Nismo audio upgrade- critique my planned setup
 

Heres what I have come up with after searching and reading the board constantly for the last month.

Head unit
http://www.the370z.com/members/pharm...13171-7535.jpg

What seems like the usual now on here the DNX-6140


sub:
http://www.the370z.com/members/pharm...e13168-595.jpg
Bigaudiofan's fav


http://www.the370z.com/members/pharm...13170-6395.jpg
the one amp route to power it all and take up less space increase stealthness

The components Im not sure about
http://www.the370z.com/members/pharm...13169-5812.jpg
SPX-17REF - Alpine 6.5" Type-X Series Component Set


Thoughts, questions, concerns? Open to all advice.

Should be a great setup another option for speakers to look at woud be the polk sr series. Might even be a bit better than the x series.

Hmm looks good, I was thinking of upgrading my stock speakers, and running a single shallow mount 12" in the rear hatch spare tire well. The part where it got complicated for me is, I have the Kenwood DNX 9140, and I think I wanna run an amp to power the components, and then I guess a seperate for the sub?

I would upgrade to 7" sceen, I personally don't like the looks of the Kenwood models below the 9140. They have a cheapness to them

other than that, looks like a nice setup

I may have to end up stealing this setup, albeit I will probably go with a different head unit. Probably a 9140 or Alpine INA-W900.

That is a good set up but for not much more I would recommend the following:

Alpine INA-W900 - It has Bur Brown 24Bit DACs!!! A true High-End double din unit.

JL Audio 600HD 4-channel (Add the Remote Bass Knob, its dead usefull) I feel JL HD amps are noticibly better than Alpine PDX amps.

Focal Polyglass 165 VRs or PolyKevlar K2R Power Series. These in my opinion are the very finest 2-way car audio speakers under $600.00. They will blow you away!

Zenclosures Speaker Box - JL Audio 12W3V3. In my opinion, the best SQ sub JL makes. Perfect match for the HD600 amp.
or
Stealth Enclosure by NAZAR with a JL 13TW5. This sub hits like a sledgehammer!


EQ - Audio Control EQX - I highly recommend this unit!! Its an excellent 10V pre-amp and you can really dial everything in to perfection.

Ill take a look at your suggestions and evaluate the cost to performance difference. Honestly dont wanna hit to loud just clean high quality sound lost to much hearing as a youth with the systems in previous vehicles.

...

then name them..... please

Off the top of my head...
pioneer ts-c720prs
polk sr6500
hybrid clarus and legatia series
morel dotech ovation
zapco ck comps
just to name a few... dont get me wrong some of focals higher lines are great ( anything with the TN series tweet) but to make the claim they are the best for the money is a little off. Id put JL and Focal in the same trendy overpriced range. if there comps were a cpl hundred less then it would be another story...

You are right about the W6 being flatter than the 13TW5. I had to use steep crossover points and low settings plus a parametric eq to get mine to flatten out.

What I really like about Focal speakers is that they have a strong midrange presence and crystal clear highs. This isnt for everyone, some people prefer a more laid back speaker. I love thier detail and crisp tight midbass they deliver. :yum: Thier home audio speakers are incredible!

As much as I love JL's stuff I disagree with you about putting them in the same catagory as JL. Focal speakers are hand made and they manufacture all of thier components. They are a whole other league beyond JL Audio.

To compare a set of Pioneer or even Polk speakers to Focal speakers is like comparing a turbocharged dodge neon to a Cayman S Porche:wtf2: Yeah it may keep up with it but it aint a Porche and it sure doesnt sound like a Porche.

Talked to the guy I plan on having do my install and he recommended the Hertz HiEnergy HSK165.4 & Hertz HX250D

Anybody have experience with these? Sub goes for 300 and components for 450.

Ive ran the HSK 3 ways, theyre lacking a little on the midbass, The hi energy line is Hertz low ed line and isnt even made in house.

