SMALL AUDIO STORM TROOPER 2015 CREWMAX BUILD

Hell yeah @Vector W8
I always wondered how this build was going to turn out.
I'm still curious how you are going to be wiring up dual 5-ch. Your dsp have a crap load of outputs?

 

Running one amp in 3 channel mode. 150 wpc on the 8" and 350 wpc on one 12". The other is running in 5 channel mode. 75 wpc on the tweeters, 75 wpc on the 6.75" mid bass drivers and 350 wpc on the other 12" sub.

12" crossed over at 65hz Butterworth 48db per octave slope.
8" 60hz to 550hz, Butterworth 48 db per octave slope
6.75" 500 hz to 5500hz, Butterworth 48 db per octave slope
.75" Tweeter 5500hz to 45,000hz open ended with the bottom end on the Butterworth 48db per octave slope.

That is the preliminary set up. I will adjust slope and tweak set points depending on how smooth the transitions are between drivers.

It will run as a 4 channel system.

 

I'm hoping for a broad and deep front stage. Time alignment is set for my driving position. The Arc Audio PS8 is just a beautiful piece to work with and set up. The only thing I am worried about is the factory amp being my source. Toyota has crossover set points in the amp. I dont know what they are. So they may make a mess of the set points I have in the PS8. Its going to be a computer tuning fest on Sunday. Hoping I don't have to pull the factory head unit. I want it to remain stock. We shall see.

 

Man, that's gonna be sweet!

 

Are you running the Mids and tweeters active?
If you are, Pioneer doesnt list the FS for the tweets but Im fully certain 5500 42db slope is way to high of a cross and too aggressive a cut. Likewise for the sub, its response range plays nearly double your low pass. A 42db cut will make it inaudible by the time it would even reach the next octave (which would be the 125hz Pioneer claims it will play to).

 

Ok so for an update I was hoping to be able to show a lot more, but my setup file for the PS8 did not copy over to my thumb drive from the laptop I was using for the setup. So I will need to get that back so I can copy the file and do some screen shots of the set up. I have to say the factory head unit is a bit of a pain in the ass to use, without something like the Arc Audio PS8 you would be dead in the water.

The factory crossover points for the JBL system are a mess. So you have to blend channels to get the frequencies you need across the board. By using the amplifier high level outputs JBL has a bizarre mid tweet driver that is more a high mid/ low tweeter and they really use the 6x9 to cover a strange frequency range. So you have to blend all over the place to get the frequency input that you need to divide it up in to a 4 channel out. I was hoping to show that here, but my file is missing from my USB. I will get it back in a week or so.

So here is what I can tell you. It is one of the best front stages I have ever heard in a vehicle. And that is saying a lot. I have competed professionally in IASCA for more than 20 years, had Pro sponsorships and have built several pro vehicles. While my tundra is more of a utilitarian vehicle for me and I never intended to build a competition beauty. (that it is not) I never pulled out the fiberglass and went to town building all custom enclosures and an amp rack for the Tundra. It serves one purpose. To be the best sounding system I have ever built. It does that in spades.

I made slight tweaks to crossover points as noted below:

12" are crossed over at 75 Hz on a 48 db per octave Butterworth slope
8" run 65HZ up to 550 hz on a 48 db per octave Butterworth slope
6.75" are running from 500hz to 5500hz on a 48 db per octave Butterworth slope
.75" tweeters run from 5500 and are on a 48 db per octave Butterworth slope

When playing any of my Telarc discs or any of my Sheffield Lab's discs for reference the stage is about 14 feet out in front of the car and the stage runs about 30 feet across when you close your eyes. I had 3 places to mount the Tweeters and settled on the dash L and R speaker area to mount them, the reflections that you get off the glass pull the stage up nicely across the windshield. At no point do you realize that the 8" are in the door and the 6" are in the kick panel. Nothing pulls the image down.

