Starting a complete audio build, 2 way active front stage, DSP, sub.

ebatr24 · Jan 15, 2020

few35t said:
Yeah I've definitely thought about the added weight the whole time. Honestly though, this kilmat stuff is quite a bit lighter than other brands out there. Obviously that means it won't be quite as effective but still, I think it's a good compromise. The sub box obviously is the heaviest part here, but I'll have this set up so it can easily be removed. I'm also removing the oem sub and tire repair kit, that'll save a bit.

At the end of the day this is a car that I want to check all the boxes of an awesome daily driver. It will never be a dedicated track car, and though I do hope to have it on a track some day, it'll just be for casual fun, I'll never be chasing track times.

That's a good start on your audio plan, you didn't mention a sub amp though. Also, you obviously don't want a full range going to the sub, though I do believe I read that you want to use the speaker level inputs from a mid woofer and not the sub. I think our oem amp cuts off some low end frequencies, the LC7i can't output frequencies it didn't have to start with.

Also pretty sure that you'll have to keep the rest of your oem speakers plugged in. One reason I chose the AP F8.9 is that it has built in adjustable speaker load resistors which for our car I think may be necessary. When our oem amp doesn't see the normal resistance load from the factory speakers it gets pissed off and shuts down. I'm just now learning about this stuff and I'm not even 100% sure everything I have will work as well as I expect it to, but my current plan is to disconnect every other factory speaker, which I've already done actually. I'll only be running the components and sub, going from 12 lousy speakers to 5 hopefully great ones.

Forgot to add the sub amp lol yes I do have one though (it is a bit overkill but it came from my old setup with 2 JL Audio W3s). Using the amp to cut down higher frequencies, the reason I went with the LC7i for full range is because I initially had it tapped into the sub output. The stock system seems to cut volume from the sub the higher you go in volume, it also seems to be missing higher frequencies which sound great for rap/hiphop but not so much for other genres and I like a variety of music. I switched the input to tap into the woofers in the doors and gained better bass for some songs, but would lose a lot of low end. So I used the LC7i to sum the two signals, it sounds the best I think but it still needs some tweaking to get the levels just right. It has been too cold to keep tweaking it though but I am pretty happy with how it sounds for now.

few35t · Jan 15, 2020

ebatr24 said:
Forgot to add the sub amp lol yes I do have one though (it is a bit overkill but it came from my old setup with 2 JL Audio W3s). Using the amp to cut down higher frequencies, the reason I went with the LC7i for full range is because I initially had it tapped into the sub output. The stock system seems to cut volume from the sub the higher you go in volume, it also seems to be missing higher frequencies which sound great for rap/hiphop but not so much for other genres and I like a variety of music. I switched the input to tap into the woofers in the doors and gained better bass for some songs, but would lose a lot of low end. So I used the LC7i to sum the two signals, it sounds the best I think but it still needs some tweaking to get the levels just right. It has been too cold to keep tweaking it though but I am pretty happy with how it sounds for now.

Oh I misread, I didn't know you had all this stuff already. I'm guessing you bridged the 4 channel amp and you're using the passive crossovers for the C2's?

ebatr24 · Jan 15, 2020

few35t said:
Oh I misread, I didn't know you had all this stuff already. I'm guessing you bridged the 4 channel amp and you're using the passive crossovers for the C2's?

The stock system causes me a bit of a headache because of signal is already crossed over and has separate signals for the tweeters and woofers. The Kicker Key amp is supposed to have a single input coming in and then you run it in bi-amp mode to send signal to tweeters and woofers. Since I have 4 inputs coming in if I run it in bi-amp mode I lose all the lows going to the woofers. It sounds good but I think once I tweak it and run the auto tuning feature the Kicker amp has, it might fail to work. I haven't been able to run it because of the weather making too much ambient noise due to the non stop rain in the NW.

few35t · Jan 15, 2020

ebatr24 said:
The stock system causes me a bit of a headache because of signal is already crossed over and has separate signals for the tweeters and woofers. The Kicker Key amp is supposed to have a single input coming in and then you run it in bi-amp mode to send signal to tweeters and woofers. Since I have 4 inputs coming in if I run it in bi-amp mode I lose all the lows going to the woofers. It sounds good but I think once I tweak it and run the auto tuning feature the Kicker amp has, it might fail to work. I haven't been able to run it because of the weather making too much ambient noise due to the non stop rain in the NW.