You need to educate yourself a little better to make that statement, both pioneer and polk build and design those series in house and they are highly revered in the SQ community. As far as focal being hand made, sure everything above the access line is assembled in france. Alot of the parts ( baskets, cones, ferrite for motors) are outsourced and brought in.

^^ I agree

Still I have to say I would take focal over pioneer and polk any day after hearing the polyglass ones. Although the polk SR's are very nice.

I need to educate myself?? You and I are on a completely different playing field when it comes to SQ and car audio. You can think whatever you want, its really irrellevant to me.

Well Im glad we agree on something... Its not my point to cut you down but to be so close minded when there are ALOT of other products out there that can do the job better for less. Ive actually put together more than a few SQ cars, I dotn just make stuff up...

I can tell from your last 3 posts that YOU don't have a clue on how to build a true competitive SQ system. Like I said, you and I are in a completely different league. Enough said!

This coming from someone who had a shop install do all the work. I bet your using passive crossovers for your competition sytem lol

Lol, dunno why your so bent out of shape because I said there were a ton of cheaper, better options than your focals. Just because you bought an overpriced set of components doesn't make your car an award winning sq install. I'd love to see the how you have the speakers imaged and how the wires are ran and terminated. SQ is a lot more install then product used.

There are many photos and unique designs in my audio system on this site that speak for themselves. Everything in my car has been designed and engineered specifically for my car. I have even shared my subwoofer enclosure design with some of you that took countless hours of design and engineering.

I had to have a shop do the fabrication and installation because fo one, I dont have a Machine shop and a wood shop at my disposal anymore, next I didnt have the time to strip my car down to deaden it.

I have done both active and passive cossovers on my fronts and I actually gained better results from the passives but my passives have been modified and redesigned by me to taylor them for the interior of my car and the thier location. So dont go there buddy! You are outta your league.

LOL speakers tailored for your car, doubt it. How they are aimed and setup that is something that I would believe. Speed knows what he is talking about and someone I talk to a for advice. So chill out!

Is this an East Coast vs. West Coast thing? Haha!

You doubt becasue you and 95% of enthusiasts out there dont understand how crossovers really work. They do much more than filter frequencies. You can alter the phase and shift the time alignments on the drivers to compensate for tweeter location and for the material it reflects off of like glass vs plastic, leather, or even carpet. Crossover design is a science that is used in DIY world of car and home audio. Some people think its a bandaid solution and it is if you use inferior quality speakers ie "BOSE" but it does work!

I have been doing DIY for 15 years and I have developed my own custom software for crossover and enclosure design. If anyone is interested in it I might even share it.

I'd like to throw in a suggestion for the component speakers, Infinity Kappa Perfects. Should be about the same price range as the Type-X.

Your best bet would be to hear them in person somewhere, like an audio shop. I love Alpine products, I have a complete Type-R setup (including vPower M500 mono amp & F300 4chan. amp, 12" Type-R sub, etc. etc.) and I absolutely love it. But I would really say, after hearing the Infinity Kappa Perfects powered from an Infinity 500w multichannel amp in a friend's GTO, I was just shocked at the clarity at high volumes, not to mention the bass they provided as well.

Im curious how your changing the phase in your passive crossovers. The phase you can control through the crossover is electrical by utilizing different crossover slopes. You said you were using the focal passives so Im lost there.
Also phase as you refer to it being affected by the vehicles acoustics is not controlled through the crossover but rather through the install, aiming, and level matching primarily. Im also curious how you're utilizing time alignment with a passive network. You would only be able to adjust the stage left and right. Time and Frequency of a driver are two different functions, correct me if Im wrong. Also if you are using a passive filter time alignment wont help with height of your tweeter and the only way you can change phase without moving the tweet is to adjust the slope, affecting the electrical phase.

Again please dont take my comments the wrong way. I hope Im not out of my league because I'd like to think we can have an intelligent discussion. Id be curious about the program you made for crossover design. It could be a nice tool to add to my collection.

I apologize if I came off a bit negative, anyway this forum is about sharing information and this is a bit lengthy so here goes.

