my NEW speakers sound like crap...whatd i do wrong?

so i finished up my audio install today. I have JL 450/4 powering my interior speakers but I only replaced the fronts and left the rears unconnected for now. I have a cleansweep connected to clean the signal. The speakers I bought were DLS MS6 components (rated 100w rms for the speaker and 50w for the tweeter). Although you may not have heard of the company, they are very good speakers.

 

So after adjusting the cleansweep and pumping up the volume, I get very loud sound (a lot louder than stock) but the quality is terrible. At low volumes it sounds nice but as I start to turn it up, my speakers sound like they are....well, farting quite frankly (tweeters sound fine). It sounds worse than stock. I have them mounted on iaperformance spacers because they dont fit otherwise.

 

I'm convinced my wiring is correct (the sound is the same on the left and right speakers) so i was thinking about what could be wrong.

 

1. I installed the spacers wrong. When I initially put the spacers on the door with the speakers, there was a clearance issue with the window. So i followed the instructions on the install sheet about the washers but i may have misunderstood. I placed the washers between the spacers and the metal door panel (the metal sheet that hides the window).

refer to this picture:http://silentspin.shackspace.com/Subaru/Audio/LGT%20001.jpg

I placed the washers between the black spacer and the silver metal sheet panel.

 

2. cleansweep is not tuned properly. this could be true, but it shouldnt make my speakers fart

 

3. wiring is wrong? but it shouldnt lead to farting speakers unless its out of phase. ANd whats the probability of doing it wrong on both sides of the car?

 

4. x-over settings are off. These are swedish speakers so the instructions were a lil hard to read, but theres only one setting on the x-over...a low and high level for tweeters and even after changing it, i still got the fart.

 

HELP ME I AM GOING OUT OF MY MIND:mad:

what is the rms rating of your amp?

 

check your gain settings, check any crossover or bass boost settings on your amp

 

dynamat the doors

 

find out if this speaker company that you claim is good, but no one has ever heard of, is really good.

i went outside and played with the settings a little bit and it sounds a lot better. There is no farting. But they sounded like they had more bass when i heard them in person before, but i guess in cars they sound differently. I have a sub going in soon so hopefully that will take care of the low end.

 

the tweeters on the left side of the car are making a wierd hi-freq noise...could it be cuz the power wire is run on the same side?

calibrate the cleansweep with the radio on volume 15, then adjust your amps gain so that when you have the cleansweeps volume at about 3/4, it's plenty loud.

 

that should take care of the buzzz

u shouldn't need to dynamat the legacy; sonically these cars are awesome.

u shouldn't need to dynamat the legacy; sonically these cars are awesome.

 

ROTFLMAO...

 

Apparently you havent heard a legacy with two JL subs running 500 RMS.. I need to dynamat pretty much the entire rear of the car..

i have two at 1000 RMS, although yours is half i what i have i would assume it still sounds decent. i kno my car is thumpin'

Make sure your deck is putting out enough signal for the cleansweep to work with effectively. I would look up the threads from Manville Smith (Who works at JL as a VP) and see what level he recommends LEAVING your factory volume set at. I'm not sure if the clean sweep has one built in, but you should install an active crossover for those speakers while running an amp with that much power. I would personally recommend about a lower limit of 60hz with an 18db/octave slope high pass to the midbass drivers in the doors so that you aren't sending the lowest bass frequencies to those speakers, they are operating outside of their efficient range once they go below about 50-60hz , and the bass will cause them to chuff. If you filter out the bass, your midrance and treble will stay much clearer, much louder because the amp is not expending all of that energy on bass (a power hog), and can better do it's job by sending clean midbass and treble to your component speakers. I hope you are using some sort of passive crossover network at the moment, or you are running a real risk of blowing up your tweeters. If you can afford it, a three-way system can be the best sounding and cleanest setup of all. This requires one channel of amplification for each speaker driver in the system (left tweeter, right tweeter, left midbass, right midbass, woofer), and someone who knows what they are doing hooking it up properly. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

1) Calibrate the CleanSweep at Volume "25" with all tone controls and fader on "0".

 

2) You're sending 150 watts full range (?) into each front speaker set. That is a lot of power without filtering off the low bass. You can try setting the filter on the amp channels driving the fronts on "HP", the slope on "12dB" and the filter freq. at "50 Hz" for now (until you add a sub).

 

3) Speakers popping loudly means that moving parts are contacting non-moving parts, which means that you should turn it down (or filter the low bass off).

 

Good luck!

 

Manville Smith

JL Audio, Inc.

ROTFLMAO...

 

Apparently you havent heard a legacy with two JL subs running 500 RMS.. I need to dynamat pretty much the entire rear of the car..

 

Psh, Dynamat's for pussies (I need to get some real bad)

 

Too much Bass

 

To get rid of even more of the farting and to clean up the sound, if you havent already install a sub and then set the cutoff freguency to the highend cut off of the sub. This will direct all of the low bass to the sub and leave the speakers to the high end range of the spectrum.

I just had the same problem installing my Alpine Type-X components. The speaker actually hit a portion of the door panel on high excursion! I took the door panel off again and noticed that a steel bracket (c/w screw) was right in the way of the speakers excursion. I had to bend a portion of steel out of the way for some cutting. I used a knife to take off about 1/4 inch of the plastic that protruded close to the speaker. I then cut about 1/4 off of the screw I took out. Bent the steel bracket back in place. Screwed it all back together and gained enough space for the speaker to hit peak excursion w/o hitting the door panel.

 

Hope that helps.

I second the notion that speaker thumping sounds are the result of the driver contacting something it shouldn't. What size spacer are you using - is it possible that the driver is moving so far out that it's hitting the door panel? That would do it. Check the SQ with the panels off.

 

About lack of bass - I'm wondering about the washers between the spacer & door. If they "stand off" the spacer enough to create a gap that air can pass thru then you've got the back wave mixing with the front speaker wave - bad juju & will eliminate your bass in a big way.

 

X-over's a good idea somewhere between 60-100hz on the front amp, but not entirely necessary. You've got a lot of sub juice, no reason to run the fronts at full range unless you just like the sound. You won't hurt anything either way.

 

If these are the only problems on your first big DIY install, you're doing pretty good. Must've got the power cord thru the firewall OK. Good luck, keep us posted.