front door speaker placement

[Dan2]

i dont quite understand why they decide to put front door speakers at the bottom of the door. although it sounds fine when i am on my own, as soon as i have a passenger, their legs are in front of the speaker, making the sound less clear.

is this not a problem for anyone else??

[Cal Weldon]

Often they are placed there so they don't interfere with the rolling down of the window.

[zigzagflux]

As long as you can get your tweeter up higher (which is usually fairly easy), you end up with decent sound in the car.

[Cal Weldon]

Difficult with a coax but as Zig says if that is an option then Bob's your uncle.

[Dan2]

really? but then the tweeter surely needs to be crossed over pretty low right?

also i want to keep my car standard, or at least look standard, which would make tweeter placement an issue.

[jol50]

When the tweeters are say behind the side mirror covers, you don't really notice the lower ones being covered some. I don't think they change xover any different than other setups. It is better to have the tweeter and mid close together but in a car you do what you can. There are some really tiny tweeters but they tend to only play very high, but are easier to mount in tight spots. They should help.

[infinia]

Be careful if you mount the tweeters higher up in your car door, some passengers seem to believe they are electric window switches/buttons.

[trusound]

that will always be the issue with a door mounted driver.... along with tactile energy transfer... it's hard trying to create a believable stage with door mounted drivers..

the sail panel is a great place to put a tweeter... allot of times it's the widest part in the car... I try to stay away from pilar mounted anything.. as you deal with relection issues... timing issies... off/on axis issues...

[tsmith1315]

Dan2:

as soon as i have a passenger, their legs are in front of the speaker, making the sound less clear.

IMO, that's the biggest problem with front speakers in a car.
The best solution to that problem is to mount the front speakers in/on the dash, or high in the doors. Or simply don't allow passengers in the front seat.

Perhaps the best option along those lines is 3-way with midbass down low where space is available, and mid/tweeters up high. Of course, this is more expensive and complicated. Driver choice and crossover design is very important in this solution.

[mda185]

Dan2,

Speaker placement low in the doors is poor from a sound quality standpoint. SQ is low on most auto makers' priority list. Overcoming this does involve mounting a higher frequency driver in a higher location in the vehicle. There are two approaches but neither will leave you car looking stock unless it already has a high mounted tweeter.

First approach is to mount a good quality tweeter up high on the door or on the A pillar and cross it over a low as possible. This usually means crossing over at 2500 - 3000 Hz. Tweeters that can go lower safely are very expensive and usually have flanges that are too large for unobtrusive car stereo applications.

The other approach that I am experimenting with is to mount a 3" full range driver up on the dash or the A pillar and cross it over to the door woofer at 200-300 Hz. This however, will definitely not keep the interior looking stock.

If you absolutely don't want to alter your interior, the only other approach that may improve the sound quality is to mount good co-axial speakers in the doors with tweeters that can be aimed up towards your ears.