My car audio install

Very nice mate, are you planning to start to come to local meets again as well ? Be great to see you there.

Sex wee time walt  

Whaaaaaa  

Awesome!

Hi Walt,

Love the work on your door builds.

Are you on talkaudio?

I'm planning to run a McIntosh MX406 with a Genesis SA30 and modified Dual Mono which Gordon has upgraded with better components and more class A Bias. 

Im sure of what components to run but will be 2 way. I have some Focal KRX2 components I could run active with the tweeters off the sa30 and Mids off Dual mono.

I have some audioscape door pods which will provide a good starting point but will probably adjust them as the drivers would be really off axis.

To be honest not sure about sound quality with my G60 engine being so loud!

Hi Rich.. No I am not on talk audio although I have come accross it when googling things.. Gordon also upgraded one of my dual mono's for improved performance, Class A bias and treble upgrade. I use that on my tweeters, the Ta2 tube dual mono on the mids and a dual mono on the bass with a powerful monoblock for the sub. I chose DLS amps as they are similar to the genesis but also look slightly nicer in my opinion. I did apologise to to gordon for not buying the genesis amps when I asked him to upgrade one of mine. He will work on DLS amps aswell as the Genesis amps. I think he has been employed by DLS now helping design their new amps.. Knowing what I know now about Gordon Taylor and Genesis, I probably would have gone for them instead of the DLS. There is something I like about the idea of hand built audio equipment, especially stuff designed and built by Gordon.

With regard to your components, I personally love the Morel stuff I am using. Whether or not there is better out there, I have no idea, all I can tell you is that the build quality is superb, they sound beautiful, but they are not cheap.. I was considering some of the Morel supremo piccolo tweeters instead of the MT22's .. But at the end of the day, its a convertible and you will hit a point where your returns diminish.

When you start building, you will find that other problems will influence certain things you do. For example, if I cross over my bass speakers at 50hz, I get too much vibration inside the doors. Ok, so I could spend time stripping everything down and see if I can reduce it, but it makes more sense to cross over a little higher at say 80hz.. So I guess what I am saying is that all those nuisance things, like vibrations and tweeter direction make more difference than any improvements you will hear between a top tweeter from one brand compared to another.. Of course there are differences and one brand may be slightly better than another, but as is with most things, you get what you pay for.. I chose Morel, because they have been a top speaker manufauturer in home audio for years. Someone I know swears by the Seas drive units (another home audio giant).

Something I am finding very annoying is that in order to set up and test my set up, I need to spend a lot of time, playing test tone cd's, favourite test tracks, etc etc. I did all this in my garage, thinking it would be not so far off when I took the car out for a spin.. How wrong I was.. So now I am going to have to annoy the neighbours setting it up outside..

You have all these joys to come.. Let us know how you get on..

such a nice interior good to meet you at the weekend mate, hope you got all the sand out ok!

Best interior by a mile, epic retrim with unbelievable detail. Brave colour choice that works so well against the blue and by keeping so much black contrasts perfectly.

As for the stereo …………,mental :-)

Thanks matey.. It means a lot to me that people appreciate what I have done.. When making a change, you have to constantly ask yourself "Is it better than it was, and is it the best that it could be" and with the stereo and interior, the mental pounding I have given myself over every little thing has left me feeling fatigued sometimes.. But the search and journey for perfection should never be easy and as far as I am concerned, you should never actually get there either.. Because if perfectionism really is an illness, there should always be that nagging doubt that it could be better.. And that is where people push boundaries.. My stereo still isn't set up quite as I would like.. I am at some point going to get it set up by someone with experience at the highest level, but I'm giving it my best shot first.. I've done big sound stereo systems as a young lad with my first cars. But this one is all about quality. It was great to hear people's reactions to the sound quality at the agm and it really means a great deal to me, so thanks for your kind words.. I have seen your thread on your sportline and although a car re build and a stereo may seem on the surface two very differect things.. I know we both have a very similar attention to detail and for that reason, its really reassuring to hear from you that you like my car.. Thanks very much..

richievr.. Thank you so much for lending me the water sprayer.. I was on the verge of going home when you lent me that.. That wet sand on the way in totally trashed 4 days of cleaning prior to the show and I couldn't have shown my car in that state, so big big thanks to you.. I pressure washed under the arches as soon as I got home. It was stressing me all day..

not a problem matey, glad it sort of worked!

I have done a few installs on various Mk1's now, alongside a vast number of other cars and without a doubt the worst car I have ever experienced for killing the sound coming from the boot was a Mk1 Cabby…

Have you ported the boot in any way to allow the subs to actually work in the cabin?

