How to ADD subwoofer to NEX 4200

[kevroq]

My car got broken into and they damaged the stock head unit so I installed the pioneer NEX 4200. I had it installed at a shop for insurance purposes so I dont know exactly how they hooked it up. I know the headunit has subwoofer auxillary outputs so I know I would just connect the amp and sub there. My question is how would I stop the factory speakers from punping out the bass? I installed a system in my other car but changed everything so this wasnt an issue when I did it the first time.

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[Scoobybrz]

just tune it from the headunit. play around with the cross-over.

[kevroq]

Originally Posted by Scoobybrz

just tune it from the headunit. play around with the cross-over.

Got it! Thats good news, I though it would be a little more difficult!

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[gramicci101]

In the head unit you can set a low pass filter for the subwoofer and a high pass filter for your mids and highs. Set them both to the same thing, like 100 Hz. The sub will play everything below 100 Hz, the mids and highs will play everything above 100 Hz.

[Chimera]

Depending on your sub, having some gap isn't necessarily bad, I have my sub set at lpf 80 12db and my fronts at hpf 100 12db

[toast]

Pick up the microphone for the unit for $20 bucks. It will set up the equalizer, crossovers and time alignment for you.

[kevroq]

All good advice Ill play with the frequencies to see what sounds the best with my setup! 100 hz is a good benchmark to start at. Thank you.

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[kevroq]

Originally Posted by toast

Pick up the microphone for the unit for $20 bucks. It will set up the equalizer, crossovers and time alignment for you.

I know it comes with a microphone already that is mounted by my mirror but not sure if this is the one you are talking about. Ill look into this more. So there is a function to adjust the frequencies by using the microphone?

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[toast]

Just Google auto eq microphone NEX 4200. It is $20 on Amazon. The head unit plays white noise and a series of pulses that the mic pics up and it will set eq, crossover (if you have a sub), speaker levels and balance based on what it measures. More importantly for a good sound stage it will set up time alignment for the speakers. If you are using stock speaker placement and amplification the alignment won't be as good as if each channel were a separate speaker, but it will be better than what you have now.

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[kevroq]

Originally Posted by toast

Just Google auto eq microphone NEX 4200. It is $20 on Amazon. The head unit plays white noise and a series of pulses that the mic pics up and it will set eq, crossover (if you have a sub), speaker levels and balance based on what it measures. More importantly for a good sound stage it will set up time alignment for the speakers. If you are using stock speaker placement and amplification the alignment won't be as good as if each channel were a separate speaker, but it will be better than what you have now.

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Thanks toast, i will look into it. This seems like the best way to do it! I plan to upgrading the speakers if it makes that big of a difference. I bought two amps and have another two from my other car that are at my disposal (two 2-chanel and two 4-chanel). Do you think it will make a huge difference adding my stock speakers to one of the 4 channel amps? Or will the difference only be if I upgraded the speakers as well. I know this will probably vary greatly with the type of amp but unfortunaly i dont have the model numbers in front of me. I noticed a difference just by changing the head unit already.

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[toast]

The way things are wired make doing this kind of an all-or-nothing proposition. If you have a 4 channel I would power the dash speakers as a pair (3" and tweets) for 2 of the channels and the door speakers as the other 2 channels provided you have a high pass xover for the dash speakers and a low pass for the doors built into the amp. Set the headunit up to treat the door speakers as rears and the dash as front. That will result in the best time alignment setup and allow the head unit to automatically set the levels for each speaker when doing the autoEQ. If you add a sub just redo the measurement and the head unit will align the sub channel as well. I found that in my car the measurement resulted in the sub channel being set to -8, I raised it to -2 to compensate for road noise and the type of sound I wanted.

[kevroq]

Originally Posted by toast

The way things are wired make doing this kind of an all-or-nothing proposition. If you have a 4 channel I would power the dash speakers as a pair (3" and tweets) for 2 of the channels and the door speakers as the other 2 channels provided you have a high pass xover for the dash speakers and a low pass for the doors built into the amp. Set the headunit up to treat the door speakers as rears and the dash as front. That will result in the best time alignment setup and allow the head unit to automatically set the levels for each speaker when doing the autoEQ. If you add a sub just redo the measurement and the head unit will align the sub channel as well. I found that in my car the measurement resulted in the sub channel being set to -8, I raised it to -2 to compensate for road noise and the type of sound I wanted.

So the rear speakers will not be amplified at all? The way I was thinking of maybe doing it was to get some component speakers replacing the door speakers and the tweeter. These would be on 2 of the channels. The other two channels would be used for my rears. Then I would add another amp for the sub. I was told the dash speaker could be combined with the channels on the components. Now I'm thinking that is totally the wrong way to do it so I'm glad I asked haha

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[toast]

I don't like rear fill and the speakers back there are garbage, so yes, I would propose you only drive your dash and door speakers. You absolutely could go with a set of components but the time alignment values would be a compromise (would still sound much better than what you currently have) since the distance from each tweeter to your head is different than the distance from each door speaker to your head. Also, if you use active crossovers (in the amp) you don't need the space for the component crossovers and you don't get the phase delay that they add (most come with a phase switch so this part at least is kind of moot).

[kevroq]

Originally Posted by toast

I don't like rear fill and the speakers back there are garbage, so yes, I would propose you only drive your dash and door speakers. You absolutely could go with a set of components but the time alignment values would be a compromise (would still sound much better than what you currently have) since the distance from each tweeter to your head is different than the distance from each door speaker to your head. Also, if you use active crossovers (in the amp) you don't need the space for the component crossovers and you don't get the phase delay that they add (most come with a phase switch so this part at least is kind of moot).

This made me feel like I was taking physics all over again haha. Ill look into everything you said! Need do some more research now. Thanks for everything!

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