Car Audio
- Thread starter S-Man
- Start date
More drivers, sounds better (on paper).
Joking aside a friend of mine used to design this stuff for Harmann and with a budget of often £1-2 a driver the fact it makes noise at all is quite impressive.
I’d go wide range and see what you could fit on a plastic plate the same size as that one you have removed. Scanspeak do a mean little 2” driver in the discovery series:
willys-hifi.com
Sensitivity is quite low though.
Joking aside a friend of mine used to design this stuff for Harmann and with a budget of often £1-2 a driver the fact it makes noise at all is quite impressive.
I’d go wide range and see what you could fit on a plastic plate the same size as that one you have removed. Scanspeak do a mean little 2” driver in the discovery series:
Scanspeak 5F/8422T01 Full Range - Discovery Series
Scanspeak 5F/8422T01 Discovery Series 2 inch full range drive unit. Possibly the finest small drive unit available. Featuring: a powerful neodymium ring magnet, symmetric drive, hard paper cone, foam surround, long excursion, extended copper capped pole piece, 1" voice coil on titanium former...
willys-hifi.com
Sensitivity is quite low though.
Fatmarley
"It appears my intelligence circuits have melted"
Have you thought about measuring it to see if it could be improved with a passive crossover?
Obviously you don't need to worry about baffle step correction in a car, so measuring at home, on a big baffle, and relatively near-field will be pretty accurate.
S-Man
StrivingON
More drivers, sounds better (on paper).
Joking aside a friend of mine used to design this stuff for Harmann and with a budget of often £1-2 a driver the fact it makes noise at all is quite impressive.
I’d go wide range and see what you could fit on a plastic plate the same size as that one you have removed. Scanspeak do a mean little 2” driver in the discovery series:
Scanspeak 5F/8422T01 Full Range - Discovery Series
Scanspeak 5F/8422T01 Discovery Series 2 inch full range drive unit. Possibly the finest small drive unit available. Featuring: a powerful neodymium ring magnet, symmetric drive, hard paper cone, foam surround, long excursion, extended copper capped pole piece, 1" voice coil on titanium former...
Sensitivity is quite low though.
I can imagine the aspiring car designer (no slight intended on your mate) being given a project “see what you can do with this dashboard speaker. You have carte Blanche with the CAD system and can have full custom parts… as long as the total budget of $2 per unit is met”
I was about to push the mouse button on a couple of Faital 3FE22s, as I realised I could make them fit. Unfortunately Blue Arran only has 1 in stock - thought I’d found another on EBay but it turns out it’s the same one.
S-Man
StrivingON
I did think about measuring but feeling a bit lazy. Since the Faital route has an issue, I’m thinking that Vibe Optisound might be the way to go. Hope I can remove and replace the door panels.
I might have a pair of Faitals in the garage, I bought 2 pairs in 4ohm when I did my Audi. Will check in the morning if you want.
The driver designer for automotive was all off the shelf parts, pick this motor, voice coil, basket, spider, cone and surround. Assemble it all the go measure what you get (this was all pre klippel analysers etc). He said that was more fun that trying to design bigger budget ‘better’ drivers.
The driver designer for automotive was all off the shelf parts, pick this motor, voice coil, basket, spider, cone and surround. Assemble it all the go measure what you get (this was all pre klippel analysers etc). He said that was more fun that trying to design bigger budget ‘better’ drivers.
Having worked 20 years inside the auto industry I can just comment that you are nearer the truth than you might think...I can imagine the aspiring car designer (no slight intended on your mate) being given a project “see what you can do with this dashboard speaker. You have carte Blanche with the CAD system and can have full custom parts… as long as the total budget of $2 per unit is met”
It's obvious that the car makers make allowances for the HiFi very late in the design process, otherwise they wouldn't put the speakers where they do. Like the obsession with putting speakers in rattling doors.
S-Man
StrivingON
Auto engineering is weird stuff. It’s all custom designed but with strange quality requirements.
They want extremely low early life failure rates but the operating lifetime is quite short - maybe 5,000 hours.
