2018 Civic Si Coupe Component Speakers upgrade. Help!?

[Andrewaronjim]

I have a 2018 Civic si coupe and I recently purchased the Infinity reference 6530cx for my two front doors. I have purchased the mounting brackets and have removed the door trims. That is basically all I have done and I need help with connecting the passive crossover. I do not know anything about speakers and wiring and I would like to learn and try it myself instead of taking it to a shop and wasting $90+ for installation. I understand that I must connect the tweeter, woofer, and input into the crossover but I do not know what wires I must plug into the input slot. If anybody can help inform me what I must do I would greatly appreciate it.

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[bikejog]

The door tweeter and midrange wiring in your Si are already crossover at around 2K-3K Hz per the following post https://www.civicx.com/forum/threads/2018-premium-audio-system.33835/

If this crossover f is a good match for your Infinity speakers, then you can ditch the Infinity crossover and wire the drivers directly to the factory wiring. Otherwise, you may want to combine (ie using a lc2i) the factory tweeter and midrange output, feed that to an amplifier, and connect the output from the amplifier to the Infinity crossover.

I have a set of Focal K2 Power 165 KR 6.5 and its crossover f is 3.8K so pretty good match for the factory so I just ditch the Focal crossover and wire the drivers directly to the factory wiring.

One tip is if you'll be using one of those tweeter connector adapters available from ebay/amazon, make sure you don't assume the red wire in those connectors are +. The ones I bought have the Red wired to the factory negative wire. So double check.

 

[Andrewaronjim]

The door tweeter and midrange wiring in your Si are already crossover at around 2K-3K Hz per the following post https://www.civicx.com/forum/threads/2018-premium-audio-system.33835/

If this crossover f is a good match for your Infinity speakers, then you can ditch the Infinity crossover and wire the drivers directly to the factory wiring. Otherwise, you may want to combine (ie using a lc2i) the factory tweeter and midrange output, feed that to an amplifier, and connect the output from the amplifier to the Infinity crossover.

I have a set of Focal K2 Power 165 KR 6.5 and its crossover f is 3.8K so pretty good match for the factory so I just ditch the Focal crossover and wire the drivers directly to the factory wiring.

One tip is if you'll be using one of those tweeter connector adapters available from ebay/amazon, make sure you don't assume the red wire in those connectors are +. The ones I bought have the Red wired to the factory negative wire. So double check.

Oh okay sounds good. How would I check if my speakers are good to just swap in and ditch the infinity crossovers

 

[bikejog]

Oh okay sounds good. How would I check if my speakers are good to just swap in and ditch the infinity crossovers

I did it un-scientifically, I use the curve, copy and past below, from a post by @SCOPESYS in the thread I linked to above to get the factory crossover f at 2.5KHz (intersection of the green and yellow curves). And since my Focal's crossed at 3.8KHz, I figured it's pretty darn close.

Infinity didn't publish the crossover f for your speakers, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's right around the 3.5Khz mark since that's the most common. If you look at the tweeter curve below, at 2KHz, the output is down 20db so I think most tweeters will be able to handle 2Khz at -20db without damage. So I think you should be fine.

But if you're worried, go search around and see if anyone else has done this with your speakers. And you can email Infinity tech support to query what the crossover frequency is.

Plot created by @SCOPESYS

 

[DOZOIR]

I have a 2018 Civic si coupe and I recently purchased the Infinity reference 6530cx for my two front doors. I have purchased the mounting brackets and have removed the door trims. That is basically all I have done and I need help with connecting the passive crossover. I do not know anything about speakers and wiring and I would like to learn and try it myself instead of taking it to a shop and wasting $90+ for installation. I understand that I must connect the tweeter, woofer, and input into the crossover but I do not know what wires I must plug into the input slot. If anybody can help inform me what I must do I would greatly appreciate it.

I am considering purchasing the Infinity Reference 6530cx components for my SI coupe. Any impressions? How was the installation?

Thanks in advance.

 

[CopperPeacock]

One tip is if you'll be using one of those tweeter connector adapters available from ebay/amazon, make sure you don't assume the red wire in those connectors are +. The ones I bought have the Red wired to the factory negative wire. So double check.

A note on this subject:

A LOT of factory tweeters, including ours, are wired out of phase from the factory. I know Chrysler, GM, Toyota, and Honda do off top of my head and it stands to reason that most of the others that place tweeters at ear level and woofers low in the door will wire them backwards as well. OEMs will do this as a "poor mans time alignment" and it'll catch you off guard if you're not checking the polarity of each speaker when you're putting them in.

Very rarely, but still sometimes, OEMs will also only wire one tweeter out of phase for the same reason.

This can also lead to issues if you're summing the channels together as it'll lead to a nasty dip at the crossover frequency that you wont be able to catch unless you can see it on an RTA.

Edit: Also in some cases where there's a factory tweeter it may still be a good idea to run the crossover that comes with the new speakers as most of them will also have an attenuation switch that will let you bring the tweeters down if you don't like the level. They can also act as a power filter since it being in the signal chain will sap some of the power just being there. in a setup like this you don't have to worry too much since whichever crossover is higher will be more prominent so either it rolls off to the correct level or does nothing. I don't like a lot of tweet so I will usually set mine to -3 even if its on it's own channel.

 

[bikejog]

A note on this subject:

A LOT of factory tweeters, including ours, are wired out of phase from the factory. I know Chrysler, GM, Toyota, and Honda do off top of my head and it stands to reason that most of the others that place tweeters at ear level and woofers low in the door will wire them backwards as well. OEMs will do this as a "poor mans time alignment" and it'll catch you off guard if you're not checking the polarity of each speaker when you're putting them in.

@CopperPeacock. Your reply really got me confused a bit so I had to find one of my old posts to set me straight. https://www.civicx.com/forum/threads/door-speakers.51252/page-2#post-891611

So what I was saying is if you buy one of these, from ebay or Amazon where they all look the same,

make sure you know the Red Wire goes to the negative of your tweeter. The problem, of course, is the Red Wire of the adapter is wired to the bigger tab and most brands use the bigger tab for the + terminal. So don't assume the bigger tab goes to the positive of your tweeter.

And how did I came up with that conclusion?

1. I ran an Android speaker popper app on one phone and an audio scope on another phone. The speaker popper app will drive the tweeters thru the headphone output. The audio scope measures the signal captured by the phone's microphone.
2. I use a 3.5mm headphone breakout cable to connect from my phone's headphone out to the tweeter under test
3. First I connect the + of the breakout cable to the terminal where the Red Wire would connect to on the stock tweeter. And the - of the breakout to the other terminal of the tweeter
4. I did a single capture using the audio scope and I got this
   
5. Then I connect the + of the breakout cable to + terminal of my Focal K2 tweeter . And the - of the breakout to the other terminal of the tweeter.
6. I did a single capture using the audio scope and I got this
   

As you can see, the two waves are inverse of each other. Which means, the Red Wire does NOT go to the + (positive) of the tweeter. It goes to the - (negative) terminal of the tweeter.

So this has nothing to do with what Honda might or might not have done in regard to reversing phases in the wiring/processing or what not. What I did was simply matched the phase of the aftermarket tweeter with the Honda tweeter.