What to consider for car audio?

[herc]

In looking at the prices for car audio speakers it seems going the DIY and building your own crossover is pretty economical.

What considerations specifically about the drivers do I need to consider before I start my design? I'm decently versed in plain jane boxed speakers and in car audio in general but it seems going the DIY route for non subwoofers isn't common on the 'net.

[BHTX]

Automobile environments are usually nightmares for sound reproduction and system design.

Anyway.. if using midbass drivers in the doors without a sealed chamber behind them (infinite baffle), use high Qts woofers of around .6 and no higher than .7. With such a high Q and low freq requirements from such a small driver (usually 5 to 6.5 inches), they're obviously going to be inefficient. Trying to match a good sealed subwoofer that sits in the very back of a vehicle with the front speakers can be a bit of a pain if it's not all planned out right. A lot of the best car systems I've heard had 8" mid woofers IB in the doors crossed low to 4" mids custom installed up higher, closer to the listening axis, carefully crossed to carefully chosen small tweeters. Think of the confined space that you're dealing with, and all the problems that brings with it, along with the fact that there's no center listening position, and design a system to get around those issues the best you can. Both seats need to get good response, so a carefully chosen mid and tweeter and crossover design is necessary.. but reflections also need to be minimized. Obviously, I've never been very satisfied with mids/tweeters down at my feet.

[Luke352]

Try here for whole lot more info. http://www.diymobileaudio.com/