Running the 2 db per octave scale on my Audio Control 3050A. I have a nice curve from the bottom end from 20hz up to 80Hz then I roll it off to flat, carrying that all the way up to 16Khz where I start a slight roll off and am 4 db down at 20Khz. This is due to the tweeter placement up high in the dash and toning it down slightly so its not too bright. The end result is spectacular.

Unfortunately the laptop I am using belongs to a family member (I need to buy a laptop) so most of my time was spent figuring out the blending of each channel to get full frequency response from the JBL head unit. I forgot to take a snapshot of the RTA curve so I will have to do that the next time I go out to the truck.

The one thing I was not sure of was how low the 12" Pioneers would play down to. I have no issue with 20hz on the RTA. But that is as low as the scale goes to measure.

I have a couple of old school DDD cd's that have bass notes that hit 16hz. My large home system has no problem hitting those notes. But to do it in a small enclosure with a set of 12" subs from Pioneer is a tall order.

I'm happy to report that the air movement at 16Hz hits your chest like someone slapping your chest. It's impressive that they go that low and don't appear to be more than 3 db down from the 20hz note.

So here are a couple of pics of the tweeters mounted in the dash and the PSC controller mounted in the center console.

I will follow up with additional screen shots of the setup as soon as I can get my file back.

Just a reference a photo for how long I've been in the car audio game.


Tweeters mounted where the factory JBL 3" was

The PSC Controller mounted in the center console

 

I definately had to google what "buterworth" meant. ha!
Glad to hear you got the setup up and working! I'd like to see how you ended up tuning your dsp and the rta curve!

 

Coming soon to a post near you.

 

In your experience what’s the trade off off the baffles? I’ve read that they limit excursion and hurt bass, but how bad is it especially in the 6.5” range?

 

would love to hear this. i bet that bass hit is something else.

you're making me want to go tweak things more in my own truck. i may just spend the afternoon fiddling with my TwK 88...

ditto this.

 

I have never been a fan of infinite baffels. Nor ported enclosures. They sound muddy. I would have preferred to build fiberglass sealed enclosures for th 8" and 6.75's. But that would have been a much more labor intensive build and would have added many months to the build if not another year.

Using the XTC baffels adds a little control and stuffing them helps the driver think its in a larger enclosure. It provides a happy medium for my personal listening tastes. There are things that I still have to work out in the truck as continuous improvements. The door panels themselves need more sound deadening on them as the plastic is hitting a resonant frequency in some music. So I will do that. But first pass out of the gate we are off to a great start.

 

Ok, Time to show the RTA and some set up files. Now the only issue with the photos of the RTA is running the sample rate at medium is a direct conflict with the phone shutter speed. It flickers and you don't get good photos. So here are two shot at separate moments to show where all the frequencies are at. Also keep in mind that this is on the 2db scale and not the 3 db scale where most people would set up at.



I will continue to tweak this over time as I am not 100% done with the system and I was playing around a bit with it today.
So I had the RTA back out in the truck and snapped some photos.

I will also add set up pages from the PS8 so you can see where I am settling in at on my set up.

 

Great write up so far ...

 

Ok not sure how this will work for showing all my set up pages I will see if I can upload the presentation in PDF Format. This will show you where every minute detail is of my set up in the processor.

 

not to be a noodge since i totally appreciate you taking the time to do this but, none of the curves showed up in your screen shots. it looks like the screen grabs for the tab 3 crossover points are all the same.

 

That should pretty much cover everything I have done so far for the system in the Tundra. The more I tweak and play with the system the better it sounds. It stages and images incredibly well. I don't think I would change much from a system perspective at this point. I am pretty happy with the overall end results. I will need to pull a few panels and put more Dynamat in places. The Tundra's sheet metal and plastic seems to resonate more than most vehicles I have done systems in. So as time goes on I will continue to make adjustments to the environment.

