Speakers

[Muncher]

So i know the rear speakers are 4x6 but has anyone done any bigger with out having to cut the pannel?

[ghetdjc320]

5 1/4 will fit with a bit of trimming. My though has been to put a pair of 6.5” or 8” subs back there behind the panels. It would be a nice custom setup

[ghetdjc320]

That being said, I currently run infinity reference 4x6s in back and 5 1/4 up front. Also installed a Sony double din touchscreen CarPlay head unit (that was a ton of work)

[Muncher]

19 minutes ago, ghetdjc320 said:

That being said, I currently run infinity reference 4x6s in back and 5 1/4 up front. Also installed a Sony double din touchscreen CarPlay head unit (that was a ton of work)

Do u have a thread for that? I was thinking of a pioneer flip up

[Minuit]

My suggestion is to not even bother with rear speakers. The MJ cab has enough frequency response and speaker location problems as it is. All you'll do is kill any imaging you may have had by adding a pair of full range speakers behind the seats.

[Muncher]

Just now, Minuit said:

My suggestion is to not even bother with rear speakers. The MJ cab has enough frequency response and speaker location problems as it is. All you'll do is kill any imaging you may have had by adding a pair of full range speakers behind the seats.

Are you suggesting no speakers at all back there?

[ghetdjc320]

25 minutes ago, Minuit said:

My suggestion is to not even bother with rear speakers. The MJ cab has enough frequency response and speaker location problems as it is. All you'll do is kill any imaging you may have had by adding a pair of full range speakers behind the seats.

Don’t meen to disagree but that hasn’t been my experience. I’ve noticed a more encompassing sound stage. The frequency response of the cab is all relative to what’s in the cab anyways. If I have a bunch of stuff behind the seats though the sound gets lost and they become useless. I really think it would be a great location for a pair of 6.5 or 8” subs though! Also thought about putting a sub in the center console. 

[ghetdjc320]

35 minutes ago, Muncher said:

Do u have a thread for that? I was thinking of a pioneer flip up

 

 

Was a lot of work but well worth it. The backup cam is an awesome feature in a lifted truck especially when trying to hookup my boat trailer.

[Minuit]

1 hour ago, ghetdjc320 said:

Don’t meen to disagree but that hasn’t been my experience. I’ve noticed a more encompassing sound stage. The frequency response of the cab is all relative to what’s in the cab anyways. If I have a bunch of stuff behind the seats though the sound gets lost and they become useless. I really think it would be a great location for a pair of 6.5 or 8” subs though! Also thought about putting a sub in the center console. 

People like what they like, and I've never heard your system.

 

That being said, behind adding an amplifier and installing component speakers, the single biggest improvement in sound quality I ever saw was by getting rid of the rear speakers entirely. A properly EQ'ed and powered set of front speakers provides all the soundstage I'll need.

 

Details aside, my opinion these days is that this is all basically academic anyway, because even a very good car system can frequently be beat by even the simplest home hi-fi system with properly positioned speakers. It's all in the speakers and their locations. My testing "setup" for the radios I work on (which doubles as my garage sound system) is to plug whatever radio I'm working on at the time into a pair of 8-ohm bookshelf speakers that I bought for cheap on eBay and replaced the tweeters in. Bass aside, it sounds better than a LOT of car audio systems I've heard, and we're talking about 35+ year old car radios that are good for 13 watts per channel into 8 ohms at the very best and speakers with 5" woofers that weren't exactly top of the line when they were made 20 years ago.

 

I do agree that a pair of small, shallow mount subs in the factory rear locations is an interesting idea. Designing a half-decent enclosure that fits back there and keeping the B-pillar trim panels from rattling would be the biggest challenges I think. It's something I really want to look into in a few months.

[ghetdjc320]

1 minute ago, Minuit said:

People like what they like, and I've never heard your system.

 

That being said, behind adding an amplifier and installing component speakers, the single biggest improvement in sound quality I ever saw was by getting rid of the rear speakers entirely. A properly EQ'ed and powered set of front speakers provides all the soundstage I'll need.

 

Details aside, my opinion these days is that this is all basically academic anyway, because even a very good car system can frequently be beat by even the simplest home hi-fi system with properly positioned speakers IMO. It's all in the speakers and their locations. My testing "setup" for the radios I work on (which doubles as my garage sound system) is to plug whatever radio I'm working on at the time into a pair of 8-ohm bookshelf speakers that I bought for cheap on eBay and replaced the tweeters in. Bass aside, it sounds better than a LOT of car audio systems I've heard, and we're talking about 35+ year old car radios that are good for 13 watts per channel into 8 ohms at the very best and speakers with 5" woofers that weren't exactly top of the line when they were made 20 years ago.

 

I do agree that a pair of small, shallow mount subs in the factory rear locations is an interesting idea. Designing a half-decent enclosure that fits back there and keeping the B-pillar trim panels from rattling would be the biggest challenges I think. It's something I really want to look into in a few months.

Most car audio systems I hear are not what I would consider quality and getting a system to sound good in a rattly, loud old Jeep is tough. It’s so much more than just the kind of speakers installed. The environment needs to be treated first. I’m also strongly against using any sort of EQ. If a speaker can’t keep a flat frequency response than it not a quality speaker. Car audio is tricky though and my background is integrated AV systems in commercial and residential theaters as well as restaurants and club environments so I approach car audio a bit differently than others may. Not saying it’s the right or wrong way but I know what I’m listening for. In my mj though, I haven’t spent to much time on the audio system aside from dynamatting the whole interior, replacing speakers and wiring as well as installing the head unit. I was prepping for it though. Installed a singer 240a car audio alternator.

