I've disconnected the rear speakers, and extended those wires to a sub in the trunk. No amp yet. Fader is used now to balance between the sub and the front speakers.

e.b.

 

huh, wouldn't you get better sound with the rear speakers + sub though?
now you're missing all the mids..

 

I get plenty of overall sound, (with mids) in the front speakers, which works out pretty well, since I'm usually sitting in the front seat while driving.

At first, I had the sub connected with the rear door speakers, but in that scenario, the sub shared the power with that rear door set of speakers, which decreased output for the rear door speakers and for the sub. So I opted to disconnect the rear door speakers and go with just the sub for the rear.

The sub is dual channel (left and right inputs). Now the Fit Sport Audio (200W) is feeding 50W to each of the front channels, and 50W to each of the rear channels, but with the fader, I'm giving the sub more juice to run the bass. (bass takes more power to produce than the rest of frequencies)

I just worked this extra sub I had sitting around into the Fit system to get a little more out of it than what it had out of the box. Fit to bump some reggae a bit better now, keepin' the sound irie, mon. My old lady thanked me for this mod... saying the music sounded more present now, more alive.

 

yah, i suppose that would work since we can contour the sound
with the stock EQ and set it so that the front speakers dont drive
the low freq (like dont use groove mode) and let the sub do the work.

i setup my old Gen5 prelude like that, with subs running on the
rear deck and front driving just the mids and high. it sounded
good. it sounded like it had 12" subs in the trunk while it was
only polk 6x9s running a low-pass crossover.

 

yup. I actually still use the groove EQ, but can lower the bass from -1 to -3, and the sub is still kicking nicely, with the mids and highs nice and clear. And the sub has a built-in crossover so it only produces the bass.

e.b.

 

sounds good. wat i like about the groove mode is that i boosts really
low freq like down 60hz area. and you cutting the mid-low freq with
the EQ (that's probably 90-120hz) you end up keeping the 60-80hz
area and boost that through your sub.

yah, that should work.

 

word.

e.b.

 

i do love the groove eq myself.

i had it set on beats for a while but it actually sounds more muddy than anything.

 

AAHHHHHH HHHHAAAAAA !!!
"MUDDY"!!! Thats the word I was looking for....a weee bit late now though.
its a bad sign when you can't remember a word as easy and seemingly intuitive as that...
Alzheimers here I come baby...

 

just put the pipe down... and pass it to me!

 

For the record, there's no way any head unit will actually dish out 50W to one specific speakers without a secondary amplifier. You'd be lucky to get maybe 5-10W RMS per speaker out of the stock headunit. Connecting subs to a non-amplified source severely under-drives them. I'm surprised you can even hear a 'thump'.

 

yah, HU and speakers are waaay overrated. the best you'll get out
of one is probably 20-25w... but that 25w will sound like crap. and
once in a while you get this transient peaks that go up to 50w by
accident. lol

 

lol...i am quite the stickler for a good adjective myself

 

I'll say it again and again and again.. Wattage has little to nothing to do with sound quality.

In car achieving 95 db's only takes about 16Wrms with the average speaker. The difference is that with a head units built in IC chip they make 15-22Wrms depending the on the models at 10% THD so it gets louder than most people will ever need.. just does it while being highly distorted.

Middle end amplifiers usually have damping factors over 100, and THD less than 1% this is where th sound quality difference comes in. FAR less distortion and more control over cone movement....

Damping factor i best escribed as an amps shocks absorbers. Low damping factor, poor control, High damping factor. excellent control.

 

I think the stock speakers sound good if not great. What I dont like is how they get distorted fast. I like to listen to my music pretty loud.
With the fear of blowing the speakers I keep it low. I still like it loud.

Im just planning on adding a sub and turn the BASS all the way down at the HU. Let the sub do all the lows.

 

yeh the stock speakers dont cut it for me. i hate the distorted sound when i get my music around volume 35 on the stock h/u.
i have all my audio gear just waiting to get installed after i purchase my double din from alpine. im running the subs at the moment, so i turn down my bass mainly for the speakers. what i did do to help the distortion is i used mini mic fuses to use them as a bass blocker. that helped out a lot.
but i havent found the time to switch all my speakers out to components and run my 4 channel amp.

 

Thanks for the knowledgable advises.
A fellow member started a tread about adding dynamat in different noise transmitting areas of the Fit and realized how beneficial it was to the acoustics of the car. Dollar for dollar, would you consider this a better investment than speaker upgrade?

 

Better speakers and sound deadening go hand in hand. Putting in expenive very high end components into your car would not be very benificial without proper sound deadening. and adding alot of sound deadening to the stock speakers won't gain you too much ebnefit either.

As my redneck uncle once said "No matter how shiny you polish a turd. it's still a turd"

High end sound quality comes at a very expensive labour intensive price. Getting good sound is a matter of good speakers, and a little sound deadening.

 

some deadening and from elemental designs the teklite? that stuff works, both those combine makes a great sound combo. you can really tell the difference.

 

hmm. i've always thought sound deadening to be a good, fairly simple upgrade. but i usually tend to stray away from ever actually installing and using it because of the extra weight i'm assuming it would add on. haven't actually checked into any numbers in that dept. tho so i'm not 100%. dynamat seems to stick out to me as perhaps the best (possibly cuz i'm not familiar enough with any other brands/types) in class. i'm extremely intrested in trying something of this nature, if anything, to at least help reduce some of the wind/road noise. anybody got any info? opinions? or am i just dee de dee?