Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Audio finally upgrading sound

The lack of a working sound system in my car has finally gotten to me, so I decided to upgrade. I've been reading up on some stuff but there's still a LOT that I'm not sure about. Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

HU: Alpine CDA-9811

Front: VIFA PL18WO09-04 7" WOOFER 4 OHM and
VIFA D26NC05-06 1" NEODYMIUM TWEETER (out of stock at partsexpress, anyone know somewhere else I can buy these?)

Crossovers: I assume something to mount in the doors, so only one set of speaker cables has to be run in? But looking on ebay and various audio sites, all I seem to be able to find are the bigger ones that would go in the trunk.<br />

Rear: JL XR570 CX

Amp: How do you decide what amps to get? The woofers are rated at 100 watts RMS @ 4 ohms and the tweeters 40 watts RMS @ 6 ohms. Do I add those up and find an amp that is rated for that power? And what about the impedance difference? Would either of these be a good one to get, I'd be looking at amping all four doors. (Rockford Fosgate Punch 801X or Kicker KX800.4)

Wiring: Knukonceptz

Battery: Optima Red Top (Is it worth it for what I'm running?)

I don't have any plans as of yet to get any kind of sub at the moment. And yes, I realize that many of you would say not to have anything in the rear doors but I want something, so I bought those off a fellow CEG'er. So, let me know what you think.

http://www.speakercity.com/caraudio.shtml

Here are the tweets. You'll want the Vifa D26NC-05-06. For ease of ordering, you can also sub your PL's with the Vifa M18WN-19-04 on that site. I think they may sound a little better (and save you $20) due to their higher Qts, higher Xmax, and higher power handling. Don't forget some tweeter mounts if you're not going with surface mount. I used some Neokop's to flush them into my doors.

You'll want to find a "2-way passive crossover". Look for one in the 2000Hz-3000Hz range. You can also contact www.madisound.com to make you custom crossovers. You might run into a hangup as they'll only build crossovers based on drivers they stock.

Looking at madisound, they've got all of those vifa drivers there at around the same prices. I'd go for the Vifa D26NC05 tweets, Vifa M18WN19 7" woofers, and some custom built crossovers.

I wouldn't get too worried about power and ohms ratings. The woofer/tweet work well together at the 4ohm/6ohm ratings. I ended up not even adjusting the levels between the two on my crossover (which has a tweeter level adjustment). I'd just make sure to get your components a minimum of 75w per channel. Those Vifa mids are a bit power hungry.

BTW, sell those mids and get a small sub (bridge the rear channels of a 4ch amp to it). It'll sound soooooo much better than some coaxials in the rear doors.

Good luck!

Where can you find these Neokop's for sale? There was a mention of them at Speaker City, but I couldn't find them on their site, and I couldn't find them anywhere else, even with Google's help.

They're right on the page I linked to under "Tweeter Accessories".

Thats the same exact head unit that I have. I must say that the 9811 kicks a$$. You are lucky because im pretty sure the price on it has gone down since I bought it.

Bah! Even that web site lists the 9811 as available but after not receiving any kind of notification of shipping I called up and they don't have it. So the head unit is up in the air for the moment.

Anyway, on to a crossover question. So the crossover splits the signal, sending the lower frequencies to the woofer and the higher frequencies to the tweeter? In my case 40-4,000 Hz for the woofer and 2,500-20,000 Hz for the tweeter. So wouldn't that mean I need a crossover point somewhere between 2,500 Hz and 4000 Hz? I'm not finding many 2-way passive crossovers, would these be fine?

I would think those would be fine, but I think you can find them cheaper on ebay. When I bought my passive crossovers, they had a lot of those around, Buy It Now's for ~$7. I don't know why that page says "Active Crossover" in the title bar, but those are not active crossovers. They are passive 2-way crossovers. The way I understand it, active crossovers need electricity and actively allow you to change the crossover frequency. I could be wrong about that bit.