Good way to improve sound for about $4

[cfdrumr]

I was recently in my cousins 08' WRX. He put in a AVIC D3 and Elemental Designs sub. I loved how his setup sounded so I asked him about it. He was running the stock door speakers off the D3, but with a low cut. Cutting out the lowend cleans up the sound of those cheap paper speakers. Seeing as we cant easily/stealthly throw in a new HU, I decided to cut the lowend another way. I went to radio shack and bought 4 "470" capacitors. Tonight I took out the HU and spliced the door speaker wires. Simply insert the capacitors on the positive leads to each speaker. I am cutting the lowend at aprox. 80-85Hz. In conjunction with my JL sub, my car sounds much better for the time being until I can replace the door speakers

[-TT-]

thanks for the heads up. cheap mods FTW!

[CzarDestructo]

Easier to just crank the sub gain and lower the bass on the deck

 

For further control I fed my sub off the rear speakers, so I can play with the bass as well as the fade between the front and rear speakers.

[cfdrumr]

It actually acts totally differently. I tried fooling with the bass controls. I mean, we are never going to acheive audiophile quality in our cars (I am an audiophile, I have a full Dynaudio/Yamaha monitor setup with 2 KRK subs in my home studio...)

 

With this mod, I am running full bass to the rear doors, front doors are cut around 80Hz and sub. When u cut bass on the HU, the sub will react differently.

[gfxdave99]

It actually acts totally differently. I tried fooling with the bass controls. I mean, we are never going to acheive audiophile quality in our cars (I am an audiophile, I have a full Dynaudio/Yamaha monitor setup with 2 KRK subs in my home studio...)

 

With this mod, I am running full bass to the rear doors, front doors are cut around 80Hz and sub. When u cut bass on the HU, the sub will react differently.

 

Plus the bass frequencies are just lowered to the speakers when you use the tone control on the radio. By using the "bass blocker" on the stock speakers you are preventing those frequencies from reaching the speaker and are getting more bang for your buck per pathetic watts of RMS the HU is putting out.

[CzarDestructo]

Plus the bass frequencies are just lowered to the speakers when you use the tone control on the radio. By using the "bass blocker" on the stock speakers you are preventing those frequencies from reaching the speaker and are getting more bang for your buck per pathetic watts of RMS the HU is putting out.

 

Not sure I understand, I mean the signal is still being amplified by the HU, only it's getting sinked into the cap to charge it instead of just being wasted by the speakers. The energy is still being expended. Unless I'm misunderstanding how the amp works.

 

Just seems like a lot of work to solder the caps behind the radio when a knob does something similar and it's not permanent. In regards to "When u cut bass on the HU, the sub will react differently.", I use a signal processor (MTX re-Q) to tidy up the signal. Granted it's far from perfect, but for $80 it makes a huge difference.

 

I dunno I love music and dabble in audio although I certainly wouldn't call myself an audiophile. I figured my mod to my stereo was the best route short of redoing everything. I'm always welcome to new ideas if they're going to improve the sound of my daily drive!

[Prime Power]

I use those on my truck system. Different size caps but same thing. It comes down to how clean the signal is. I know by messing with the bass adjust as stated above you are distorting the signal. Possibly clipping it when the volume is too high. I have had no problem with the bass in my stock system, but if I do I will add these.

[gfxdave99]

Not sure I understand, I mean the signal is still being amplified by the HU, only it's getting sinked into the cap to charge it instead of just being wasted by the speakers. The energy is still being expended. Unless I'm misunderstanding how the amp works.

 

Just seems like a lot of work to solder the caps behind the radio when a knob does something similar and it's not permanent. In regards to "When u cut bass on the HU, the sub will react differently.", I use a signal processor (MTX re-Q) to tidy up the signal. Granted it's far from perfect, but for $80 it makes a huge difference.

 

I dunno I love music and dabble in audio although I certainly wouldn't call myself an audiophile. I figured my mod to my stereo was the best route short of redoing everything. I'm always welcome to new ideas if they're going to improve the sound of my daily drive!

 

So when you turn the bass down you are doing just that, subtracting from the frequencies based on the points in an eq curve that the stock knob attenuates. For example the stock bass control has a point in the eq curve and turning it down only reduces the amount +/- the few db that the knob allows. So if the response curve was a rubber band you are just pulling the rubber band down a little and the corresponding frequencies reduce in a V shape, so while you are reducing your audible bass you are still sending those frequencies to the speakers, just less.

 

If you use a bass blocker you are removing those frequencies from the signal going to the speaker. So instead of the pulling the rubber band towards the left you are actually lowering the anchor point of the audio frequency on the low end. So instead of creating a valley in the eq curve you create a descending slope on lower frequencies. So instead of decreasing by a small amount you are preventing those frequencies from reaching the speakers at all, which then allows the speakers to focus on reproducing the range of frequencies above the slope drop off. This gives the speakers a narrower range to deal with and they should theoretically do a better job.

 

Also by just turning down the bass knob on the stereo you then have to inversely up your input gain on your sub amp which after awhile can introduce more noise and distortion to your signal. If you wanted to do it a simpler way you could simply splice them in-line at the speaker output at the back of the stereo for all four channels instead of having to rip each door apart. The bass blocker doesn't care if its on the stereo end or the speaker end.