[Minuit]

14 minutes ago, ghetdjc320 said:

Most car audio systems I hear are not what I would consider quality and getting a system to sound good in a rattly, loud old Jeep is tough. It’s so much more than just the kind of speakers installed. The environment needs to be treated first. I’m also strongly against using any sort of EQ. If a speaker can’t keep a flat frequency response than it not a quality speaker. Car audio is tricky though and my background is integrated AV systems in commercial and residential theaters as well as restaurants and club environments so I approach car audio a bit differently than others may. Not saying it’s the right or wrong way but I know what I’m listening for. In my mj though, I haven’t spent to much time on the audio system aside from dynamatting the whole interior, replacing speakers and wiring as well as installing the head unit. I was prepping for it though. Installed a singer 240a car audio alternator.

It's clear that we aren't really talking about the same thing, or speaking from the same body of experience, so here's where I'm coming from.

 

If you look at any of my post history you know how much I push sound deadening and "make it sound better, don't just add more power" in all its forms in these trucks.

 

You don't need me to tell you that it doesn't take much to change what the listener hears. Even a tiny movement of a speaker can make a big difference if the situation is right. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that every room is its own puzzle.

 

The cab of my truck has noticeable peaks in the midbass and midrange bands. There are a few very noticeable hot spots in the midrange, and a couple of them were extremely offensive to my ears. This was a constant no matter what I did to my system. From junky, 20 year old cheap speakers in the dash running off an aftermarket headunit and no amp, to a Morel component set running off an amplified factory headunit, same thing. This is probably a combination of my ears and the truck's acoustics - what sounds fine to some people sounds absolutely dreadful to me, and I'm sure it works the other way too. As I slowly improved the components of the system, sure it started to sound better but there were still a few things that either didn't quite sound the way I wanted them to or caused very unpleasant ear fatigue after more than about 20 minutes of listening.

 

My 1991 original headunit has reasonably linear frequency response that starts to drop off at about 24 kHz, way above what a human can hear in a real life situation. Any changes being made across the audio range is a limitation of the analog circuitry of the radio and not intentional by the designers. Ditto my amplifier. So we can rule out the equipment. My truck had the same peak at ~1.25 kHz through four sets of speakers, three headunits (two aftermarket and one factory), and an amplifier. The environment is everything.

 

The only way to account for the truck's acoustics is by using tricks - or by finding a speaker with a frequency response curve that's a perfect complement to the truck's interior and position of the listener's head, which ain't gonna happen. Tuning car audio systems on a professional level can pretty much be considered it's own trade, and you'll find people making a lot of money because they know how to design and build a car audio system that sounds like a concert hall and wouldn't raise an eyebrow to anything but the most knowledgeable observer. They offer their services to people who aren't satisfied with a headunit and speakers, and they generally charge a $#!&load of money for an essentially fully custom build. Fiberglass tweeter enclosures made to look factory, hidden subwoofers, all components completely hidden from view behind custom panels that are a near perfect match for the factory materials, the works.

 

EQ (on basically every driver in the system), time alignment, and other forms of tuning are extremely important to getting a car audio system sounding right no matter how good the speakers you use are. In other A/V disciplines the "rules" might be different, but a car is pretty much the worst possible listening environment you could possibly dream of and designing a decent system is all about overcoming those drawbacks in whatever way possible given the customer's requirements and preferences (believe me, I make my life more difficult by being utterly insistent on a factory look throughout the truck, even if someone starts poking their head behind the seats or under the dash). The sound system is probably literally the last thing anyone at AMC thought about when designing these trucks, and you're never going to get around that. A perfectly flat EQ may or may not sound worth a damn in a non-moving building that isn't full of protrusions, panels made of multiple materials, and glass all around the listener's head, but in a car there will be tuning of some sort required pretty much no matter what. Some of these hurdles are properties of the equipment (crossover points and slope, sub enclosure design, etc), and some of them have to do with the fact that a tiny, moving, vibrating room with speakers firing every which way is a horrible place to listen to music with anything approaching a critical ear.

 

I know this thread started off about what size speakers to put in, but car audio is such an iceberg of a topic that it's hard for me to just give a small answer.

 

One of these days I'm gonna get off my @$$ and make a big, public project of making my truck sound awesome and it'll be tons of fun. I'll show people setting amplifier gains with an oscilloscope, go over DSP controls and what they do, show what I ended up with and what I'd do differently if I started over, and post some demonstrations of what you can make an ancient tin can do. Just gotta get some dominoes into place first.

[ghetdjc320]

1 hour ago, Minuit said:

.The only way to account for the truck's acoustics is by using tricks - or by finding a speaker with a frequency response curve that's a perfect complement to the truck's interior and position of the listener's head, which ain't gonna happen. Tuning car audio systems on a professional level can pretty much be considered it's own trade, and you'll find people making a lot of money because they know how to design and build a car audio system that sounds like a concert hall and wouldn't raise an eyebrow to anything but the most knowledgeable observer. They offer their services to people who aren't satisfied with a headunit and speakers, and they generally charge a $#!&load of money for an essentially fully custom build.

I am one of those people but on the pro audio side lol. The goal still needs to be a flat response from your drivers and a well dampened interior that does not add to or or take away from the original audio recording. This is the principle with which I approach every system I design and, to some degree I like to apply those same principles to car audio. 
 

To the OP, apologies for the spurious information. You can fit 4x6 speakers in back and they do help the overall soundstage. I recommend you buy a well built quality speaker and keep them all the same brand and preferably the same series. This should help timbre match the speakers and provide better sound quality.  You can fit 5.25 speakers back there also but the corner position they are in greatly increases speaker reflection. So basically, just stick with 4x6 speakers and delete them as @Minuit suggests. 
 

One of these days, if I get the time and ambitions, I’ll work on installing a pair of 6.5 or 8” subs into the b pillars. 
 

 

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