component or stock?

[gambit]

amazing reply hotmilk! - but as mentioned NO AMP simply no time/technical knowledge and no cash!

...so should I shell out on a pair of Apline Type R components up front?

TIdriftin - you think if I'd have hooked up the crossover when I connected the different woofers it would have made a difference?

[hotmilk400]

F**.. i had a huge post liek the last one that was perfect, and it got deleted.. =/ .. haha..

again
For TI
haha..okay, so I didn’t do the math for the DB .. also, after re-reading this (i was tired when i wrote this, and had to write a huge English paper that was due) i meant 83 DB really, which is a popular DB for cheaper or higher wattage subs. (88 DB is really a half decent DB rating) anything OVER 90 DB is a good loud speaker. so 88 would be alright, and 93 or more is prime for those that want a high quality system with little money.

anyway.. ohms is a tricky thing to figure out when it coems to a system, and really depends on the speakers individually for sound output. (yeah over all I was thinking about something else, but read what i have for him)


anyway, Gambit:

yeah, sorry I went a little off topic with amps in my last post. I was just trying to explain that you probably wont get what u want unless u have one. Also.. can you tell me the brand, model, DB rating, and watts of the 5 ¼ inch speakers you are trying to install? Just installing alpine r speakers probably wont fix the problem a whole lot if the speakers your are trying to stick in now have an OK DB rating. The alpine will probably sounds better and have a higher wattage and a slightly higher db, but probably not going to fix the problem.


if you do have 2 door speakers, the kick speakers are fighting with the door speakers for power. Since the kick speaker WAS 8 ohms, changing it to a 4 ohm speaker would have upset the balance, and made the KICK speaker louder in the new system, then the last one... its probably making the door speakers more quite, and the kickers louder (or about the same as before, since a small reduction of power in a small tweeter means u are losing a lot of sound, which u aren’t gaining back in the 5 ¼ kicker speaker. )


also, depending on your old system, and how you hooked up your new system, you probably HAVE an amp already installed in your car.. my car came with a small amp in the rear left trunk panel. What happens is if you hook up your car radio like the old one was hooked up, your radio’s power gets dumped into the BMW amp, then sent to your speakers.

what I am getting to is you maybe be able to cheat, and do one of 2 things with that BMW amp.

You can add your crossover there, which will add more bass to your kickers, and change the sound at your door panels. (it wont do much anyway, but you are limited with out an amp)

or you can use the BMW amp to power the kicker speakers ONLY and then use your radio’s front speaker output and rear speaker output to power everything else. (but that is alittle harder to do, and you need to remove your BMW AMP, find the wires, cutthe old ones, splice into them, and run them to the output side of the amp)
Then the amp will ONLY power the Kicker speakers.

I don’t know anything about the BMW amp, and if you would like to do that, I would look into it more for u, and help you out.. (im not sureif u can because i havnt looked at the BMW amp.. i have a real amp, and cut that amp out of my car.. )

I you DON’T have door speakers, then I have no idea other then u got crappy speakers with low DB .. haha.. or they ARNT angled in the right direction, and the sound is just pouring into the carpet of your BMW, and u hear muffled sounds.


if u do decide to go with an aftermarket amp.. let me know.. really, if you are just looking to add a little bass without an extra speaker, and your kicker speakers are solid, without a tweeter strapped on them, you can just pick up a cheap $30 amp, and it will work perfectly. All you have to do is find the BMW amp, splice into the wires before the BMW amp, and use the HIGH power input on your aftermarket amp. Then for the output of the aftermarket amp, splice into the wires going to your kickers(coming off the BMW amp) . They are the biggest speakers in your car, and the amp will allow you to make them much louder and much more bassy (if you want) you will have more control of them.. total cost shouldn’t be to much. You only need like a 100 watt amp (50 - 75 watts RMS meaning 100 – 150 watts rated) , 2 channels.. which are cheap online, used or new. Then u only need like 14 AWG wire, and you can run it to your cig lighter if you want. (the amp doesn’t draw to much power when they are that small.) then you ground the amp where the BMW amp is grounded. .. not to hard, and shouldn’t cost more then $40 – $50 .. .. I would do it for free if u lived close to me, since it wouldn’t take me more then an hour. you can probally even pick up a used amp that small for like $20 locally or online, and the wire cost about $3 depending on where u get it.