I am a firm believer with car audio that sound quality is totally dependant on personal taste and acoustic environment/installation. £600 components might not sound as good as £100 items. My current system (Not intended to sound the best it can due to the structure and 'tinny' nature of a Mk1) includes:

Up front:-
JL Audio C5 5.25" Coaxial speakers
Rockford Fosgate 500.2

In the back:-
JL Audio W3v3 12" Sub
Rockford Fosgate 300.1

I have no speakers in the rear of the car as I find the front speakers give enough fill, apart from the fact that I have no rear seats. My choice of Coax speakers mounted low down in the door was purely aesthetic, had I been able to find what I thought to be an acceptable place to mount tweeters I would have. That being said I found during the build that there was very little difference because of the interior noise when driving. The whole car has been deadened properly including the roof and having chosen the system components from my personal 'bang for buck' list I find it musical and rounded as well as lightweight and punchy.

I have installed and listened to Rainbow, Morel, DLS, JL Audio, Hertz etc etc in various cars when I worked in the car audio industry full time, however for me the Mk1 is not the place for high end items as the environment they are installed in is not suitable to get the best out of them, you can get just as good of a sound out of a speaker which costs far less.

I'm not knocking your install because you have clearly spent a great deal of time planning, thinking and experimenting. I am simply trying to understand/challenge your logic for putting such high end gear in such an acoustically poor car.

All that being said the install and car look properly mint! Loving your interior too! Have a look at my build thread in my signature as my interior is a similar style albeit a totally different colour not to mention its a tintop!

Would also appreciate any opinion on the system in my car, this is after all what forums are for

Joe

Hi Joe90k.. I agree completely that the mk1 golf cabby is acoustically dreadful.. I also agree that the quality of the components in my car are to a degree wasted on such an unsuitable environment.. However.. My car was a totally stock, mint condition, low mileage, show winning car. Edition 38 beast standard concourse, GTI International, Tatton park "Most original GTI" to name but a few.. When I set about improving the stereo in the car, it was with a view to being as subtle as possible and I started with just a head unit. Unhappy with my results, I upgraded the speakers.. Still unhappy, I bought a sub and amp and so it went on… As a person, I am a perfectionist and as such, taking a show winning standard car and doing an extreme stereo install with average components just wouldn't cut it for me.. I would never forgive myself.. Because of the show side of my cars life with me, it had to be show worthy.. Not only in sound quality, but also in the quality of the components. The components in my car are pretty much all new second hand and as such, cost me well under the £9000 they would have cost brand new in the shop. So trust me, I have been as thrifty as I could be.. I've maybe spent £7000 including the leather interior and sportline recaro's.

This install was a gradual learning curve and personal challenge for me and on reflection, I now have enough experience to agree with your points in general.. But at the beginning of my journey to what I have now, I never once thought, "Hey, I'm gonna throw a whole heap of expensive components into a car that is acoustically dreadful"… Instead, I thought "I'm gonna make this ******* thing sound good if it kills me.. "

It does sound pretty good though.. A lot of the issues I addressed with my door card builds and as for bass, I am only running 1 10" morel ultimo 10sc but it is more than you could ever need..

 

With regards to your components that you are running, it is very difficult to say what I think without hearing them, however.. I tried a 5.25" speaker (Morel Dotech ovation) in my doors early on in my build and certainly in the standard door cards and pods, it just couldn't give enough bass due to the nature of the door card material. The negative wave cancellation through the flimsy card and plastic pod just made them sound tinny.. Your 5.25" JL's really depend on your door card construction. In my home audio, my Rega Ela speakers have a 4" driver I think, but do such a good job of conrolling the negative wave that they sound really warm and full. I was very tempted to go for 8" drivers in my doors, but I suffered enough from vibrations in the internals of the doors (electric window mech's, door lock mech etc) that I decided that the 6.5" were ample.

With a 5.25" driver in the door, I would have been more inclined to use a 10" sub.. But again this is down to personal taste in music and what you want from your system.. A 12" will always be lower and move more air, but in my case, I found a sealed 10" to be more musical and more in keeping with how I believe the music I'm playing was originally recorded. I never wanted to add bass, only play what should be there. It is very easy to be impressed by bass and power. Its a lot harder to bring yourself to turn it down to what you believe it should be to give a truthful representation of the original track.

All these opinions are hypothetical and only theory until heard.. I don't profess to be an expert on the topic although I am a perfectionist who is into hifi. I only shared what I had learnt along the way because I thought I might be able to help people learn from my mistakes and experiences..

I had a quick look at your interior, looks very nice.. The diamond quilt seems very fashionable at the moment doesn't it..  

I only managed a quick scout around this at the AGM Walt and she looked even better in the flesh.

I would have loved to heard the stereo. Maybe next time.

