Rear Speakers
 

I've been pondering my options with the sound system installed in the BRZ. To me it sounds "ok"; not bad enough that I want to rip it out and start from scratch but not good enough to leave alone. Adding a sub and the amps to run a complete sound system overhaul would add unwanted weight to the car (I'm sure this was a consideration when Subaru designed the system). Plus, I don't hate the nav unit like many do...I think the nav & audio system are well integrated.

With that said, I just can't get over the lack of fidelity of the rear speakers. They are listed as 4" speakers; not a great sized speaker. I don't mind making the mounting/cut-out holes a little larger to accommodate larger speakers that would provide greater choice.

Has anyone replaced just the rears? What were the results?

You haven't peeled back the plastic panels, yet, have you? The rear speakers are 3", but they're mounted in a giant void on a strip of metal that is bolt to the car. The metal strip is kind of L shaped and holds the speaker at the angle of the L.

You could easily stuff a 6.5" speaker in that void, but the quality of sound coming from such an odd shape would be....odd.

Why would you waste the time and money on rear speakers? Just disconnect them and improve your front stage.

Rear speakers are for rear fill if someone is sitting back there, which this car is small enough not to need them even if someone is crammed back there.

Yeah, I don't see me EVER cramming someone back there. This car is a two seater.

The rear speakers do serve a purpose. When (if) you sit in a living room listening to music, or sit in a club listening to a band, the speakers fire at you and sound is reflected from the walls behind you. This gives the sense of being surrounded by the sound. In a car with just front speakers the sound is directed from your left and right, leaving a void behind you. To me, this is unnatural.

Given the above description, the rear speakers don't have to do a lot of heavy lifting. But the stock rear speakers can't even accomplish this simple task.

Good to know about the speaker cavity, infinite012. I will have to remove the panel and determine the depth of the space. Maybe a mid-grade 4" coaxial (I believe they are 4-ohm) would work well in that location. Perhaps I could also install an amp with speaker-level inputs to help drive those speakers.

A car, club, and living room are all completely different environments for tuning audio.

In a car if you don't have processing and delay for the rear channels its simply duplicates the front. So things that should now be for example between center and left would be coming from behind you.

It also causes issues with getting a good center on the music as well as more problems of bringing the subwoofer in time with your midbass, which leaves it feeling like its coming from the trunk or at best floating between the front and rear.

I'm not tryn to tell you how to set your car up, just giving insight of the issues you run into by having them back there.

They're 3.5s and getting to them is a bitch. You've got to take out the trunk liner to take out the back seats to take off the side panels just to get to them. That being said, once you get the stuff off its easy and there is a ton of room to add larger speakers if you've got the aptitude to build your own brackets.

I replaced all 6 speakers and it made a world of difference. Just note that the door speakers are 2ohm subwoofers powered by an amp in the trunk area. Getting regular 4ohm speakers is a bad idea.

I've always had great experiences with the infinity brand. I'm also running the 6.5 inch Kicker 2ohm subs in the door, they fit in the stock location if you make your own brackets..

I'm also thinking of just disconnecting the back speakers. I don't really see a need for them. Although I do have a 4 channel amp :P

Why?

4ohm is fine for everything but the door speakers and that's assuming we aren't adding an amp.

I agree with Bill 100%, rear speakers are not needed in this car and I wouldn't spend any time or money trying to change them out.

Because the stock amp runs them at 2 ohm which means you need twice the power just to get the same output when running 4 ohms. I mean, you can run 4 ohm speakers but it won't sound any good.

The twos shouldn't be any more expensive than fours so its just a matter of picking out the right speakers.

Good. Electronic crossover separating the doors from the dash and a passive for the dash speakers. Four channels put to good use.

I disagree with Bill. It all depends upon what you are listening to. I like to listen to movies.....Not watch, but listen to. The movies I listen to are ones I can quote without it playing verbatim from beginning to end. Movies are recorded in surround sound. Without the rear fill I am without the intended audio environment. For music, the front is enough MOST of the time. If you are an audiophile and have sacd/dvd-a media, then you really do need rear fill. Several sacd and dvd-a disks were recorded in surround. I also have some of these and enjoy listening to them in my other car and soon in my BRZ. Again, without the rear fill you are missing the listening experience as intended.

