AudiWorld Forums: Front doors custom panel speakers installed.....

Let me first discuss my goals before anyone starts to wonder "why would you want to do this to your car".

For starters, the factory front speaker location only hold a 5¼" driver (while the rear is a 6½").

By nature, I enjoy a wide variety of music, and consider myself an AUDIophile (love that play on words). Over the years I have competed in autosound competitions with other vehicles. This was NOT for loudness or SPL (Sound Pressure Levels) but for sound clarity and imaging. This is achieved by a balance of using the right equipment, speakers and speaker placement.

When you listen to music (either in your home, or live), the sound comes from in front of you. My goal was to achieve the majority of frequencies of sound from the front, and rely as little as possible from the subs in the back. The use of the dual 6½" drivers that you will see is a major part of achieving that goal. These drivers respond `fast' and will be able to play down `low'. (Plus I love good, strong midbass). The separate midrange drivers used, will allow me to distribute the frequencies more precisely. In addition, I will be adding 31 bands of digital equalization.

This, plus as Murph stated, I'm a maniac :)

Here is the detailed buildup on the front door speakers.

Started with this:

Got two pairs of Morel's top of the line 6½" midbass drivers with 3" voice coils:

Properly soldered to some high-end directional speaker wire:

For midrange, got a pair of matching Morel 4" soft-domes:

Luckily my friend has a military-grade CNC machine shop, so I had him make me up some custom precise fit mounting rings:

They were later `tapped' once I had the proper mounting location.
These are used to angle the midrange up toward the listener's ears at around 30 degrees.

Here are all the speakers mounted in one door panel, fully sealed in using expanding foam in all the crevices:

And here are the panels, with the grills installed:

What you can't see in these photos, is Morel's 1" tweeters installed the factory location.

The midbass drivers will be powered at 150 watts each, the midrange and tweeters at 50 watts each, all RMS rating.

Coming up soon...the head unit nightmare, and the trunk amp rack install.