The problem with stock passives is they are designed primarily for having the mid and tweet close to each other and on the same baffle or panel. This largely why they get a bad rap especially if you are forced to put components in unconventioal places. Basically a car is an unconventional envornment for audio. In order to resolve these problems we have to re-design our passive crossover network and taylor it for our envoirnment.

Phase and crossover slope are 2 separate entities and in this case slope remains unchanged.

Now adjusting the phase is a whole other science. Car speakers are optimized to perform well off-axis (speakers that play indirectly) vs home speakers that are optimized for on-axis (pointing directly at you). No matter how good off-axis speakers are, they will still sound better on-axis.

What I try to do is put the tweeter on axis by adjusting the phase anywhere between 90 and 270 degrees. In doing so this will change the time alignment between the mid woofer and the tweeter. You can calculate your resistor values that you will need to correct the change in time alignment. Let’s say you have a lot of carpet in your car, then you want your time alignment to be quite advanced because of the non-reflective materials in the car. If you are reflecting off of glass then you need to go the other direction because of the reflective material.

Applying this to the Z:

I chose to use the stock location for my mid’s and tweets. What I did was roll my tweets 270 degrees off-axis by changing the values in the resistors on the passive crossover. (I will explain why I did this later) Since they are reflecting off of glass I used the lower settings on the crossover volume to cut a little output from them to compensate for the db gain from the reflection from the windshield.

In the Z, the distance between the tweets and mid’s are about 18 inches but again the fact that they reflect from the windshield made the phase invert. I not only had to flip the phase 180 degrees to put them back into phase, but I added an additional 90 degrees to make the illusion that they were in front of my face. This was a total of 270 degrees of phase adjustment.
In order to get my values I had to reverse engineer the Focal passive crossovers.

These crossovers are 3rd order Butterworth 18/db octave crossovers so they were not that complicated. I just punched in the component values in my software and then my software program spits back the values after I have it calculate the phase I want.

I just had to order some 1% tolerance resistors and capacitors of equal quality and replaced the components.

This still changed some behavior of the tweeter and mid woofer relationship but remember I have a 13 band parametric eq which fixed this problem and I was able to blend them perfectly, at least to my ears.

My imaging is dead on and dramatically better than it was just rolling with the stock passives.

I had to heavily paraphrase to keep it from being a book but I will touch on your notes.

What i first was trying to say is I did not change the slope of the crossovers. Also Phase and slope only directly affect each other in simple passive crossovers without phase compensation. Any decent passive crossover will have phase compensation. In my Focal crossovers they compensated for that shift so I had to alter them.

Also since I have my own software I calculate time alignment by distance between tweeter and mid woofer becasue its a more stable constant since once the drivers are installed they will never move.

A Zobel network is already designed into the Focal passive crossovers because the Focal tweeters are actually 8 ohm and the woofer is 4 ohm. I altered the values in an attempt to undue the phase compensation that was designed into the crossover which put me exactly where I wanted to be at 270 degrees off-axis.

I left the mid woofers as they were (off-axis) as I only needed to alter the tweeters in my installation. I did this to keep it less complicated becasue I knew I could use my eq to blend them.

I wasnt using the EQX to tame individual speakers but to tame the peaks at each octave. I also first tune the system by my ear as what sounds best to me. I then record my settings as my reference point. If and when I have my car RTA'd for competition I can record those settings as a competition reference point so I can go back in forth. Perfectly flat is not always ideal for all music for everyday listening at least for my tastes.

Remember, there are a hundred ways to skin a cat. What I did made a big improvement and greatly enhanced my imaging and overal tonality of the system. If I could have in hindsight I would have used the 3-way Focal poly kev set and had even more improvement. I wanted to keep the stock appearence and that would have been nearly impossible.

so that NISMO audio upgrade.... hows that thing coming?

