Decent 6x9's for a reasonable price?

[Zero Cool]

1st let me say...I hate most car audio stuff! flashy lights and buttons, swimming dolphin displays, pop out screens...blech...I want simple, clean, AUDIO based gear and no one seems to make that anymore.... AND...car speakers are an even worse subject for me. I will absolutely avoid the entire store corner where the car audio dept is just because I know it will be a bunch of pimply faced kids with some rapcrap cranked up way too high through a boomy flappy subwoofer and some bacon frying sizzling tweeters that will make my ears bleed!

The factory system in my Mazda3 was tolerable for the most part after a speaker upgrade at least in the front. now that car is gone and I have an 06 Nissan Murano with an absolutely intolerable sounding car stereo system. I am once again faced with the dilemma of having to venture into the land of boom and sizzle....

I cannot replace the factory radio as it is integrated into...well everything it seems. But what I can do is upgrade the speakers and work backwards with the possibility of adding a small 4/6 channel amp. some sort of DSP for eq, time delay etc. and possibly some POOGING of the factory radio to whatever degree is possible. but all that is much farther down the road. If i can at least get it to a point where i can listen at a low volume without wanting to jamb an ice pick in my ears would be good.

SO...starting with speakers as this is the easiest part and the part most likely to show improvement right away. the front has 6x9" and the back 6.5" speakers so we are off to a good start already. thank god its not some lil 4" jobbers.

Now the other factor is that I am not Donald Trump! looking online some of this car stereo crap gets real real REAL expensive quick and for zero reason as far as i can tell comparing them to what is available for high quality raw drivers.

So lets set the budget around $100 for a front set of speakers. what I am looking for is EVENNESS from top to bottom. they do not have to handle goobs of power or have separate components. but something that is smooth with no noticeable holes in the response and NO SIZZLE! smooth, clean, even.

The last speakers I bought were the Infinity 682ci reference (I think) for the mazda. out of every speaker in the store, they were the ones that made me want to shoot myself the least. However for whatever reason the 6.5" version did not sound even close to the same. so I am hesitant to just pick the 6x9 version.

I would prefer a clean 2 way vs the 3-4-5-15 way junk. it seems that most of the 3+ way speakers are nothing more than a 2 way with an added piezo or fake super tweeter type driver and lets face it, these are going in the doors so there really isnt much need for a super tweeter anyway. so lets keep it to a 2 way.

MB Quart comes to mind. however i have heard good and bad from them as well. what else is out there today that I am unware of?


Sorry for my ranting.


Zc

 

[planet10]

My favorite 6x9 is the 10 ohm GM Delco. The 4 ohm is good to, but not the same. You won't have to venture far from your 'puter as these are vinatge and ill need to found. They range in price from $2 at the garage sale to about $50 if you are battling a guy restoring his old chevy for a mint pair.

dave

 

[Perry Babin]

I think you're going to have to go listen to the speakers in person. Even though it won't tell you precisely how they'll sound in the car, it will allow you to chose the ones that sound best to you. This is especially important when you've set a relatively tight budget for the speakers.

If you find 6.5 2-way component speakers that you like, you can build a plate to mount them in the 6x9 locations.

 

[Zero Cool]

I stopped In to Best Buy today...3 stores actually(long story) and i was shocked to see that what once stood huge car stereo departments was all gone. now there is one tiny section with only a few speakers on display and in fact not even a single 6X9 was on display in any store!! all the displays had 6.5" speakers and that's it! I was floored! I guess BB got sick of all the jokes?

There aren't many stereo stores in MN, I am going to have to figure something out.

P.S. Perry, there used to be some aluminum coned car speakers called BABB years and years ago. A friend had a set in his truck and they sounded pretty good...from what I remember....could have also been "influenced" at the time as well hahahahha!

 

[planet10]

Babb's are called something else these days. VERY pricey -- in the 1/2 thousand range IIRC.

dave

 

[glen65]

Babb is DC Gold Audio now.
Their 6x9s are over 200 bucks.

 

[Zero Cool]

No Shizz!!! I thought they were LONG gone! LOL! wow!

After looking online a bit i see that 6x9 prices are easily in the 100-150 range. I guess I am just that outdated that I didn't realize.

 

[ppia600]

Be sure to get the correct impedance speakers or the deck won't drive them hard enough. Some of the nissans have 2 ohm speakers from the factory so you'll need to replace them with 2 ohm aftermarket replacements. I believe infinity, kenwood and maybe polk and mbquart have 2ohm versions. I like pioneer but if your murano needs 2ohm I don't think pioneer has them. Yeah, I like the sound of good 2 ways or components over those flaky "3,4,5" ways. I think they just make those to impress the kids.

 

[Zero Cool]

I noticed on the web there is a lot of confusion re: the speaker impedance. So is tarted looking at used factory speakers on eBay. and sure enough...some factory NON bose-o speakers are in fact 2 ohms...which i find very odd but ok whatever.
I checked my speakers and they are 4 ohms...BUT. use of the internal factory amp would be temporary anyway. so even if i had 3db less sensitivity, that would be ok for a little while. I rarely listen loudly in the car anyway.

