Leroy's 2004 Tacoma stereo build log

Thanks man. The thing with everything on this vehicle is that it is so well made, that there isn't a lot of clearance anywhere. Every single thing I've been doing seems like i barely make it fit.

My picture on the inside grill is prior to all the shaving I did. I got every millimeter that I could. From the back of the magnet to the window rail is about 2mm of clearance. I spent a whole day getting that to fit in mockup.

Oh yeah, and I did have to cut out just a bit of sheet metal. Nothing too serious. Dremel made it super simple. Just make sure to round off the edges and don't have anything sharp leftover. I sealed it with clear coat.

 

Got a little bit done tonight.

Here's the final picture of the back of the door grill.


Back of the tweeter wired and whatnot.


The Focal crossover is friggen huge. I moved the door dome light switch from the big hole to just a little hole and added a grommet. A small cut to the carpet and I can fit the crossover right in. I'll mount it with industrial Velcro (auto) tomorrow.

 

Any reason you are installing passives along with the DSP?

 

I was originally going to have a 6 channel amp but didn't have room for it. Then I would have ditched the passive crossover. Then I was just going to do only front speakers, but I got a screaming good deal on the rears, so I decided to go with the passive crossover on the fronts.

Crossovers only really set high/low pass and slope, built for the particular speaker. The DSP does the same thing, but also allows you (with a good dsp) to set time alignment and custom biquads to really dial everything in. I spoke at length with our towns resident installer and illuminated for him what I'll be missing.

1. DSP control over front crossover points.
- Focal makes really good crossovers and I would be setting them the same as they have.
2. Distinct time alignment
- yep, I lose this, but time aligninging the fronts as a whole is okay with me. I will bias the TA for higher frequencies.
3. Bi-amping
- I'll be sending signal that will be cut off for both speakers at the crossover. Big whoop, I'm not going for SPL but strictly sound quality.

I definitely know that I could have done better in this bit, but I'm not building a competition system. The extra time and money spent redoing all that would have been a lot for only an incremental increase in SQ.

With the miniDSP 6x8, I will be able to get a flat frequency response. I did so on the home Bluetooth system I built using it and it sounds friggen amazing. Some more expensive DSPs look nice but don't give you the low level control.

 

I highly recommend ditching the rears, especially if you are limited to channels, in favor of not having to bi-amp the front components.
Unless you are an incredible tuner, you are going to find the rear fill will pull your stage down and back.
The mini doesn't have dolby either, so you are going to lose a lot of the benefits that you can gain from a properly tuned rearfill.

Also, the CLD is great for killing rattles, and you are doing a phenomenal job with the plastic and stopping rattles. While you have the truck torn up, I recommend considering CCF and MLV.

Either way, the build looks great, just trying to provide a second opinion.

 

Oh no, that is wonderful advice and greatly appreciated.

The sound skins is combination sound deadener and closed cell foam. I've considered mass loaded vinyl on the front doors, but not sure.

For the rears, I'm considering just tuning out the higher frequencies all together and using them for low to mid low bass.

Not sure what you mean on the Dolby. You mean more than just a stereo signal? I'm not a professional here as is obvious, but more a DICY. Do it correctly yourself.

I really wanted to do the Focal 3 way with speakers mounted in the A pillar, but with my time line, that would have pushed this way out...

Oh, and I am a pretty dang good tuner.

 

I need to figure out a good usb quick charge to put in the blanks by the 12v outlets still too... I've seen some of the threads on that, but nothing on quick charge. Gotta get that ordered soon.

 

Any audio, even bass in the rear, is going to pull your stage back.
The alpine H800 has dolby/prologic that is designed for "surround sound". This is a super simple explanation of it....
MLV on floor, back wall and doors and you will soundproof 80% more than what you currently have. MLV is the real sound proofer.

https://powerwerx.com/backlit-blue-panel-mount-usb

 

Awesome build!

 

https://www.bluesea.com/products/1039/Fast_Charge_-_Dual_USB_Charger_Switch_Mount

This one from the same site is higher amp and sounds like it has quick charge, don't know what version though. I have a quick charge 4.0 and it gets my phone to 80% in like 20 min, so that's what I'm trying to find. I wonder if this will work with their same mounts. I also don't want more lights all over the place.

 

Thanks! I'm slow but at least my wife thinks I'm a dork.

 

dlo's tossing out some pretty good advice here. IME time alignment makes more than a marginal difference - it's night and day. All day long I'd ditch the rears to go full active up front. All day long. Without a thought.