---sorry about my HUGE post.. haha--

[gambit]

Hey man excellent post again but I need to clear up something important - unlike you guys in the US the tis here in UK don't have a bmw amp installed in the boot (trunk) so basically everything is just running straight from my new Pioneer head unit. Secondly - there is only one speaker in each door (tweeter with built in crossover as you can see the capacitor there) one in each kick (the woofer I been replacing) and one each in rear behind seats. (six in total). What I basically did was disconnect the stock tweeter in the left door and swapped the stock woofer in the left kick with different woofers as mentioned. On the right side I left in the stock kick speaker BUT I did swap the right door tweeter with an aftermarket one (DLS). ***on boths sides I kept the rear stock speakers in. Now you seem to know a lot about electronics which I don't! - but what's happening here when a polk audio woofer in the left kick doesnt sound very loud or clean compared to the stock ? - remebering that no power is being used up by the left door tweeter as I disconnected it. Further and heres where it gets tricky as I am an amateur - the aftermarket DLS tweeter in the right door that installed I INSTALLED INCORRECTLY - I didn't use the cross over wire that came with it as I thought this only needed to be used if you power speakers with an amp( I know basic error but I'm a noob). Anyway it gets worse the right door tweeter still worked when I did the testing !!! ( it has since blown though as I have learnt from my mistakes i.e. sending low freequencies to the tweeter). Hope your not too confused but this is the point - when I was testing the left kick with diff woofers the HU was directly powering: 1)this left kick aftermarket speakers 2)the right side kick stock speaker 3) an aftermarket tweeter in the right side door (installed wrongly without its crossover but still producing sound!!!); and 4) both rear speakers unchanged I know it's really messy! but if you can help I'd be most grateful and could make a small paypal donation as at the moment my in car audio is f***! Assuming that I have a decent HU there are two conclusions: 1) Immediately it should make the stock speakers sound better - which is true as they were worse with the stock head unit installed. 2) Based on 1) shouldn't it now be able to make new replacement speakers sound better than the stock as some new ones will have better specs etc. It just doesn't make sense to me that I cant go to a store, buy a relatively expensive new set and replace the stock to make an improvement - it's as if BMW made the stock speakers in such a way that they will be the best sounding speakers you will get to run off any head unit - stock or aftermarket. PS I think I beat you on long posts lol!

[TI-driftin]

Gambit,
I would say 90% of the time when a problem occurs with a stereo system, the problem is in the wiring or connections. If you never wired up a stereo before i would say get a buddy to do it with you that has done it before. I would HIGHLY recommend hooking up all of your new speakers and make sure that you dont have any old speakers connected at the same time. If everything is wired correctly those polk speakers should sound alot better then your stock ones.
And if your up for the task or if you still are having problems. Bypass the factory stereo wires. (I prefer this and do it everytime.) You can still use the factory wires for the power, acc., and maybe ground, but the better ground you have the better. You can attach a ring terminal to the ground and screw it into the frame under the dash for a good ground.
If you need help identifing wires, let me know i think i have a wire diagram somewhere that tells what each color wire is.

The simpler the wiring the less chance you have of creating problems.

[TI-driftin]

Found the wire diagram. If you want it i can email it to you.

[gambit]

Yeah thanks although it might differ as US model.

lostb0ys@yahoo.co.uk

[gambit]

Hotmilk what's your take on this? i.e the big post I last sent

[hotmilk400]

haha..don't worry about donations for us, (well at least for me, i don't wanna talk on TI's part, just save your money up for an amp ) sorry, i didn't see the new post there. umm.. like i said, its hard to really know without being there and being able to hear it. i can fix sound problems all by ear.
also, you didnt hook the tweeters up wrong. they dont need the CAP or crossover, it simply limits the power that can go into it, making it harder to break them (since low wattage car tweeter blow fast) you can hook up tweeters any way you want, and as long as they are hooked to the radio, they will work fine.. so no worries

also. when wiring these up, did you run NEW wires? or just use the old ones going to the speakers. (it doesnt matter, u can do both, but it will make a difference if u ran them yourself, and u didnt hook them up right) since your stock speakers work fine, we can rule that out. it wouldnt hurt to make sure that u have a good ground, but normally the stock ground from your old radio is good enough unless the wire is adnormally small. (you can have a ground as big as u want, but if the 12V+ wire is smaller, it doesnt matter.. haha.. it can only draw so much power, so the ground only needs to be the same size as the power sorce)

