Decent Replacement Speakers
 

If anyone is looking for some decent replacement door speakers, I recommend the Pioneer TS-D161R. They're about $90 online. They have kevlar woofers and some sort of soft dome tweets. Very smooth sounding mids. Decent low end response.

I just picked up a pair after auditioning about everything under the sun. If money isn't an option, there are some nicer speakers in the $250 range. But at $90 these really shine.

Link

my $20 Rage speakers are badass :gay:

to each his own.

these pioneers are great for anyone who's looking for something nice without spending stupid $$. they blow away the alpine/infinity/polk crap found in the same price range. Play fine on headunit power, though I'd imagine an amp would make them sing.

There are some other speakers I like better: Rainbow, CDT, and Crystal in the $250-300 range. They'd need an amp.

no actually that's good to know....one of these days I might replace the old MMS stereo that barely works, since I don't even have my bass shaker in my driver seat anymore and the automatic volume adjustment thing doesn't work.

now find me some tweeters!

I really liked the stereo that came in my 96M. The auto volume thing worked pretty well, but the "top up" and "top down" dsp modes were cool.

Here's a good set of cheap components for ya: Phoenix Gold RSD

Anyway, ya'll probably could tell that that I have a fairly critical ear. So if I like a speaker, chances are you will too.

http://www.audioallies.com/getitem.a...=DKF116&Sys=FR

those are decent too. I bought the shitty lightning speakers, and they are terrible. I should have saved the $30 and bought the $200 mc quarts so I'd never have to worry about it again.

Any suggestions for the headrest speakers?

MBQ is nice in a "tinkle & boom" kind of way. They are not smooth. Would be good speakers for rap or techno. Wouldn't want them for rock, jazz, or country, or anything with vocals.

For headrest speakers, actually I'd go with the stock speakers. You don't want to add the complication of a multi speaker array that close to your ear.

yeah just ditch the headrests and run an amp to the main speakers and crank away.

I tried some pioneers in the doors but ditched them for some Kenwoods. Hooked them into a 4channel amp that powers the Kenwoods and a small bazooka sub in the trunk. Put Max 5 headrest speakers in but they are only powered by the head unit which is a 2002 Tribute 6CD changer double din unit. the headrest speakers are used just to "fill in" some sound and the system is mainly faded to the front amp powered Kenwoods.

Sounds really good with the top down!

word

Good info, thanks.

Mine came with the Clearwater's in the headrest... but I went with the standard m.net recommendation for the doors. 6.5" Lightning Audio 2-ways. I think they were about $40 at Walmart and do the job. I run a "newish" Pioneer headunit and no amp.

It's all Memphis Audio in my other rides and have no complaints about the Lightning stuff. I usually keep the fade at about 4-rear for the Miata, so the Clearwater's do most of work.

Hmm... I have lightnings in mine and I think they sounds pretty damn good. I get compliments on the sound quite often too. What head unit are you running? 27W RMS from my Blaupunkt seems to do the trick rather well.

I'm running alpine deck, alpine components, and a 4-channel alpine amp. Great sound, but i think the amp was a little overkill. I'm only using 2 channels, and if I turn up the volume about ~25 (depending on the song) the speakers start hitting the grill.

heh, my last 10" sub finally hit the crapper, memphis power bass 10", thing was badass untill "someone" decided to run them in parrell but ran them in series instead...or something like that.

take the metal tweet down to -3db if you need too. I'm an audiophile, and happy with the sound q of quarts. People who think they sound tinny don't know how to use an eq.

I have a 40w kenwood.

I have Focal speakers, they came with the car. Really really nice sound, but they're about $250 for a pair.

I didn't say tinny. I said boomy and brash. And they are not smooth. No amount of eq will correct that.
To each their own, of course. Your happiness with your speakers is more important than my happiness with them.


Focals are great. I have them all the way around in my other car with a JL 12w6, A/D/S amps, and an audio control eq :bigtu:

Back when I was in highschool and working at a car stereo shop, we didn't have any problem scoring 40's in sound Q with them.