MLV is good people too. It made a major difference in my truck. The doors are the most critical - by far. I found that the vast majority of the noise in my truck was either generated in or transferred into the doors. Those rear quarters are noisy too, but the doors should take priority. I've finally gotten my doors to where I want them & here's what it took - CLD tiles on the outer skin, inner skin - all holes sealed with CLD tiles, 1/16" neoprene foam, 1/8" 1 lb/sq ft MLV, more neoprene foam then more CLD on the door card. The neoprene acts as both a decoupler and thermal barrier. It does both extremely well. I have trouble hearing emergency vehicles anymore, but that was part of the point.

 

I'm putting a lot of thought and more research into this.

Some reading:
http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...ear-fill-do-you-use.html#/topics/9806?page=15

http://www.termpro.com/asp/pubs.asp?ID=123

I had gone over all this rear fill stuff and was gonna go just fronts, but they gave me the rears for $100 more. For Focals, that's dang good. I'm used to rear fill so ...

One thing I'm thinking I can do here... I'm hooking up the speakers to the amp rack with xt60 molex connectors. I could easily run extra wires to the crossovers and be able to test both ways. The dsp has 4 buttons for selecting different configs, so I can easily have a single rider, front only, both riders front only, and 3 and 4 for with the rear fill.

One cool thing about the dsp is the ability to set time alignment centered directly on the driver, and another for when more people are in the car.

Thinking about this is fun and kinda exciting. I've already modded the back and everything and would have kinda wasted some $, but I'll have the ability to play a ton.

 

Okay, this whole rear fill sure sent me down the rabbit hole.

So I'm wiring so I can switch easily for either option

1 - fronts only fully active, no rear
2 - fronts on one channel rears on the other

The first thing I'm going to do is create two separate tunings for the fronts in the DSP and leave the rear disconnected.

I want to test and analyze if running separate time alignments on the woofer and tweeter is going to be noticably different than tuning them off one channel. The Focal crossover is nicely built for Bi-amping so this will be easy to do.

If one channel sounds like crap and bi-amped sounds like the bees knees, then cool, I'll sell the rears and call it good.

If there is no appreciable difference between the two, then I will try adding the rears and tuning it up. Doing rear fill properly is not just plugging them in, time aligning them and calling it good. There is a lot to look at there and will take me a while to do. If the rears were in the bottom of the back side panels like in my wife's jeep, I would never have done them at all. It would be a waste. The Tacoma is different. The rears are actually set pretty high and not too far back. I tend to sit further back, so they are only about 1 ft behind me when driving. These particulars are why I feel it's worth it to try.

In the whole rear fill debate, I think that the rear fill proponents biggest issue, and why they think just running fronts is dumb, is because they've never actually experienced a really good stereo setup. They just listen to music. But when you get into the sweet spot, 60 set off in an isociles triangle from the speakers, it's like a whole new aural world opens up to you and you can't imagine listening any other way.

Cars are interesting though, because you can't actually hit that sweet spot unless you sit in the middle. TA helps but does not overcome this. A car environment will never be perfect for listening, but we can get a close approximation.

It will be interesting to see how this comes out.

 

Back with an update. Right door wired and crossover mounted.

I spent so many hours doing the spacer/adapter... If I had a router table and flush trim bit it would have taken 15 minutes... Oh well.

 

Well, been working all day on this speaker in the door. I have 3.75 mm clearance from back of speaker to window track. So that's pretty good. However, it's still hitting the grill. I'm using the plastic speaker cover to gauge clearance as I could probably get it installed, but then it would hit the grill with too much excursion. I used nutella to identify where it's hitting on the back of the grill. I have some more that I can take off but not much.

 

I reached back with a bit of spare speaker wire and ran it behind the speaker btw, that's how I got the 3.75mm clearance value.

Here's where I'm at with the grill back. I've been shaving away...



I didn't put nutella on the speaker btw, just the plastic cover.

 

After two days of trimming, this thing is finally mounted, well, at least fit. I know that it won't hit on excursion and it doesn't hit the window rail. I have 2mm from back of magnet to window rail, and about 2-3mm from max excursion to grill. Talk about a tight fit, holy carp.

 

So I finally got my new rear window latches and installed them. I can open them now which is nice.

Carjoying sent me the wrong backup camera so I have to figure that out with them as the one they sent would be impossible to mount.
This is the one I'm getting:
https://www.carjoying.com/car-acces...rsal-car-rear-view-reverse-backup-camera.html

Not sure where exactly I'm going to mount it yet...

Mr Marv and I had a discussion and he told me of a trick to get some more clearance behind the speaker. Unbolt the window rail and put in a spacer! I can literally get an extra 10mm of clearance. Now I can fabricate a more shallow speaker ring/adapter for a great fit. Thanks Mr Marv!