like i said before, the front kicker will be run in parallel with the tweeter. (but i don't think you are having a problem with that, as far as that goes, installing new components there with higher watts will rob how much sound they can put out combined) i dont think you have a problem with your wiring, when it comes to wiring, either they work or they don't. (among many other things when 12V+ wires come to close to them, but that doesn't concern you) here is my best guess, without being able to test them and hear the differnerence, i would say:
1.) the new speakers are of inferior quality compared to the last ones, as in, you thought they were good, but you got ripped off...
2.) there freq. is different then the last ones, or lower based (more for bass), or just bad, compared to the stock ones, which probably have a high freq with limited low freq (bass) (ie, cheap speakers) that is why you can hear the old ones better, because it is producing a higher freq, where as the old ones might be made more for Mid to Lowrange speakers and deal more with Bass, which means they lose the ability to hear them clearly. even with the tweeter up next to your arm, putting in speakers with a lower freq at the kick will be hard to hear.
3.) it needs more watts (as in your speaker is a power hog) i told u alot about this on in a differnt post, and im guessing this one is the problem. speakers now sometimes have Min and MAX watts.. what u see on the box is the MAX watts, or the RMS watts (the true watt rating, where as the MAX is a bunch of **** watt rating and means nothing) the Min watt rating is normally seen on SUBs but i have seen them on component speakers (it would be nice if u told me what model your polk speakers are, so i can look up the specs and just tell u if they are good quality or not) the min watt ratting is what that speaker needs BEFORE it will start to work. normally the min. is so low on speakers that no one cares about it. but my 10 inch apline sub has a min watt rating of 50 watts, which means it needs 50 watts before it can really work right, and anything lower is doing basically nothing except making heat for it. i have saw component speakers with a min rating, and would never buy them unless they were to be constantly loud and hooked to an amp..

basically.. i have no idea without begin there, or knowing what type of speakers you are trying to shove on in there. send me the full specs of them, or a model number so i can look them up and check them out for you. im thinking u just got the wrong type of speakers for what u wanna do.. sometimes the more expensive the speaker, the worse off u are if u dont use an amp. even if you goto a store and test the speakers and they are loud and sound perfect, they are all hooked up to an amp.. they may need that amp to work. normally for a kick speaker, i just grab a pair of cheap sonys for like $40 off the Internet, and they work fine, low watts with high DB is what u need when u dont have an amp..

i wouldn't worry about wiring going to the speakers. do your tweeters work without the kicker installed? (i mean nothing install) or do the tweeters ONLY work when the kickers are installed? if they work all the time , then you are fine as far as wiring goes, but if they depend on the kicker, then i will help u re-wire them up.. but they shouldn't depend on them.

i would say the same, install all your new speakers and test it out. cheap speakers are normally dont put off as much sound because sometimes they focus on quality instead of sound output. hook up all the speakers, and make sure u put the caps on the tweeters this time so u can turn up the radio louder without being death in your right ear. you will probally have to play around with the settings on your radio before u get it perfectly right. you should be able to hear every speaker. try to focus on each one, and try to hear the uniqueness in the sound they produce, ie the tweeters are loud and annoying, the rear should have more bass and is coming behind u, the kickers are the only thing that might be hard to hear. tune your radio's fade so u can hear them all, u might have to dump more power to the front speakers, and then maybe play around with bass and treble to get them perfect.

[TI-driftin]

Hotmilk,
This is what he said the speaker model was

Polk model db5251

[hotmilk400]

oh, i didnt even see that he had mentioned that anywhere.. my bad. well that helps alot and goes along with what i had said, but still doesnt make 100% sence in my mind (hence why i would love to be there to give him a true answer instead of guessing)

anyway.. the one thing that cought my eye was the wattage it demanded to run the speaker. "10-100 watts RMS (250 watts peak power)" this concerns me because they demand that 10 watts RMS to power them, which in realaity is alot of power (its the rms , so your radio probally has to be turned up alittle before they start working nicly) lets say your radio is 4x50 watts. which reallly means it about 4x30 - 4x35 watts RMS. if it takes 10 watts just to power them before u really start to hear them, it may be alittle harder to hear. were as the stock ones are probally less then 5, if any. ..

hmm.. im not 100% sure if i am right about that because i havnt plaied a componant speaker with a min wattage that high. the best example i am taking this from is that the amp i have needs to be turned up alittle before the sub is really audiable. umm.. on the other hand, i could be wrong because it is only 10 watts, and i cant be sure unless i was there..

the best way to tell is to turn up your radio after it is installed.. if it sounds fine, its power related. becasue of the crossover, u will have to rewire the tweeters get it to work right. and u can leave the crossover in teh kick panel.

umm.. the best thign i can tell u is just to find a friend that knows alittle about sound systems, let him listen to it. it could jsut be that u arnt use to how the new one sound, and u might have to alter the radio's settings alittle to get it to sound perfect. if its noicitably differnent, im not to sure what to tell u. i dont have a sure answer, make sure the crossove is hooked up right, and proballu just run new wires to make sure there isnt a problem..

[gambit]

Okay thanks for all your help guys - l'll try and get this seen to using your advice by someone iwho can actually see and hear what's going on. Thanks again.