This will require some thinking, but I'm going to make it work.

Bit-Ten and Bit-One are amazing and worth every penny. That's next on my 'to-do' list for my custom Civic.

 

I would be extremely concerned with how well those baffles will breathe air. Your Hi Energy XL's are designed to be played in an infinite baffle environment. Those baffles might be okay for a smaller speaker with less dynamic range and power going to it, but I think they will significantly impair the quality of sound response from those XL's, and possibly harm the speakers themselves. If the F.A.S.T. rings are what I think you are referring to, then that may help increase the volume from your doors.

Definitely check that tweeter level setting. I would recommend the -2db position for our trucks from the get-go.

The real bitch with any car audio application is that without molding the living piss out of your doors/kicks/pillars/etc to get somewhat close to an on-axis response from the speaker, you will always have an inferior response compared to what you could be getting (especially because of the sound lost inside of the door panel). This is a bigger problem for your woofers than your tweeters in our trucks. That said, it might be worth building another spacer for your speaker to get it closer to the speaker grille on the door itself. I have not done this, and I imagine that it will take some patience to get it to fit correctly. But it should yield at least some results. Once you get the speaker as close to the door panel grille as possible. Use some dense, but malleable, foam to create a gasket between the outer flange of the speaker and the door panel. This is something I have considered doing for a while, but I'm still contemplating if I would rather just build out my door panels altogether, or just get a new truck and start from scratch... *sigh*... first world problems .

 

Well, I'll try the baffles, they may do nothing. I never considered building out the baffle. Ive got some .75" MDF in the garage not doing anything. Maybe I'll give that a shot with the F.A.S.T. rings.

 

Now why so much thinking, you know what they say, no brain no pain.

 

Trim rings example:

Here's an example from DIYMA.com. Simplicity in sound made these brackets, and they're pushing the mids out towards the door card. I think I know what I'm doing tomorrow, cutting some MDF to space the mids closer to the door card while I wait for my F.A.S.T. rings to show up.

 

So, Bing from Simplicity in Sound got back to me. He says the spacers were for guaranteed clearance of the Focal 165 set in the truck. He recommends looking into the F.A.S.T. foam rings, to get a tight seal. I have them on order, but I may make the rings today, I've got a sheet of MDF in the garage not doing anything, so I may as well make use of it. Can't hurt to try.

 

Okay, so the trim rings brought the mids more forward, about equal with the tweeters now. Something I was missing. Going to do more testing when I get a chance, my neighbor came over yesterday and asked me to turn it down. Going to go through some more music, and see if I can hear a major difference.

 

So, I've made some more changes, and I think it's for the better. First, the spacer rings. Brings the mids closer to the door panel. It seemed to bring the sound forward, or made the presence of the speaker more noticeable. Definitely something I recommend. Second, I dropped the EQ to 0's all across the board, and tried some more tuning. I dropped my subs to 63Hz crossover, with a 6db slope, and the mids are crossed over at 80Hz with a 6db slope. Playing some more with the crossover, I boosted the EQ on the mids +3 across the board, up to 1kHz, and the 1.6kHz level is at 0. The midbass is better, and the mids opened up, and sounded less muddy. Last step, a big one, is the addition of the F.A.S.T. rings that Aw9d picked up for me and mailed to me. Can't wait to try them out as the final step of sound improvement of the mids on this setup.

 

So, here's a question I have for the installers here. When I sealed my doors, I used corrugated plastic signs to do this. Basically, one of those "Garage Sale" signs you can purchase at the hardware store. Could this be a possible cause of losing midbass? Should I pull those out, and put some aluminum flashing type metal in its place?

 

Okay, so thanks to Aw9d, I got a set of F.A.S.T. foam mounting rings in the mail, and here's how they go in.

First things first, take the door card off and reveal the speaker.

Take your F.A.S.T. rings and pull out the middle plug.

Put the plug on the outer door skin. We have an issue with our trucks of the safety bar going right where you want the plug to go, so it has to go about 2" lower.

Then separate the inner and outer rings.

The inner ring goes on the back of the speaker adapter, do direct rear waves the correct way, and to cancel standing waves for better mid and midbass production.

Outer ring goes around the front of the speaker, to seal with the door card.

Finished product. Remember to tighten the adapter plate in a criss cross pattern, to get an even pressure on the plate and a flat mount on the door panel.

"Finished" EQ settings. I dropped the 100Hz, 315Hz, and 500Hz levels by 3db each, and still get a full and rich sound.

 

Looks good! Any big change in sound? Did you get that midbass response like you wanted?

 

Yes and no. It's close, I'm going to try changing up the tuning freq. a bit, I think. I might be concentrating on too narrow a band down low. It's a lot better than it was, but I've got more tuning to do. That's why I put the quote marks around "finished" tune. You're never truly finished tuning.

 

You might consider taking down the tweeters a bit using the slots in the crossover. I'm thinking those tweeters likely play 3,000hz and up or around those areas. If you bring the response down at the crossover it will be way better than using the EQ to do the cuts. Basically, with the EQ you have dips centered around the frequencies where you did -1db cuts but it's not smooth.

 

I'm already using the -2db cut at the crossover. It's just that the tweeters are mounted off axis in the truck, due to the mounting bracket for the stock tweeter. I think these would sound better on axis, but I don't want to go cutting up my A-pillars to get that position. I may try some Ensolite behind them, see if that would help with the reflection off the back panel, but there's not much else I can do with them. They're just a little bright at the -2db setting on the X-over, so I had to cut them an extra db with the EQ. They sound alright now, no real noticeable dips or waves in the response.

 

Did the tweeters come with any type of mounts? I know most of the hertz tweeters come with little 45 degree mounts for the tweeters but the HT28's are the same size as my Mille tweets which did not. If they did come with some angled mounts, it woul be a great improvement to mount those on your sail panels. Way easier than messing with the A pillar and you'll still get great results. If they don't come with rings and you'd like to relocate them, I could sell you the sail panels that I made. They aren't made to be on axis, but it's a huge improvement over the factory location.

 

Don't do the Ensolite behind the tweeter. I did that to see what would happen and I was disjointed. Ensolite is good to take out the higher pitched frequencies and it just made my Focal tweeter sound somewhat flat.

 

No cash right now, or I'd definitely pick them up from you. Being on disability sucks, so does the arthritis in my knee, but the lack of pay really hurts. If I can scrape up enough, I'll PM you and let you know.

Interesting. I was curious what it would sound like. I may still try it, it's just a 2x2" square that can be easily removed. But it's good to know what to listen for if I do try it.

 

So was the foam worth it? It got there a faster than I thought it would.

 

Yeah, the foam rings are great! They really move the mids and midbass forward, and give a great seal to the door-card. They prevent rattles, and bring out the low end that I was looking for. Well worth the money. Thanks for your help.

 

Interesting. I may have to try them. Thanks for being a lab rat!