Ian  

I saw your car last weekend and it really is stunning!
I've now read though your thread which is very interesting and informative; I only wish I'd known half of this when I did my "install" 15 years ago. I would say mine fell into the 'must be loud to overcome the wind noise' category so I threw in as much of everything that I could buy and ended up going way OTT. It pretty much ended up as the 'Vauxhall Corsa driven by the 19 year old wearing a baseball cap', just without the Corsa! I still have the car with the same install; I might re-do it one day and tone it down a little. 

Hi KevMk1Tdi.. Thanks for the kind words.. Years ago I had Renault 5 gt turbo's, in one I built a really nice sounding install which was way too loud really.. Still quality driven, but still way too loud.. I think we've all been there in our youth and I now joke scornfully at the people who were just like I was when I was young.. Bit hypocritical really.. But.. That said, I am trying to put that right now by sharing the small amount I have learnt along the way and hopefully put up a case for sound quality over quantity..

Just a quick update on this install for those who followed what I had been doing. I had gone for a 7 way active system (each component having its own dedicated mono amplifier) I did this using 3 dual mono amps and a large monoblock amp for the sub. In order for this type of set up to work correctly, you need to balance all the volumes of the amplifiers and also the timing of each component so that it reaches you at the same time and volume as everything else..

Now given that this was my first attempt in 20 years doing a car stereo and my first time dipping my toe into a fully active set up of any kind, I was learning all the way.. I made a few useful friends and acquaintances along the way and learnt a great deal, most of which I have shared in the earlier posts.. However.. Following a trip down to London in the Golf to visit one particular friend (who I made during my build), I have to really come back on here and clear up a few of my mistakes.. Not exactly mistakes, but failure to set it up correctly.. Let me explain..

I had previously measured to my ears from each speaker and input those measurements into the sound processor in order to get the timing as close as I could to being right.. As each speaker is a different distance from your head, this is very important to get right yet I had done it using a tape measure.. Although this would be there or there abouts, it just wasn't good enough because the timing is absolutely essential and impossible to get right with the human ear. I had also set up the gains of the amps by listening to music and adjusting to get it to sound balanced.. Again, I got it there or there abouts. However, each side needs to be set up individually to get the exact same volume at the ear and once again, this is impossible to do by ear. Finally the EQ.. I had listened to a test tone cd on my hifi and given each tone a score from 1-10 and transposed this onto the car stereo using the EQ.. In area's such as vocals, where I wanted to make it project further, I tried to boost those frequencies in order to force the vocal forward. But again, this was not correct and created as many problems as I was trying to cure, sibilance (hiss on the s's) being one of them. So I went to visit my friend to use his sound measuring equipment..

First of all we placed a mic pointing forward in the driver seat finishing exactly where my nose was. this point being the focal point for both timing and volume. We first of all checked the performance of each speaker, finding out at what point would be the optimum frequency to cross over from one speaker to the next. For example, my mid range speakers stated that their frequency range from 450hz but in reality, they dropped off so steeply from about 500hz that you couldn't cross over anywhere near that point. So, with all the crossover points set, we measured the output from all drivers using an optimum frequency tone for each of the drivers. The left channel being further away was adjusted to be exactly the same as the right and all speaker volumes were matched. We then set the timing by sending a click through the tweeters and adjusting the timing so that both sounds hit the mic at exactly the same time, then the same for mids, bass etc. Then all these timings were matched with each other to ensure that all sounds hitting the mic were matched in volume and timing and that no anomalies were created within the crossovers.

The result is quite stunning and to be honest I am blown away!. The difference between being perfect and there or there abouts is quite staggering. Where I had used the EQ to try to project vocals,  perfectly adjusting the timing had created such separation that everything stood out from everything else. Each instrument, singer, sound effect was so accurately in its place that the car has seemingly been removed from listening experience. Only the punchy bass is the give away that you are actually sat in a car!. The EQ is virtually flat now with the exception of a slight adjustment at the crossover of the bass (to soften the effect of crossover but without changing the crossover slope of 24 decibels per octave)

My car will never win and SQ competitions as it is a cabriolet and also the big players in SQ competitions would generally use 8" bass drivers in the doors and far more expensive components than I used. However, the results are close enough to that level, given the limitations of the car.

To the chap (Joe90k) a few messages back who questioned my judgement on installing such high quality components in a mk1 cabriolet, I am going to have to say that I have enough experience now to know where he is coming from, however, my equipment is not only built and installed correctly, but also now set up correctly and to Joe90k, I want to say that if you are ever around Manchester, or if you see me at a show, please come over and see me. In the nicest possible way, I like to silence my critics..

That's not a quick update!! 

It is in the world of Walt..