I've also had focals, and they are great. I have an old multi-magnet 13" focal sub for my house. If I ever put another high end stereo in a car, I'll probably go with 6.5" ads mids and the 1.5" soft tweeter...those are without a doubt the warmest, most perfect, easy to tune components i can think of.

oohhhh the audiophiles come out to play...

Oh shit, I thought he said pedophile.

both work for me...lol.

Yeah I also was once in that biz, I did a lot of design, installation, and custom fab. I even did MBQ's for front stage in one of my cars once. They were bright, to say the least. Can't remember what the name of what I replaced them with--what where those white Infinitys called, Kappa Perfect or Kappa Beta or something? Anyway, they had that silk tweeter, LOVED EM.

Old guys usually like MBQ because they sound not bright to them because of their age-related hearing degradation/damage.

word. 40 alpines worked for me on my old car.

Now I have bose in the new one ftw

Threadjack:
Brain, I ran a Memphis PowerBass 10" for a long time in my Ranger... the best car audio purchase I ever made. I still have it in the attic... waiting for the right car to come along.

I'm also a big PartsExpress fan. My first sub project w/8" TangBand @100w in a sonotube that currently sits totally stealth behind my main 43" Toshiba. My second was a Dayton 12"DVC for my dedicated home theater room. It runs off a small(ish) 250w amp. It's total overkill in the 12'x15' room. I wanted the 15"DVC, but when I told the wife how big a 4^ft box was, she put her foot down.

i'll play too.

Right now I'm in the middle of about 14 speaker projects... The more urgent of these (whatever that means) is the coincident home theatre speakers. They're basically a 7" clear poly woofer with a dustcap-mounted silk dome tweet. Very nice for acoustic alignment and visual size. I'm mounting them in some 8" pvc pipe. That's a bad idea for resonance so I've got some plans to tackle that on the inside.

http://gallery.y8s.com/d/13202-1/DSC00134.jpg

You'd be surprised how hard it is to cut a nice flat edge on that pipe! I made myself a fun jig and was able to get clean cuts.
http://gallery.y8s.com/matt/projects/bigpipe/

I plan to make 4 of those and a non-cylindrical center channel to replace my aging home built kit from college. The crossovers are kicking my ass though.

Next is a neat project that's somewhat stalled. It's a dipole 3-way based loosely on the linkwitz lab phoenix. Cool because they're very thin main panels. shown in this photo (click for bigger) (a little dusty). They are very transparent sound-wise but require triamping which sucks--6 amps for stereo. I'm pondering making some passive crossovers for the main panels and running the woofers off the sub channel. Incidentally a stereo pair requires FOUR 15" WOOFERS. Mama.

So for now I ditched the dipoles and cannibalized one of the 15's and made a nice mini (if you call a 15 mini) sub for the home theatre. It's 18x18x10 roughly and uses a Linkwitz Transform equalization circuit to allow me to use a tiny box and still reach down into the 20 Hz range. I LOVE this sub. When watching United 93, it literally felt like i was in the plane when it took off. It kicks some serious ass and makes your hair stand on end. I think it has something like a 23mm one way xmax.

I should take some more pictures of all this so I can be cool like Spam.

Installed a small Alpine 4 channel amp in the trunk today and tested this theory. The Pioneer TS-D161Rs I mentioned at the beginning of this thread absolutely shine with some "real" power. There's no longer any need for headrest speakers. I even have a set and I'm not going to install them.

The amp I have owned for a while, figured I'd use it as it was just sitting in a box. My only hard cost for the installation was a $10 set of 17' long RCA cables. Amp went in the recessed area in the trunk. Next weekend I'll build a false floor to cover it up (and so I don't really loose any trunk room). Will take some pics once I've completed it.

Also I am going to pick up a pair of 6.5" or 8" free air "subs" for the package shelf and run them off the other 2 channels on the amp.

I played house music in clubs for like 6 years...maybe you're on to something.

A couple of pics

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/5...eredta9.th.jpg

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/7...eredtc2.th.jpg


Yes, I know it needs to be vacuumed and that white patch needs to be redyed