Drivers for small center channel?

[Sawzall]

I am beginning the process of building a decent sound system for my car.. wait wait, before you throw me out to the other forum. My question is what do I use for a center channel?

The car in question is an Infinity G35 without the navigation unit. It has a small compartment at the top front of the dash that otherwise would contain the slide up display unit for the navigation system. The size of this "hole" in the dash is 3.5 inches by 10 inches on the face of the dash, with a open depth behind that hole of about 10 inches.

Given that a center channel has little low freq. requirements (the sub will cross at aprox 100 anyhow) and the L / R will be 6.5 units, does anyone have any thoughts on what might be a good driver(s) for the center channel? This will be for music, not home theater in the car. Would like to keep the total driver cost to around $100 to $150.

Any design concepts?

[tiroth]

Is the basic concept to pull the stereo image closer to the center given the severely off-center placement that the listeners occupy?

How is the stereo signal filtered to avoid combing?

[Sawzall]

The center is intended more for 5.1 and other surround formats. While I have not yet made the plunge for the head unit, DVD-A and SACD are both available. I also want to use it for XM satellite radio, which does matrixed surround now and will feature descrete multichannel in the near future. XM is probably used 95% of the time I am in the car.

(as an aside, I recommend anyone considering satellite radio, or XM in particulary, get the digital output hack - it costs very little and greatly improves the sound using a higher quality DAC. I posted the circuit here a year ago or so).

[Timn8ter]

What happens to the people sitting in the back with their ears close to the ambient channels? Perhaps I'm being ignorant but I've never heard of 5.1 in a car.

[mitch808]

Oh there is all kinds of bells and whistles for an in-vehicle audio systems. With the advent of more and more in car DVD players and mulitmedia systems, things like surround sound, 5.1, DTS, etc are becoming more prominent.

Now does it really sound good and comparable to a home system? Probably not, but it's the bragging rights that most anyone that puts it in their car care about.


As for a sutible speaker to use, generally speaking you want to match the speaker with your front channels. Now since you have some space restraints, Try to shoe horn in there a 3.5"-4" driver from the same brand of speakers you have in your door.