LOL funny you use the metaphor theres more than one way to skin a cat, It was exactly my thought when typing my last response. It just seems that you're taking the longest way to achieve the results, I was under the impression you had the car RTA'd. You can calculate all you want but without figuring out the vehicles internal volume and resonant frequency the crossover design was just a guess. This is why I prefer an electronic crossover. Essentially all the componets you changed in the crossover usinga program are a guess without measuring in car with an RTA. You cant figure out the phase diffence form the reflective materials without one.
Id scrap the passives all together and maybe use a DQX for all your tuning. There are som any in car variables that effect overall phase and stage height that in a competition SQ vehicle you have to be able to make small adjustments. In my truck I had been running a Clarion DRZ9255 and a DQX to take care of those issues. Now for a non competition vehicle, the passives will do the job just fine.
I would be interested in hte program you use Ive used a few different programs but theres always more to learn which was the original point I was trying to make to you...

My methodologies may not be very efficient and you are correct, I have no way of calculating the inside of the car or measuring the refraction of sound from different materials. Much of what I have done is an educated guess and I am no where near exact but I am in the ball park.

The reason I chose to retain and modify passives is becasue I have years of experience playing with them and I enjoy doing it. Most of my experience comes from home audio which follows the same basic designs, but car audio enviornment throws a twist which makes it a challenge I couldnt resist.

As far as software is concered, I didnt like anything I found so I wrote my own software and over the years built upon it. I would be more than happy to share it with you but its not compiled and I dont have a compiler so I can't package it into a neat little installation file.

I have some really old programs that are more basic that were done in excel that are usefull. The crossover calc is only 1st and 2nd order crossovers and its basic but its usefull for building custom passives.

This site will not let me upload .xls, or .rar files. If you want them, pm me with your email and I will send them to you.

pm sent. yea thats the problem with alot of programs is that a home audio environment is way different and makes it tons easier to use a passive network.

First, thanks for your advices. I noticed that you suggested a JL Audio 600HD 4-channel to power up the Focal's midbass but I didn't see any recommendation for the subwoofer. I'm going on the same direction since I'm looking for SQ and JL looks to be the best shot. The only thing is that I think I'd get the 12W6V2 and I need an Amp for it... I think 1000 1v2 is too much and I need to know if the JL 500 1v2 is enough. Having this set up, should I need to trim or adjust anything on the doors? Do you think that the factory enclosure from JL is the best option to go?

PS - My head unit is an Avic Z110BT.

Thanks a lot!

the JL 500.1 is perfect for the 12W6v2. That is an excellent subwoofer! A 1000 watts is just too much! If you havent bought an amp yet, I highly recommend the JL HD 900/5 amp. It will power your whole system very nicely.

I wouldnt drop the dough on a JL enclosure though, the ones from Zenclosures are very good and very reasonable.

You will need some spacers for your fronts but I think you can also get them from Zenclosures too and they do not cost much.

Nazar makes a nice eclosure for the 13Tw5 but I will tell you right now that the 12W6v2 is a much better sounding subwoofer. The 13Tw5 is louder but lacks the finess of the w6 series.

Thanks again buddy. I didn't buy the amp yet but are you sure the HD 900/5 will pull a 100% out of the potential on the sub or would be better to get a 10"? I mean, the sub channel has only 500 W... and the other 4 x 75 W... I heard something about those specs being not in RMS but I'm really not sure.
Also the factory battery is enough to power everything up?

I agree with 2 fast, 12w6v2 and the 900/5 is a great start, that is 500rms and the amps use regulated power supplies and put out that power from 2 ohm to 4 ohm

Oh yeah, it definitly will! The 12W6V2 is rated to 400wrms so throwing 500 wrms on it will push it to its limits. The 900/5 is 500wrmsX1 and 100wrmsX4 and if you bridge the front and rear channels you will have 150wrmsx2 which is where you want to be when pushing a high-end 2-way or even 3-way component system.

I do recommend replacing the battery with a dry cell type battery. They are a big step above the lead/acid spiral cell battery and like 5 steps above an OEM nissan battery. Oddessye and Stinger are the only ones I know of. Your stock battery wont last long with an HD900/5 sucking on it. 1 year max!!