Rear fill is not used the majority of the time is cars that are built for sound quality competitions. Everybody has their own preferences so I wouldn't say its wrong to use it but its definitely not needed for most people in a car this size.

Again you are comparing a car to a home enviroment. Do you even know of any headunits that will play SACD in car? I'm pretty sure there are none.

So you would need processing to actually make use of the rear speakers still. Slim to none offer true surround sound either. Unless your source unit has it then you aren't actually doing anything other than cloning the front output. Thats all rear is, a duplicate of the front output in 90% of car stereos.

So even if you are listening to dvd audio in a car, its still not surround sound just incorrect imaging from the rear. Unless you have one of the few units that do 5.1.

If someone wants to run rears fine, but there's no reason to have false beliefs of whats going on.

I wouldn't spend too much time & effort on the rear-speakers either, but from my experience things sounded better (at least fuller) with them there.

My setup: I'm running a RF P500X4D 4-ch amp to components in front and bridged for a single sealed 10" sub in the trunk. Tweeters were mounted in the dash and 6.5" speakers (4-ohm) were obviously in the doors, running full pass-through on the HU and amp, allowing the crossovers to do all the frequency separation. The OEM 3.5" rear speakers are currently being powered by the aftermarket Pioneer AVH-X8500BHS HU.

I accidentally cut the wires to the rear speakers for about a week and drove around without them connected thinking to myself they're virtually useless anyway. But to my surprise, it just felt something was missing. After connecting them back up I was happier with the overall sound. Now I'm wondering if a $50 pair of 3.5" or 4" speakers for the rear, powered by the aftermarket Pioneer HU, is worth experimenting with. Anybody try to install aftermarket 4" speakers to the back? I hear speaker baffles ($7.50 on Amazon for a 4" pair) actually work pretty well for smaller speakers like these.

What did you guys do for the fronts? 3 channels?

I took 30 seconds and google found these three. All 3 are Sony head units, models MEX-DV1000, MEX-DV2000, and XAV-W1.

I have an older alpine in my other vehicle that supports it in surround. There is no DSP and the imaging is correct with it. Just about any car dvd player supports dvd-a and sacd format. Including newer systems. Any new head unit that has toslink out will support it. Last I checked toslink is 100% correct channel presentation in car or home. The toslink out will be correctly setup to present the rear channel and the RCA outputs will also be correct for rear with no DSP required. I do plan on using a DSP in my build. I will start next week on it and be posting it when completed. Just do some research before purchasing and everything will be fine.

Again this is dependent upon the equipment you purchase. Making an assumption that everything being sold by every company is identical is just wrong.

Those are no longer in production, when SACD was the new fad a few companies did it... but they pretty much all dropped support. Sony had tons of issues with their SACD models since they rushed them out to be the first to have them.

Toslink is another ultra rare thing to find on a car Headunit now. Other than finding some older models on ebay thats about the only way its gonna happen.

Wish you luck on your build tho, hope to see somthin on it when your done.

I'm using 6 channels for the front, 3 per side.

Clarification on your question.... are you asking if the front gets "3-way" speakers like kind of what the stock OEMs are? (a tweeter in the dash, a 4" next to the tweeter, and a 6.5" in the door).

I went with "2-way" components with tweeters in the dash and 6.5" in the doors. I have my crossovers under the seat but still looking for a better location. All components that I'm aware of are '2-way" setups, but I've seen '3-way' 6x9s that don't fit this car without some mods. The 4" slots in the dash currently sit without speakers in my setup.

What do you guys think of eliminating the rear speakers and molding a Sub Box that eliminates the armrest area in the rear and utilizes some of the open area behind that panel?

I would like to be able to still fold down the rear seat and keep all my storage area, and this seems like the best place to put a couple of 6" subs.

Would be a bit of work, but would turn out alright if done correctly. I would use a pair of 8s tho, more cone area and there is enough space.

I'll surely end up using what I have for now (a 10" sub) and make a box, but in the long run I'd like to be able to drive to the track without having to take apart my sound system.

