Someone on Facebook was asking me about putting waveguides in the kicks.
I told him I'd post how I'd do it, so here goes:
I have personally tried horns and waveguides in three locations:
1) on the dash
2) underdash HLCDs
3) in the kicks
Waveguides in the kicks might be my favorite location.
Nowadays, most people are putting tweeters on the dash, and I've done the same. The thing I don't like about tweeters on the dash is that you can see them, and because you can see them, it's hard to create the illusion of a stage that's larger than the dash. (This is also why car stereos sound a million times better at night.)
You would think that having tweeters on the floor would lead to a soundstage on the floor. But waveguides are different; they're nearly as loud off axis as they are ON AXIS. Because of this, a tweeter loaded in a waveguide is more difficult to localize than a conventional dome, particularly if the waveguide is well designed.
In other words, a dome tweeter in the kicks is going to sound like your tweeter is on the floor. A waveguide sounds about as big as the waveguide, or even bigger. And even though your listening two or three feet above them, wave guides tend to sound really 'spacious.'
Another cool thing about having waveguides in the kicks is that you can get really long pathlengths. Up on the dash, your soundstage depth is limited.
In addition to that, when you have your tweeters in waveguides in the kicks, the sounds is subjectively "smoother" to my ears. I think the reason for this is because the carpet attenuates the early reflections. My friend Gary Summers has a dashmat on his Mercedes, and it accomplishes something similar.
I'm not saying that waveguides in the kicks is 100% better than the dash; both locations have their advantages. But it's a location that I rarely see people use, and I think people are missing out. I am 6'3" tall and probably the main reason I don't have waveguides in the kicks is because I need all the legroom I can get.
If I were putting waveguides in my kicks, I would probably use a dome tweeter. This is because you're going to want the waveguide to be REALLY shallow. You want the waveguide to be really shallow, because you want a really smooth transition from the waveguide to the rest of the vehicle. You don't want the waveguide to stick out. If it sticks out, you're going to get diffraction off of the waveguide edge, and that will sound like s h i t.
A dome tweeter is not as efficient as a compression driver. But on a waveguide, it's trivially easy to get a dome tweeter to be about 100dB efficient. This means that if you feed it with 25 watts of power, that dome tweeter will produce about 115dB of SPL. That's loud enough for me.
I like the Tymphany NE19VTS, but there are lots of 3/4" domes that will work on waveguides.
I told him I'd post how I'd do it, so here goes:
I have personally tried horns and waveguides in three locations:
1) on the dash
2) underdash HLCDs
3) in the kicks
Waveguides in the kicks might be my favorite location.
Nowadays, most people are putting tweeters on the dash, and I've done the same. The thing I don't like about tweeters on the dash is that you can see them, and because you can see them, it's hard to create the illusion of a stage that's larger than the dash. (This is also why car stereos sound a million times better at night.)
You would think that having tweeters on the floor would lead to a soundstage on the floor. But waveguides are different; they're nearly as loud off axis as they are ON AXIS. Because of this, a tweeter loaded in a waveguide is more difficult to localize than a conventional dome, particularly if the waveguide is well designed.
In other words, a dome tweeter in the kicks is going to sound like your tweeter is on the floor. A waveguide sounds about as big as the waveguide, or even bigger. And even though your listening two or three feet above them, wave guides tend to sound really 'spacious.'
Another cool thing about having waveguides in the kicks is that you can get really long pathlengths. Up on the dash, your soundstage depth is limited.
In addition to that, when you have your tweeters in waveguides in the kicks, the sounds is subjectively "smoother" to my ears. I think the reason for this is because the carpet attenuates the early reflections. My friend Gary Summers has a dashmat on his Mercedes, and it accomplishes something similar.
I'm not saying that waveguides in the kicks is 100% better than the dash; both locations have their advantages. But it's a location that I rarely see people use, and I think people are missing out. I am 6'3" tall and probably the main reason I don't have waveguides in the kicks is because I need all the legroom I can get.
If I were putting waveguides in my kicks, I would probably use a dome tweeter. This is because you're going to want the waveguide to be REALLY shallow. You want the waveguide to be really shallow, because you want a really smooth transition from the waveguide to the rest of the vehicle. You don't want the waveguide to stick out. If it sticks out, you're going to get diffraction off of the waveguide edge, and that will sound like s h i t.
A dome tweeter is not as efficient as a compression driver. But on a waveguide, it's trivially easy to get a dome tweeter to be about 100dB efficient. This means that if you feed it with 25 watts of power, that dome tweeter will produce about 115dB of SPL. That's loud enough for me.
I like the Tymphany NE19VTS, but there are lots of 3/4" domes that will work on waveguides.