 

If you go through each page you will find that there are two pages for each size driver,

The first two pages of tab 3 are the 12" subs LH and RH
then page 3 and 4 are the 8" drivers
5 and 6 are the 6.75"
and 7 and 8 are the .75" tweeters.

 

i really wish i knew how to tune my setup like this.

 

I grew up with big audio, my dad was a manufacturers rep for several big stereo manufacturers in the 60's and 70's so we always had large home audio systems. When I turned 16 and bought my first car it was the start of the audio nightmare. I always wanted my car to sound as good as our big home audio systems. I built a large home system myself in high school. It rivaled my dads system in the Livingroom and I had it in my bedroom. He would teach me how to properly measure out the room for speaker placement, proper room tuning techniques etc. Here I am as an old man still wanting the perfect car system. Still tuning. I began competing in IASCA when I went to College, my friends and I all had big competition audio systems in our cars and we all helped build each others systems. The Audio Control 3050A was the standard for IASCA measurement so I bought it to make sure we were setting systems up on the same equipment they would be measured by. All these years later I'm still using it to set up systems.

In 1992 several of our cars had garnered enough points to be invited to the world finals in Oklahoma. We worked tirelessly to get our 501-1000 watt car ready to win. We missed 1st place by one point. It was one hell of a competition. We won 1st place in security with the same car. To have 2 podium places was worth all the effort.

This system's installation is its only downfall as I kept it utilitarian. Usually I would spend time building fiberglass enclosures, custom amp racks etc. So this one doesnt quite have the visual wow factor that a full pro system would have. But it has the sound quality that will knock you dead.

It only took me 5 years to put it together. Finally able to enjoy it a little.

 

Thats awesome!
You got any pictures of the home and car stereos?

 

Im not ignoring your request, I just haven't been able to find my photo albums with all my photos in them. That is a thing us old people use to capture photos in back in the days of cameras and film.

Here are a couple of shots of my old home theater at my previous home. The system is about 75% of what I had in my bedroom in high school in the 1980's

I lost the home in the photos to foreclosure. So this install no longer exists. These photos I shot as I was getting ready to tear this system down, so the center channel is sitting out of place in the photos.

I am still trying to find my car audio photo album with all our installs in it.

 

Shit that's awesome! That's a helluva rack of stereo equipment! I bet that stuff sounded amazing!

 

It was one hell of a great sounding system. I miss it a lot. Use to have 2 large couches in there one on the floor and one on the back riser. Loved having people over for Movie night and listening to some incredible music on the system.

 

Do you have a equally baller home theater setup now?

We've got a 5ish year old bose 5.1 setups. Its ok, but our house was pre wired for in ceiling speakers, and I've been thinking about buying some of them and cutting some hoes in the ceiling, not sure how having your front left/right/center would sound coming from above the TV though.

 

No, unfortunately I just have a small set up in my current home. After loosing the last place in an economic downturn, I swore i wouldn't upgrade another home until I had it paid off. I had just finished upgrading and updating everything just the way I wanted it. Then lost it all to foreclosure because I lost my job.

And on April 15th I became unemployed again due to our governor and her nazi esque lock down. So here we go again.

 

shit, sorry to hear that. At least here in CA, they are starting to slowly open stuff up. I work for the state and the governor said we will have to take a 10% pay cut, most likely the unions will negotiate that into a 2 day a month furlough, but who knows. "Furlough Friday" here we come.

I hope everything gets squared away and you can start a "Large Audio Storm Trooper: Home Edition" thread

 

Thank you sir. I hope so too.

 

Did a little more tuning today. I could set this system dead flat just for fun. It will hold any curve on the RTA that I want it to. Its a pretty amazing system. This is on the 2db per octave scale. This is very tight I think I could tune it on the 1db per octave scale and it would hold the same curve.

 

Holy smokes!

How's it sound with the additional tuning?

 

It just keeps getting better. It is one of the best sounding systems I have ever heard in any car.