Component Speakers in Rear Doors?

[sleepycruiser]

Has anyone put components in their rear doors? If so, any pics? I am considering doing it, but wanted to see if there were any cons to it. Hardly anyone rides in the back except my kids...but I thought adding the tweeters up top might level the sound field in the back.

I would probably put the tweeters in the top of the door or maybe in the seat belt pillar facing back if there is room.

Dumb idea?

 

[kelly saad]

I did this a few years ago. Pics on this thread : My new 98

 

[sleepycruiser]

I did this a few years ago. Pics on this thread : My new 98

Very nice. Do you think they sound good in the back?

 

[mkaderabek]

They're coaxial speakers, not components. I used JBL I bought on Amazon and it was fairly plug and play. Quick, easy and well worth the upgrade.

 

[sleepycruiser]

They're coaxial speakers, not components. I used JBL I bought on Amazon and it was fairly plug and play. Quick, easy and well worth the upgrade.

I understand, but component speakers can be installed instead. Typically a better sound and gives a better soundstage....just curious about anyone that might have gone this route instead of coaxials.

 

[mkaderabek]

I swapped both out, components in the front and coaxials in the rear. They are leaps and bounds better than the factory speakers, but no noticeable difference sitting in the front seat or in the back seat. I don't think it would be worth the extra effort. Not to mention I'm assuming that you spend the majority of your time in the drivers seat, not in the back. I would also recommend swapping the factory subwoofer, it's terrible.

 

[MallX4]

I did components front and rear in my 4runner. It was way too much treble honestly. I had been told numerous times that you just want something for rear fill, I agree now.

 

[kelly saad]

Very nice. Do you think they sound good in the back?

The sound is extremely good in my LC, back seat or front. If I turn off the rears, you will notice a difference. It all matters if you are building a somewhat high quality sound system. I have a 500 watt Alpine running the Kenwoods, and a 300 watt Alpine on 2 Fosgate 10's. Its more fun to drive when music sound fabulous.

 

[suprarx7nut]

Controversial opinion incoming: Forget the rears completely. It's a waste. Spend that money on better front speakers, sub or a DSP.

I am complete non-believer in rear speakers, even more-so after my recent upgrade. OEMs install rears simply to fill the cabin with volume without taking up cargo space with a sub. If you want quality sound and have a limited budget, just buy nicer front speakers instead of rears and add a real subwoofer. If you were going to buy 2 $125 pairs, drop the rears and spend $250 on a nicer front. If you were going to buy 2 $250 pairs, buy a single pair for $500. You'll hit start to hit diminishing returns once you get beyond $400-700 per pair, IMO, but up to that point you generally get a LOT better sound as you increase your budget per pair.

Last year I completely redid my system. At 32, this was the first system I'd ever really spent money on, despite being an audio fanatic through my 20s. I shopped speakers and found nothing better than the Morel Virtus Components. Huge detail in the tweeter and smooth mids. Those speakers are simply incredible. I don't think Focal had an equal offering until their $800-1000 pairs (The Morel's were $450). It's a mental shift now listening to music. You can hear the nuances of snares, toms and cymbals soooo much better. The amps and distorion chosen for guitars or the resonance in an acoustic is unreal. There's a wealth of detail and richness you just can't hear with your average $100-200 speaker. Listening to old Metallica was like hearing it for the first time again. That snare in the Black album is a cannon and prior to having these speakers I never knew it. Voices are so rich and full. Everything from Jewel to old school thrash metal to electronic is so much better. Pink Floyd, my god. Nothing beats a drive home after a long day like good music on a good system.

I also added a DSP amp (Audiocontrol D-4.800), but the real upgrade difference was alllllll in those front speakers.

Do yourself a favor a spring for the fronts. No matter what you do to a system, you can't improve anything more quickly than upgrading the front speakers to something a tier above typical "Best Buy" speakers.

That post got away from me. Sorry for the wall of text. I'm passionate about audio, it seems, haha.

 

[SmoothLC]

^^ Can't really argue with @suprarx7nut's advice above. I did the rears though and at least to me there is a noticeable difference. But everyone's ears are different. ha

 

[Njck22]

Supra is correct, rears are waste of time and money. But your situation is for kiddos, I can see having some cheap coaxial speakers would be useful, but don’t go better than oem, then if they are listening to something you don’t want to you could fade it to the rear.

Don’t go out and buy nice speakers and then have the low power amplifier clip and blow them!


Also tuning your sound system is just as important as quality components. A midrange budget system can sound great with proper eq, crossovers, and time correction.

 

[KillerBox]

I installed Focal ES 165k components in my rear doors and ES 100k behind the 3rd row seats in pods. In my opinion a little rear fill is good but, too much destroys your front soundstage.

With a Proper sound processor, rear fill actually can help your front soundstage by making it wider than the confines of the vehicle. I use a JBL MS8 as my sound processor because it has a Logic7 processor.

I will probably never own another car without a DSP and rear fill.

 

[Pyrenees]

You might want to check out the picture gallery in the writeup I did. It might prove helpful. It's 167 images in an imgur album but let them all load and have a look: DIY: 2001 LX 470 Apple CarPlay stereo install, Mark Levinson Amp Removal, Speaker Replacement

 

[suprarx7nut]

^^ Can't really argue with @suprarx7nut's advice above. I did the rears though and at least to me there is a noticeable difference. But everyone's ears are different. ha

I installed Focal ES 165k components in my rear doors and ES 100k behind the 3rd row seats in pods. In my opinion a little rear fill is good but, too much destroys your front soundstage.

With a Proper sound processor, rear fill actually can help your front soundstage by making it wider than the confines of the vehicle. I use a JBL MS8 as my sound processor because it has a Logic7 processor.

