[makkan00]

Originally Posted by cdgatti

Mak - what have you found as a good lp crossover point for your underseats?

Forgive me for being rude / brave or whatever you called me.

If I have
- Morels in the door then crossover is 100hz b.w door mids and underseats.
- Focals = 125Hz
- Gladen mids = 100hz

And that is with MS-8.

With Pioneer unit, I was running focals as low as 120Hz and SWS-8 upto 180Hz. I must say that SWS-8 are no good above 150Hz from experimentation.

If I send 100-200Hz down to underseats, then sound stage does suffers. Try it in your car.

[makkan00]

Originally Posted by bmw325i

With twice as much power as I have going to them I wouldn't be surprised if you could bottom them out. You are also over their power handling. It's good to have headroom but you aren't actually supposed to use it

Perhaps you are right. But then if we do have power, why not use.

You should know that all drivers can play much more than what they are suppose to provided the condition that you are giving them clean signals and crossovers are set properly.

One example is that I am feeding 200W to single SWS-8. I made sure that it gets clean signals.
So NBT--> MS-8 --> XD600/6 bridged channels --> 200W / SWS-8 = Amazing clean sound.

200+ 200W = 400W and its like having a 10 inch sub in your car.

I must change my door mids to morels though.

[Wongway]

Originally Posted by makkan00

It might be cleanest mid bass if you use them 70Hz above.

Under normal circumstances I would agree. Personally, I'd run midbasses around 80hz and above.

That said, my install was a bit unusual since I didn't want a traditional sub. I'll freely admit, it sounds a bit sloppy below 80hz, but it's quite tolerable. The biggest goal I met was, I have no box, and no subwoofer taking up space in the trunk. I lost hardly any useable storage room, and it still sounds better than anything I've heard out of BMW's systems out there.

[bmw325i]

Originally Posted by makkan00

Perhaps you are right. But then if we do have power, why not use.

You should know that all drivers can play much more than what they are suppose to provided the condition that you are giving them clean signals and crossovers are set properly.

One example is that I am feeding 200W to single SWS-8. I made sure that it gets clean signals.
So NBT--> MS-8 --> XD600/6 bridged channels --> 200W / SWS-8 = Amazing clean sound.

200+ 200W = 400W and its like having a 10 inch sub in your car.

I must change my door mids to morels though.

That is true but using a sub at a lower frequency than it is intended with more power than it is intended doesn't seem like the best idea. It also depends on the quality of the speaker and how they are rated. I know some subs that wont even take rated power. I also know of some very high powered subs that can handle 25-50% over rms. I'm talking about real subwoofers though nothing that would fit in the underseat enclosures. The reasoning behind having more power than you can use is so you know your signal is clean no matter what. In that case you would blow the speaker before the amp clips.

[cdgatti]

Originally Posted by makkan00

Forgive me for being rude / brave or whatever you called me.

If I have
- Morels in the door then crossover is 100hz b.w door mids and underseats.
- Focals = 125Hz
- Gladen mids = 100hz

And that is with MS-8.

With Pioneer unit, I was running focals as low as 120Hz and SWS-8 upto 180Hz. I must say that SWS-8 are no good above 150Hz from experimentation.

If I send 100-200Hz down to underseats, then sound stage does suffers. Try it in your car.

Mak, you must have me mistaken for someone else! I never called you anything.
I run my morels at 140 and up with a 24 db slope. I run my kicker ssmb8 underseats at 225 and down because if I rta just my doors they don't put out much of anything below 160.

[makkan00]

Originally Posted by cdgatti

Mak, you must have me mistaken for someone else! I never called you anything.
I run my morels at 140 and up with a 24 db slope. I run my kicker ssmb8 underseats at 225 and down because if I rta just my doors they don't put out much of anything below 160.

Sorry, that was typo mistake. (On iphone)
Which morels you have?

[bmw325i]

I have my Morel hybrid II's crossed at 200 hz this thread is making me want to to crossover at a lower frequency although I don't think I'd feel comfortable having them play 100hz. I have my subs and underseats crossed at 55hz which sounds best to me.

[makkan00]

Originally Posted by bmw325i

I have my Morel hybrid II's crossed at 200 hz this thread is making me want to to crossover at a lower frequency although I don't think I'd feel comfortable having them play 100hz. I have my subs and underseats crossed at 55hz which sounds best to me.

Dont do it if you dont want.
Read the specs of morel's woofer.
From the top of my head morel ii hybrid woofer are listed to play as low as 80hz.
I would go with 120 to try and see the effects of it on sound stage.

[bmw325i]

Originally Posted by makkan00

Dont do it if you dont want.
Read the specs of morel's woofer.
From the top of my head morel ii hybrid woofer are listed to play as low as 80hz.
I would go with 120 to try and see the effects of it on sound stage.

I'll try 140 just to test it out and go from there. I want to get a new amp and I know I'll have at least 150 watts per channel after that so I don't want to go too low. Not that I plan to use all that power.

