Redneck speaker setup-good sound, or distortion?

[keantoken]

I recently have setup my stereo with two speakers for both of the channels because they were car speakers (4-ohm) and my stereo used 8-ohm. First I took my Road Gear RG652 60W speakers and I did a DIY size-fitting job on my Boston Acoustics A40 enclosures with some hard cardboard from an old 1" binder (the boxes were 6 1/2" and the speakers were 6 1/4"). Then I took my Roadmaster 300W car speakers (the ones you can get from sprawl-mart for $20. I inherited these, I wouldn't have bought them) and connected one half in series with the left Road Gear and the same with the other. I know that the Roadmaster speakers definitely aren't very high quality and that's why I'm asking if it is actually good sound or the strange virtual surround-sound effect just makes it sound good. I have some pictures on the way, which will probably help if you can't understand this.

[Kent Smith]

Weird.

When wiring speakers, if 2 of them are out of phase, you will get less bass, and the sound gets kinda spacey weird (similar to surround, I think). That might be the effect you're hearing. Make sure they are all in phase in each speaker, then make sure both channels are in phase with each other. Whichever wiring gives max bass, that's when you're in phase.

[keantoken]

I'm sorry if that post might have been a tad bit immature. It's kind of hard not to just write something that you're excited about when your're 13 like me. I knew it didn't sound a lot like surround when I set it up but I decided to check it out anyways. This was pretty much the most useless post I have ever made... sorry... Moderator, can you delete this thread?

[noodle_snacks]

Don't worry mate there is nothing wrong with a bit of curiousity.

[cheesehead]

Hey, I did about the same thing when I was your age. I pulled some FR speakers from old TV sets and hooked them up to a transistor radio; also to another TV set. They sounded REAL neat!

Now, over 30 years later, I'm thinking that: 1) since each speaker was playing quieter, I probably reduced the distortion from each, and 2) since the distortion that was there was from 2 different speakers, it probably wasn't as noticable.

Keep trying, keep reading, and soon of all you're friends you'll have the best ***-kicking system!

cheesehead

[keantoken]

This is the first time I havent been smacked across the ego for my immaturity. Thanks everybody, you are more understanding than the guys on emuforums, that's for sure. Thanks for that last post, cheesehead, I hadn't realized that the speakers might not be so horrible if you toned down the volume, as in multiple speakers on one channel. There is one more thing I lack: I think there is a hole in the midrange. And that's where most of the notes are, right? And I don't want to mess up my unnatural speaker setup by adding some midrange speakers. I am currently using my equalizer, but it just doesn't sound right. Help?

[noodle_snacks]

you need a test tone generator, either tones on a CD or computer software (with the computer plugged into your sound system), run a sweep through the midrange (around 2-3khz) and see if the levels are noticably lower than higher or lower frequencies, bear in mind that the human ear is most sensitve around 3khz.

[keantoken]

I promised some pics so here they are:

[keantoken]

This is my whole setup:

[keantoken]

hmmm... I do have that Audacity program that can be found at
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ ...
I could probably use this.