 

[Cal Weldon]

I rarely listen loudly in the car anyway.

It may not sound loud but as I'm sure you're aware that's a relative thing. On the highway you need a fair amount of power to overcome the road noise.

I guess I am from the old school, running an amp at 2 ohm just doesn't seem right. I still like 4 or higher for car stuff.

 

[Zero Cool]

The dash on this car is huge with these large speaker grills that with some systems have small tweeters mounted underneath. The location would be perfect for some 3-4" full range drivers with a 6X9 woofer in the door. Looking at parts express there are quite a few choices out there for full range 1-4"++ drivers out there these days. I see that Tang-Band has a 3" coaxial that looks interesting. That might be fun to play with.

They also have an 8"x12" subwoofer and there is a spot in the back next to the spare tire they call a grocery bag holder that I bet this sub would fit right into!

 

[Zero Cool]

I guess I am from the old school, running an amp at 2 ohm just doesn't seem right. I still like 4 or higher for car stuff.

That is exactly how I feel! Unless....the amp is a switching amp in which case...maybe it runs better as such. I know Bose-o had some .5 ohm speakers in vette's with switching amps so maybe that's the deal????

 

[chris661]

Perhaps be on the lookout for something like this?

Vintage R&A speakers 6 x 9 inches on eBay (end time 10-Oct-10 18:58:43 BST)

They certainly won't do the boom-tizz for long. Still, I'd expect them to sound pretty good on vocals and things.

 

[head_unit]

I would forget about the rears, you don't duplicate your front channels behind you at home. Stupid historical accident those speakers are there at all. Maybe good for subwoofer locations as you mentioned.

The fronts, you are confusing me a bit. You talk about 2-way 6x9s, but a nice dash location. Anyway, even good 6x9s are quite compromised, so USE THE DASH!

If you can shove a nice 4" and tweeter or such in the dash, run a woofer in the door maybe up to a few hundred hertz, separate amp channels to the doors and dash with active crossover. That would probably work really well.

Can you fit 8s in the doors? Most 6x9s are not optimized for the small rear chamber you'll find in the door. You need something with a lower Q and maybe soft suspension. Some 6x9s can pump out a lot of bass, but in a tight space you might be better off with 8s (due to the parameters) or 6.5s (not as much cone area vs. the door volume).

If the doors don't give massive enough bass, then maybe use that rear location for a subwoofer.

 

[Zero Cool]

The 6x9's are in the front doors. there is also a dash location that has a large grill area, but it only houses a small tweeter. I could easily fit a 3" driver up there. a 4" might be pushing it, but maybe. There is a nice Tang band 3" coax driver and the HiVi 3" full range driver has some good reviews. as does the 3" Aura sound driver but it is not very efficient. The Dayton 3" driver looks interesting as well. any of those with a small tweeter might work will in the dash.

there isn't room for 8"s in the doors but 6.5" would fit. But I would be concerned that there would be less bass. there is little bass now with the factory speakers. but a better set of 6x9 woofers might improve things a bit.

I also cracked open the factory headunit and did a little reverse engineering and found there is a vehicle specific EQ board inside the head unit. I can bypass this and I will at a later date. In fact i found I can easily add a buffer board and some line outs from the HU! so that will be a future mod. This might be 90% of the bad sound! and may hinder a speaker upgrade useless unless i bypass that board. I am looking for a Hu from a junkyard now for a test mule.

 

[head_unit]

The bass out of car doors has more to do with how much air volume is back there than it does the woofer size. Don't think that a bigger driver will automatically get you better low bass in this instance. If the air volume is small, a big cone experiences more "spring effect" and the resonance gets pushed very high. You then get boomy nasty midbass, and no true low frequencies. In such case, a smaller cone can actually put out better bass. The door can load the bass a LOT, we once tested a 5.25" in an Alfa Romeo as flat to below 20 Hz!

IF IF IF the doors in your Murano have a huge air space, the 6x9 maybe could put out more low bass. But if there is any kind of sub-enclosure, you will actually be worse off with the bigger driver.

The AMOUNT of bass (SPL) is set by how much air the speaker moves, so a good 6x9 could put out a few decibels more than an equal 6.5-but not if it is being choked off by a tiny rear air volume. Also, I suspect there may be more high-excursion "subwoofer" 6.5s than there are 6x9s, since 6x9 are not generally designed for that.

You really need to try and estimate the air volume in the doors, then look at the Thiele-Small parameters of the woofers you are considering. That could lead to another post for further advice. ;-)

As for the stock system sounding poopy, maybe it's because they're shoehorning a 6x9 into a small cavity and trying to EQ out the boom. Or maybe they leave the boom in to try and impress ignorant listeners, and are trying to EQ in low bass from cheap cones which probably can't put it out. But yeah, tear that out for sure.