[cdgatti]

I have the morel hybrid ovations. Several models old now. I think this whole topic is probably more controlled by where you low pass the underseats, than where you high pass the mids - I say this because 4" mids aren't doing all that much from an spl standpoint below 160. So 100, 120, 140... it doesn't matter. Just one man's opinion!

[Geo_Johnny]

Nice Makkan00!

Most people poo-poo the SWS.
I was impressed with these speakers.
Version 1.0 of my build used SWS as the 'sub'.
I really liked the speakers.
I ended up launching them through the roof with too high w and too low hz.
I ended up with a Focal polyglass 12 sub in the trunk.
And that is where I am at: looking for a solid mid-bass driver for under seat.

[Geo_Johnny]

cdgatti,

You make a really good point. 4's can only handle so much.

Another thing I was poo-poo'ed about was the use of 6.5" on the rear deck.
The 6.5's are used for this exact problem. So the link between under seat and the 4's are the 6.5's in the rear deck. Bandpassing them between 100 and 600hz.
Now your sound stage is in a normal place (not under the seat).
However... phasing...

[bmw325i]

Originally Posted by Geo_Johnny

cdgatti,

You make a really good point. 4's can only handle so much.

Another thing I was poo-poo'ed about was the use of 6.5" on the rear deck.
The 6.5's are used for this exact problem. So the link between under seat and the 4's are the 6.5's in the rear deck. Bandpassing them between 100 and 600hz.
Now your sound stage is in a normal place (not under the seat).
However... phasing...

Now your soundstage is in the backseat.

[Geo_Johnny]

bmw325i,

Because I use a DSP, I can time delay and push the stage towards the front.

[Geo_Johnny]

bmw325i,

Also that is why this upgrade will include a DSP that has 8 channels.
I'll be able to have more control (over the under seat speakers and sound stage) than I do now with an old 3sixty.2 with 6 channels). I have had to do all sorts of things to control all of these drivers including 6db cross-overs, filtering at the amp, and using the DSP for filtering and time delays. Whew! And I mean that. Whew!

[kaigoss69]

Originally Posted by Geo_Johnny

cdgatti,

You make a really good point. 4's can only handle so much.

Another thing I was poo-poo'ed about was the use of 6.5" on the rear deck.
The 6.5's are used for this exact problem. So the link between under seat and the 4's are the 6.5's in the rear deck. Bandpassing them between 100 and 600hz.
Now your sound stage is in a normal place (not under the seat).
However... phasing...

Yep, that was me!

It's just a bad idea for so many reasons. Please trust me when I say pull those speakers out and use a properly set up front stage only.

[Geo_Johnny]

Hey Kia!

Yeah yeah... my plan is one thing at a time.

Helix DSP
Arc XDi

After that, tune it (with and without the 6.5's)
From there yank the SWS and replace with Gladen (finally made the decision).

Tune it (with and without the 6.5's).

Replace as necessary.

What I think you are missing here is the hole in the mid that the 6.5's fill in.

I should send links to you on some of our 'conversations' over the years.
;-)

jc

[kaigoss69]

Hey wait, do I know you?

[Geo_Johnny]

Kia,

Naw... just had quite a few posts talking about set-ups over the past few (3?) years.
I never use the same ID... not for any other reason than I forget what I used before.
:-)

So when you were bustin my balls I really thought about sending some of our earlier posts just to harass you... naw.... all's good.

Always appreciate your opinion.

[DrRobert]

Focal IFBMW-Subs coming out late November, made to fit our cars plug and play. No reviews on them yet. Cost ~$800/pr.

[Geo_Johnny]

Dr. Robert,

Not sure if you ever used Focal before.
My set-up is entirely Focal except the under seat woofers.

One thing I can say from my observation and opinion is they are very 'tight.'
Due to the failure of the under seat subs, I added a 12" Focal sub in the trunk.
I used a different series of Focal speaker for the sub. I used their lowest line 'softer' Polyglass. The rest of my set-up uses their (at the time) mid-level speaker K2's.

The only thing I can say is very, very clean speakers. The sound you reproduce is what you get.

My initial thought is that they would be too stiff for what I am looking to do. I am looking for a softer, mellower woofer for under seat.

[DrRobert]

Geo_Johnny,

No, I have not used Focals before but am strongly considering the IFBMW-S and IFBMW-Subs. I have listened to some other Focals on the sound wall in the car stereo shop, but they don't have the IFBMWs up there for listening and have not heard them in a car. The cones on the IFBMW series speakers appear to be made of a different material than many of the other Focals - not sure how they differ from the others in construction or sound quality. All I know is that they are made in France and were designed as plug and play replacement speakers for our cars. Supposedly that means they have maximized the cone and magnet size for the available space, and matched their sonic qualities to the interior of the car. Kind of a leap of faith for me to install them though, and an expensive one at that.

Robert

Focal IFBMW-Sub
Focal IFBMW-S