I will probably never own another car without a DSP and rear fill.

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I do agree a minimal rear fill can help with the right tuning. I'll concede that. Having a nicer rear is better than having an OEM rear. In my mind a nice rear pair of speakers is the final icing on the cake if everything else is already near perfection. Don't put the icing on before you've got a great foundation, though.

 

[KillerBox]

I do agree a minimal rear fill can help with the right tuning. I'll concede that. Having a nicer rear is better than having an OEM rear. In my mind a nice rear pair of speakers is the final icing on the cake if everything else is already near perfection. Don't put the icing on before you've got a great foundation, though.

I agree and most people don't want to spend the time, money and energy in doing it either. My GF is still talking about how many days I spent changing and adjusting my system.

I betcha I re-tuned and changed a perfectly working system at least 20 times in a year until I was 100% satisfied. Now I haven't touched a thing in over 4 months and just enjoy the music and looking for more music to enjoy.

 

[BEG]

..I shopped speakers and found nothing better than the Morel Virtus Components...

Got a link to the ones you bought? Are they a direct replacement?

 

[fblainen11]

Just got my Nav deleted and aftermarket HU and Amp installed. Next up is installing the Infinity Kappa component front speakers and the figuring out what the hell I'm going to do for subs. Amp is Pioneer 9605 which is 5 channels.
The last thing I'll do is throw some coaxial Kappas in the rear doors.

 

[suprarx7nut]

Got a link to the ones you bought? Are they a direct replacement?

https://www.morelhifi.com/product/virtus-2-way-3-way/
Morel Virtus 602

If you shop around and find a local shop, you may save some $$. My local shop had 'em for $450.

They have a neodymium magnet in the tweeters. The tweeters have a really low crossover point (I assume because of the magnet) and the highs are just wonderful. I can't speak highly enough of them. Incredibly natural. The lower tier offerings all seemed to be heavier on the mid-bass and used a different tweeter that I didn't find amazing. I'm sure you could tune the lows to your preference either way with a dsp, but I'm not sure you can make a tweeter from the lower tiers sound much better. The clarity in those tweeters in the Virtus though... gives me chills just typing about 'em. They weren't chillingly good until I got them installed and tuned, but even on the sales floor I could tell them were more my taste than anything else out there.

*Edit. Just realized I didn't talk about fitment. I cut the front door speakers out of their plastic basket and mounted the new speakers to that plastic bracket for now. It's a bit of a hack job, but it's only temporary. To do it "right" you should plan on having an adapter ring made, or making one yourself. The tweeters are too large to fit in the OEM tweeter locations without some minor fab work. You can re-use the OEM mount and shave away material from the inside of the black OEM grill or you can not use the OEM bracket at all and tape the tweeter in place. The grill will then install just like OEM. Once I go back and fix mine I'll try to offer it as a YotaMD product. I'm sure there are others out there who would like to have a nice professional drop in adapter.

 

[Anodyne]

Components in the rear are not a terrible idea. But I’ve often wondered what the benefits might be. I’ve actually had convos with Crutchfield agents on this topic and it’s kinda the same feeling across the board: you can do it but the tweeter placement is a key factor when doing it. Placing the tweeters high could augment the staging and make the separation of frequencies muddied. Most tweeters also don’t come with any kind of significant level adjustments. You might get a -3 dB to soften the tweeters but that’s it. So then you’d want to probably shift the fade levels to the front speakers a bit so that the front speakers are getting more of the attention than rear. Personally, I don’t subscribe to the “rip out the rear speakers”. You can do it but it’s not required and not always that beneficial.

coax speakers work nice for rear because they’re easy to install and upgrade the sound quality. Do not leave the rear speakers stock if you can afford it because those speakers are not matching and you can have issues with an amp working with those stock speakers. Maybe your new speakers are 4 ohm and the stock speakers are 2 ohm and your amp doesn’t handle 2 ohm well, or maybe it’s vice versa and your amp works harder and ends up burning out a year later. Having a matching set of speakers is ideal. I bought a pair of Pioneer D 6x9 components and am going to install them in my truck soon. I have an old pair of Polk DB659s that I don’t love but they’re better than stock and have a similar power profile to these Pioneer speakers so, until I buy my rear set, I’ll just pop those in.

a side note: I wonder if anyone has installed a rear component tweeter and just used the woofer for stronger mid bass? There are drivers that are especially good at this if you can drive enough power to them and I feel like this could be a cool way to go for folks that don’t have space to install subs because having a quality 6.5 woofer to pair with 6x9s can offer a nice bump for a system on the low end. But you’d need strong tweeters to make sure you’re getting vocals and high guitar parts or the detail will be tough to hear.

 

[West Hill]

It may sound better to passengers in the back seat but could also mess up the sound stage for the driver. Ideally you want the sound stage to seem like it’s centered in front of your dash. Easier to do if you have a head unit with decent DSP features or better yet an external DSP.

Tweeters in the rear door are likely closer to your ears than the tweeters in your front door, putting the sound stage behind you. With a DSP some tuners prefer to use rear speakers as fill.

You’d be getting into another level of car audio and the expense that goes with it though.

I am disconnecting my rear speakers as an upgrade is currently underway in my LC and should be completed by March 6th. I may add coaxial in the rear door and have them tuned more as fill but only because it seems I have a couple extra amplifier channels available to use.

I put component speakers in my X6 rear doors and since I have my seat all the way back and tilt it back as well, the rear door tweeter is almost pointing right at my ear. I have a two-seat tune and a driver tune I can toggle between and with the 2-seat tune the rear speaker is too hot for my taste and I need to tweak the tune a bit. If I move my head up just a few inches it sounds fine though.

Edit: Just realized most of the thread is over a year old .