5k hours is less than 7 months. Imagine if your central heating was designed like that, so it would all be worn out after seven months.
Wind turbines have a design life of 25 years continuous! (Admittedly with some maintenance and replacement of parts).
They want extremely low early life failure rates but the operating lifetime is quite short - maybe 5,000 hours.
5k hours is less than 7 months. Imagine if your central heating was designed like that, so it would all be worn out after seven months.
Wind turbines have a design life of 25 years continuous! (Admittedly with some maintenance and replacement of parts).
Do yourself a favour and get one of the sets of plastic levers for this. I have, now all I have to do is get on and do it. However it does give you a chance of getting it apart without wrecking it. About £10-15.
Cars aren't used very much. At an average of 40mph, 5000 hours is 200k miles. My car is 15 years/203k miles and I'm relaxed if a few bits start letting go. Recently the crank pulley, a rubber/steel composite, fell into 2 bits and dumped me at Southwaite Services near Carlisle. Which was great. I'm looking forward to the clutch or a brake caliper handing in a repair sometime in the next year. Or an alternator. Or...who knows? Will I know when? Of course not. But you can be sure it won't be convenient.
How many cars have people here taken to 5000 hours?
S-Man
StrivingON
Yes please!
I have a couple of pairs of Faital 3FE22 4Ohm drivers if you want one. I may be able to get them in the post over the weekend. one has been fitted to a baffle for testing so there maybe a couple of screw marks on the chassis, I've not checked in the box. But essentially they have just be run for testing, they might or might not have had the cones treated with Visaton LTS50 I will know when I check them at the weekend.
S-Man
StrivingON
If you are happy to part with a pair, then yes please. I don’t mind if they have been treated or not, I expect the treatment damps and possibly reduces the hf a bit?
Please drop me a PM with how much you want for them. No rush because I’m waiting for a couple of connectors to arrive.
Hoopsontoast
pfm Member
On the Faital drivers, I had a pair of Faital Pro 4FE32 in my
www.scan-speak.dk
Celica Install by Robert Seymour, on Flickr
Celica Install by Robert Seymour, on Flickr
I had a pair of Scanspeak 6.5" components in my old Celica, in the stock locations. Was very good from what I remember although price is around double what it was (£260 in 2018).Very happy with my new RAV4 except the sound is not great. Seems like Toyota saved some money on the speakers.
I have searched all over to try to tind some useful info on how to upgrade them. Most specifications seem to be useless, most Youtubers don't seem to have a clue what they're talking about and have no concept about driver integration and crossovers.
The RAV has a crappy tweeter each side of the dash, I assume this has a built-in cap to protect it from mid and LF. I has a 6.5" driver in each front door. These two drivers seem to be run in parallel.
The general advice on teh RAV4 forumes for an easy upgrade is to change the dash tweeters to these:
I can see the logic, however replacing a unit that makes a few tizzy noises with one that probably does a reasonable job of the mids and treble looks like a way to unbalance the sound to me. Also, how on earth can it integrate with the door speakers? There must be a massive overlap in frequency range and random phase integration. I suppose I could pad it down with a resistor to level match it with the door speakers, but this can't fix the integration properly. Or does this not reall matter in a car?
So my next thought is to replace the door speakers with a "proper" two way speaker and disconnect the tizzers in the dash:
Focal ACX165-S 6.5" 2-Way Coaxial Compact Speaker Kit
For nearly 20 years this product line has benefited from many upgrades and has built its reputation around its reliability and its acoustic qualities which are unique to Focal and offered at a very attractive price. Combined with electronics or directly connected to the vehicle's original...caraudiocentre.co.uk
The whole thing seems like a spin of the roulette wheel. Just wondered if anyone had some experience in this area and could offer some advice?
820013 – Scan-Speak A/S
www.scan-speak.dk
Celica Install by Robert Seymour, on Flickr
Celica Install by Robert Seymour, on Flickr
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Hoopsontoast
pfm Member
On the Faital drivers, I had a pair of Faital Pro 4FE32 in my Gen-5 Celica, worked well so I'd imagine the smaller ones would be just as good.