My car has only 4” x 6” speaker holes on the dash for front speakers, yellow arrow. However, there are 6” holes on front door for factory audio upgraded option, red circle. Mine has only speakers on the dash.
I have a pair of 5 1/4” component speakers. I’d like to use it for my front speakers. But as said, the front speaker holes are limited for 4” x 6” size and cannot be installed the 5 1/4” speakers—the magnet will stick to the a/c vents inside the dash.
I wonder whether I should drill the front door cards to install the 5 1/4” woofers in the red circle and put the 1” tweeters on the dash, yellow arrow. OR, I should buy a new pair of 4” speakers, either coaxial or component, to install on the dash at one point.
I have a pair of 5 1/4” component speakers. I’d like to use it for my front speakers. But as said, the front speaker holes are limited for 4” x 6” size and cannot be installed the 5 1/4” speakers—the magnet will stick to the a/c vents inside the dash.
I wonder whether I should drill the front door cards to install the 5 1/4” woofers in the red circle and put the 1” tweeters on the dash, yellow arrow. OR, I should buy a new pair of 4” speakers, either coaxial or component, to install on the dash at one point.
@Perry Babin
Have you ever done any installs where you had to cut new holes in the door panels?
- no, I haven’t done on door panels except for rear deck for subwoofers’ mounting.
Have you ever built any speaker enclosures or done any type of fabrication?
- yes, I used to build closed enclosures for subwoofers as well.
What are your objectives for this system?
- a simple and looks closely to the factory-installed system
What sort of music and at what volume level?
- 70’s & 80’s music, moderate to a bit loud (sometimes)
Have you ever done any installs where you had to cut new holes in the door panels?
- no, I haven’t done on door panels except for rear deck for subwoofers’ mounting.
Have you ever built any speaker enclosures or done any type of fabrication?
- yes, I used to build closed enclosures for subwoofers as well.
What are your objectives for this system?
- a simple and looks closely to the factory-installed system
What sort of music and at what volume level?
- 70’s & 80’s music, moderate to a bit loud (sometimes)
For your vehicle, I don't really see any good options for the speakers you currently have and the suggestions I'd have (that would be perfectly acceptable to me) would cause so much of a backlash that I don't think it would be good to post them. It could take the internet offline for days. The forum would create a special thumbs-down button that would give 100 thumbs-down for each click.
I'll take a stab at it.
Restricting the discussion to the options you have suggested, optimally you would fully utilize both locations. You want as large a speaker as you can get in the dash to bring image height up and give some semblance of imaging. A tweeter on its own will not do that for the voice range, so if you use your component set the image will be pulled to the sides where the door speakers are for the frequency range below the tweeter's. Since the path length is radically different for the left and right door speakers, that will also pull the image toward the near speaker.
Whatever you put in the dash at that size is unlikely to play cleanly down into the midbass at significant volume, so adding the door woofers is probably still desirable just to cover from say 100 Hz to 500 Hz (or lower if the dash speakers can handle it). But it's much more work to add the door speakers. I'd start with the best thing you can fit in the dash, since you should do that no matter what. If you want more midbass in the front, you can add the door speakers later.
Your other thread brought up DSP: Yes, it's the best option for a car installation if you want high quality sound. It is extremely common to have serious frequency response deviations in a car. DSP is the most flexible way to handle those now, and will give you much easier control of cross points, gains, etc. It will also typically give you presets so you can have settings for engine off sound quality, driving down the road blasting, etc.
