

Going along with the idea of spending a few bux extra for the DSP, if the signal processing function of a headunit works just as well, why bother with the extra redundant adjustments with an external unit? Is he sound quality superior with these DSP's vs your average or higher end head units?

edit: I wanted to also mention.. It appears the door speaker and the tweeter are NOT powered together with the factory wiring. Not sure where I read that it was. The dash and tweets is one circuit and the door is a separate channel.. Short story, I wired the 3" dayton speaker using the factory connections and factory head unit. Noticeable improvement, though I skipped using the factory capacitor and went with a bass blocker. Sound great all the way up to max volume, but I think the tweeter was starting to ring a bit at maximum volume. Would recommend this upgrade by its self. Low buck way to improve sound easily.

This diagram shows how the dash and door speakers are wired. The dash tweeter and mid-range speakers are both 4 ohms. These two speakers are also essentially wired in parallel with the input to the trunk amp. Together, this presents a 2 ohm load to the HU (assuming the input impedance of the trunk amp is somewhat higher than 4 ohms - which is likely). So, the HU front speaker outputs are driving all six speakers with an amp between the head unit and the door speakers. This means that with factory wiring, whatever adjustments (tone, balance, delay, etc.) that you apply to the front HU output will be applied to all six speakers.
This is kind of an unusual arrangement but it works.

@solidONE - When you connected the 3" Dayton speakers did you essentially replace the factory 4" mid-range, leaving the factory tweeter in place? Or did you remove both the tweeter and the factory mid-range? How is the volume output of the Daytons compared to the door speakers? Are they fairly balanced or are the Daytons quieter than factory, etc? Using the factory wiring there is no way to adjust the volume balance between any of the six speakers but maybe you don't need to?


Thanks!

Okay that make sense. The door speaker work with the dash and tweet disconnected, but the dash speaker will not get power unless the tweeter is also connected. This is why It seems to be a different circuit.

It was just a simple replacement of the factory "3.5" (cone is same size as my 3" dayton). Sound is more crisp and clear while slightly louder than stock, maybe. Sound pretty balanced to my ear. Wil have to try with the tweeters bypassed ala soundman98.

3 parameters for choosing this speaker. Power handling (30wrms), flat response and good off axis response, then cost. For $12 a speaker, I'm pretty surprised. Or maybe the stock just really suck.

Edit: @LimitedSlip I just got done "auditioning" the sound with and without the tweeter. Did this by keeping the tweeter in the passenger side channel and bypassing it in the driver side. Here what I found:

1. The side with the tweeter bypass plays a bit louder. No surprise.

2. Sampling some smooth k-pop R&B styling of DEAN and his broad vocal range. The tweeter channel sounded more 'complex'? here was more definition like in a larger room or concert hall ( this is with all of the bass boost turned off or into the min setting and rear channels completely off. ).

The no tweeter side sounded more natural, like he is sitting right in font of me singing than in a concert hall. The tweeter side sounded "larger?" The no tweeter side I feel lacked some high frequency response. With a different dash speaker with better off axis high end response would probably do better than the one I have without a tweeter.

I didnt want to veer too far off from 4ohm speakers at the time, but I've been eyeing this one to experiment with in the future. Using the little that I know about looking at the specs, this one looks the business.

i haven't had any issues with mine, but i'm just a sample size of one.

i can only speak of the pioneer versions i've got experience with, but i know the kenwood versions have almost identical specifications on paper. i wouldn't count alpines IMprint version as a hu option, as that requires an external processor to make function--IMprint actually drove me to building a full-active car pc back before pioneer and kenwood came out with full active versions of head unit...

anyways, overall the dsp has the same features on paper. but my experience is that it does all of those things better. with a more infinite array of adjustment options.


my first and primary issue with full active with the pioneer is an extremely limited crossover selection. from the manual:

Low LPF: 25—31.5—40—50—63—80—100—125—160—200—250 (Hz)
Mid HPF: 25—31.5—40—50—63—80—100—125—160—200—250 (Hz)
Mid LPF: 1.25k—1.6k—2k—2.5k—3.15k—4k—5k—6.3k—8k—10k—12.5k(H z)
HighHPF: 1.25k—1.6k—2k—2.5k—3.15k—4k—5k—6.3k—8k—10k—12.5k(H z)

alternatively, running it in non-network mode, the front/rear speakers can be set to the following high pass crossovers:
50—63—80—100—125—160—200 (Hz)

for most people, this is fine. in the car, the speakers are fine with those limitations. but i'm not most people. the truck runs these for the mid/tweeters.. they are not happy at 200hz. they buzz. they needed to be ran at 400hz high pass, with a slightly steeper 18/db curve. the dsp allowed me to tailor this to suit the exact issues and correct for it.

the second issue that was also contributed to the first issue is that hu eq is a singular eq. any setting is applied globally to all speakers. so despite a 200 hz, 12db/oct high pass, the +2 eq bump i added at 50hz and 80hz for the door speakers(which handled it perfectly fine) also affected how much my mids buzzed, but it also affects the sub, which doesn't need that bass boost. with the dsp, each set of linked pairs of outputs has it's own parametric(adjustable frequency) eq that is unaffected by any other speaker. so my door speakers get a bump, but my mids get a flat signal.


the dsp also played a critical role in my tinkering when setting up the trucks sub.
i'm using a (horrible, terrible, no-good) sound stream usb10p 'underseat subwoofer' due to space constraints and my own curiosity in new equipment that promise things that deny physics. the dsp made what was a hunk of of electrical components into something that has been faked into sorta working. it required a 35hz/24db hp, 74hz/12db lp and some very dramatic eq-ing to further dump any frequency under 35hz, or above 75hz, but +6db to any frequency from 40hz to 65hz. if i hadn't gone with the dsp before getting the sub, it wouldn't have lasted a week before i built a burning effigy out of it to publicly mock sound stream.


with my pioneer, i've never gotten time alignment to work great. every time i try it, i get headaches from the psychoacoustics, and the sound becomes very noticeably processed and tinny. but i've never tried to align it automatically. sometimes it starts sounding right, but the headache indicates that it's literally because my brain is working too hard to make it sound right...

the dsp offers a few different ways to tune the time alignment, where the hu only offers 'inch' measurements. i'm using it right now to delay the sub to make it better blend using the millisecond delay version.

So these funky speakers actually sound good? These flat panel drives have the best looking off axis performance of all the speaker types, but shyed away from them after reading a couple reviews that said sounded funky. Maybe they just didnt set them up right. I think these would work even better in the dash or side locations.

I suppose the unit can be used to support the dash speaker power and crossover. The DSP take care of everything else powered by the amp. Clear path for upgrade regardless if you install DSP or headunit first and not both.