Audiophiles: Tweeter speakers mounted above the seatbelts? (1 Viewer)

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As has been mentioned on here before, the tweeters stock location isn't very good, so I've been looking at alternates.

Has anyone considered mounting them on the pillars above the seatbelts? You couldn't get a very deep tweeter in there without making a spacer, but it should be an easy location to mount to and running the wiring would be a cinch. You could also mount a total of four, giving both the front and middle rows tweeters.

Any reasons not to do this?
 
It would sound really really strange to have the midrange coming from in front of you and the highs coming from behind you. Getting pods and putting them in the A-pillars would be better.
 
Generally speaking, you need to have your midbass and tweeter as close as possible. How this is achieved is up to you. I think ed97fzj80 has it right with putting the tweeters in the A-Pillars. I generally like this setup as you get clearer highs but again spacing might be an issue. I always have liked kick panels but that's just me.

Q
 
Major imaging problems with doing so. You want to minimize the distance difference between the left and right speakers and the listener. In car this means mounting them as far forward in the dashboard or kick panel as possible. Mounting them by the seatbelts will maximize the difference which will cause major imaging issues, integration issues with the midranges, and a major volume disparity between the two speakers for each listener.
 
You want to minimize the distance difference between the left and right speakers and the listener.
I think Cary meant to say is to minimize the distance between the midrange driver and the tweeter. Ideally, they should be as far the the front (front speakers) of the car as you can get them and they should be no more than 12" apart. Also, remember, that tweeters are very directional. If you mount a tweeter (by the seatbelt) that is pointing into your ear, and the midrange is in the door, your imaging and sound quality will be very poor.
Maybe perfect inaging is not your top priority, but I would think that you still want it to sound as good as is can. A few suggestions of where to mount tweeters would be:

A-Pillar - using a pod or 45* housing

The mirror panel onthe top corner of the door with a 45* housing or fiberglass a new panel

In the top outer AC vents, behind the vent adjusters(you would not see the tweeters, but you would hear them quite well)

Higher on the door panel with a 45* housing

But please, don't mount them on the seatbelt pillar.

Hope this helps in some way.

tONy
 
agree that the location would be a cinch to do but also agree with the others that the imaging created by said location would create rather poor sound quality. kick panels, a pillar, or even the dash would be more desireable for sound quality.
 
Why not put them in the stock location in the dash? I put some midrange/tweeters in the stock dash location and it made a huge improvement on how my system sounds.
 
You can do that and it will sound better, but you'll get still more improvement with better locations. The stock dash locations are pretty poor.
 
I think Cary meant to say is to minimize the distance between the midrange driver and the tweeter.

tONy

Nope, I meant what I said. The majority of your spacial and imaging cues come from the tweeters, and you want to keep them as close to equal distance from the listener as possible. Vertical separation between the midrange and tweeter is not very important, our ears are not very sensitive to vertical separation.
 
as usual this is going to get very subjective.....................
 
Agree tweets should be in front of the listener, and as close to equal distance from your ears. Their function is imaging and the stereo effect, so having one 5 inches from your head and the other 4 feet from your head would easily negate any advantage of adding them in terms of overall sound. Not really too subjective - there are basic fundamental objective standards of audio placement easily available to read.

DougM
 
Nope, I meant what I said. The majority of your spacial and imaging cues come from the tweeters

True

and you want to keep them as close to equal distance from the listener as possible. Vertical separation between the midrange and tweeter is not very important, our ears are not very sensitive to vertical separation.

In car this means mounting them as far forward in the dashboard or kick panel as possible.

Equal distance from the listener....in the kick panels?....

And as far as vertical separation between the midrange and tweeters, it is not only very important, it's HUGE! Not just to imaging, but to staging as well.

Anyway...sorry for the ranting.

tONy
 
In the kick panels is as near as you can get to equal distance, and people have been doing it successfully that way for years. To expand on cary's point about separation, it is best to have the mid and tweet as close to one another as they can be. The vertical axis is the least important. Humans are very good at telling differences in width and depth, not so much in height. That's part of why almost all speakers are vertical, not horizontal arrays.

Everything cary has posted in this thread is dead on.
 
Rite.....That's why they mount the mids and tweeters at the bottom of the cabinets for home speakers?.....WOW!
 
Good points. I guess this answers a lot of my questions on why the 3rd row tweeters were such a poor choice of location.

I think the two ideas I like the most are on the mirror panel or behind in AC vents.

Would be interesting. "Is your music coming from...your air conditioning?" :hmm:
 
What exactly are you looking to achieve? Myself, and maybe a few others, have invaded your thread and are probably looking way past what you are looking for. Are you just adding tweeters? What kind? Midrange? Amp?

tONy
 
Mostly just looking for relatively easy/inexpensive ways to improve the sound, without going too far away from the stock look (the :princess: tends to get upset when I suggest cutting holes in "her" car).
 
cary is right but in a vehicle it's hard to have placement of the speakers exactly where they should versus a home audio setup where you just pick it up and simply move it. If you have a time alignment stereo that should take care of the issue cary is referring to.

Q
 
IMO, cheapest/fastest/best way to improve sound with stock appearance is pick up a set of the Pioneers folks on the list here ID'd as a solution. Huge improvement in tonal range, imaging, etc. I just gave a set to my bro in law for his 80 for his birthday Monday. I think they were $80 for all 4 shipped to my door.

DougM
 
Rite.....That's why they mount the mids and tweeters at the bottom of the cabinets for home speakers?.....WOW!

1) Cars aren't houses.

2) Relax, you're getting way too uppity about this.

3) Read more. This stuff is all over the web. Get it from a source that isn't me, since I seem to piss you off.
 

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