For now the car requires a truck with a bed full of E-85 to go to the track anyway...lol

Alpine SPS 410
 

I installed these and insulated/soundproofed the area with Raammat on the sheet metal and Ensolite on the interior panel.
http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/c...ps2bb9c2ba.jpg

If you did the rear speaker upgrade, Raammat, and Ensolite separately and sequentially, how would you rank the impact to your overall sound from each of the three? I was considering buying some 3.5" speaker baffles for the rear speakers to see if the air separation would improve the sound coming from the stock speakers but I starting getting into more suspension mods for the car. That plus most of my sounds are coming from the front components being powered by an amp.

The insulation has the greatest impact, tire noise is less.
Speaker Tweakers made a noticeable difference, Speakers sound better, fuller.
The Alpines have to be at least worth the price ($46) to replace them,
That is my ranking

do those Alpine SPS 410 fit in the stock mount?

Yes with modifications

i wouldn't waste time upgrading the rear fill speakers. I've put 75w rms crossed over at 110Hz without any distortion at high volumes so the drivers seem pretty durable. as for fidelity you don't want to rob your front stage imaging with too much brightness in the rear. the real problem is the 3.5" in-dash components are crossed over too high causing excessive brightness. this may be creating too much of a gap between the front and the rear. instead of increasing the brightness in the rear, try adding warmth to the front stage by removing the cap on the driver and crossing it over at around 110Hz instead. This seemed to work well for me. i'm using a 6 channel amp to handle all the crossover work. this also relieved the muddiness of the in-door subs. the oem amp and crossover for the door subs is basically garbage.

what kind of modifications? getting good sound?

Stock Bracket trimming
Getting better sound than stock, clearer

SO- I just got an FRS after my TC was totaled by a drunk driver
I Have seen a lot of posts about "why bother with the rear speaker- no one is back there"

I totally disagree. Maybe I'm picky- but having no sound from the back at all is a very poor option. I enjoy the roundness of sound of a system that you can dial in to get full sound- not just a huge bump from the trunk and sound in the front.

I am searching for an option aside from the 3.5 stock as well and wonder if anyone has found a solution.

I installed some 3.5 infinitys. it took rather a lot of modification to the mount to make it fit.
Edit: when I said 3.5 I meant 4". The screws line up but the speakers basket wouldn't sit in the bracket without cutting

I agree. Did a bit of testing today. Rears are not very good. I could not live with just the front soundstage. Much prefer to have music from rear speakers as a fill. Sounds much more full with all working together

I was thinking of throwing a set of re audio xxx 6.5" component speakers in a custom bracket back there for some mid bass... Or is that not recommended/a waste of time? I already have the speakers from another project.

What did you wind up doing?

There are 3-way component systems made by JL, Hertz, etc. that are like the stock system with 6.5" midbass, 3.5" or 4" midrange, and 1" tweeter.

You could power either setup a few ways. One amp channel per side and using a passive crossover is the most common/obvious.
Can also do 2 amp channels per side. On a 2-way you'd power the midbass and tweeters with different channels and use the amp crossover, no passive crossover. In a 3-way you could power the midbass off one channel then the midrange & tweeter together off the second. Use the passive crossover for this channel and the amp crossover for the midbass channel.
Could do 3 amp channels per side with a 3-way setup. This would be a full active system with all crossover points set by the amp (and HU for the sub/midbass crossover point) and no passive crossovers. Not sure I've seen anyone do this, but definitely possible.

So I have been wondering something.
coaxial speakers are 'full range' but do not need to be used full range, correct? you could build a 3 way passive component build using something like a crx-303 and a set of 6.5 3.5 and tweeter for the front right? I have looked and I can't find much info at all on that particular crossover, but if you google 3way passive crossover there are tons of venders selling them. I expect using something like that with generic coaxial speakers would be a compromise as opposed to buying a tuned 3 way solution, but would be better than trying to use passive inline crossovers, like what come with tweeters right?

I believe you could do that. But considering the cost of 3 separate sets of speakers plus the crossover versus a 3-way component setup, which includes the crossovers, I don't think it's worth the compromise. Unless you already have the coax speakers, then it might be worth the shot. You may have a tough time tuning everything correctly though.


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OEM Audio + Reference System.