Gotcha, that's an interesting little amp, obviously not a lot of DSP features but it's got some and at $200 that's pretty sweet. I'm actually told we only need the left and right mid woofer input to get a full signal. That's currently what my plan is. Maybe try that? And so you're not using the passive crossovers? What are your tweets high passed at? Surely you're not sending them a full signal they'd be toast.

ebatr24 · Jan 15, 2020

My understanding is that they are getting the signal coming from the stock amp that originally went to the tweeters, just going through the Kicker Amp for more power. I had my friend who owns a stereo shop install this little guy as he has experience with it already. My understanding was that utilizing only the signal from the woofers in the doors you would have no highs. That is why in ctrmofo's thread here on this forum, he is running the coaxials in the doors and still running JL tweeters without having his tweeters be overbearing.

few35t · Jan 16, 2020

ebatr24 said:
My understanding is that they are getting the signal coming from the stock amp that originally went to the tweeters, just going through the Kicker Amp for more power. I had my friend who owns a stereo shop install this little guy as he has experience with it already. My understanding was that utilizing only the signal from the woofers in the doors you would have no highs. That is why in ctrmofo's thread here on this forum, he is running the coaxials in the doors and still running JL tweeters without having his tweeters be overbearing.

There's a guy at diymobileaudio that did a sq build in a Civic touring (same oem system as ours) and he told me you can get the full signal from just the mids. Initially I was planning on adding the tweeter and subwoofer signals but according to him it's unnecessary. Check out his thread here: http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...ring-sq-build-jbl-audiofrog-maybe-others.html

Also, in a conversation with him I asked:

"You said I only need the two middle inputs, so no sub either? I won’t be losing low frequencies?"

And he replied:

"Yeah, the mids are all you need. The bass and treble are still there, all the way from 20Hz to 20KHz, it's just diminished in volume at the low end and the high end. Whatever you use for input correction will raise the level of those back up to be even with the rest.
..........
But I did this with my DSP and the curve was as good with the mids as it was with mids/tweets/sub hooked up, and the DSP's manual said to use as few input channels as needed to get a full signal, so I went back to just the mids."

So I'm pretty confident I'll be good with just the mids as inputs. Sure hope so anyway, don't wanna run allll those extra wires.

ebatr24 · Jan 16, 2020

That is very interesting and I may considering switching it for the Kicker amp so I can run the amp in Bi-Amp mode. As for the sub I will leave it as is, it's sounding pretty great so I don't want to mess with it.

josby · Jan 16, 2020

few35t said:
There's a guy over at diymobileaudio that did a pretty thorough build on his 10th gen (non-r but same audio system) and he told me that for a full range signal those are the only two inputs I need.

few35t said:
So I'm pretty confident I'll be good with just the mids as inputs. Sure hope so anyway, don't wanna run allll those extra wires.

That's me! I got some more confirmation of this recently,by the way..

I'd noticed that sitting still with the engine off, I could hear some hiss from my speakers even if the headunit volume was all the way down. If I hit mute on my DSP, the hiss would go away. So I thought maybe the DSP bringing up the rolled-off treble found in the door mid's signal was also raising up the level of random high-frequency noise. Not a big deal, since I couldn't even hear it once I started the car, much less started driving, but still worthy of note.

But recently I decided to rewire my system because I was getting some slight crosstalk at high volumes due to having signal-input and speaker-output on some wires inside the same runs of 9-wire cables. I also wanted to add pluggable connectors to all the wires at the DSP/amp end so I can easily experiment with swapping in different DSP's or amps.

Anyway, once I rewired it so all my signal-inputs are on wires within one 9-wire bundle, and all my speaker-outputs are in another (plus three more individual wires I had to run), the hiss went away without changing anything with the DSP or anything else.

So, there are no ill-effects from getting the full signal from the front mids. I don't think anyone would say my car lacks for treble (I actually keep my DSP's treble setting turned down two notches), and there's no lack of bass at the other end either.

josby · Jan 16, 2020

few35t said:
Also pretty sure that you'll have to keep the rest of your oem speakers plugged in. One reason I chose the AP F8.9 is that it has built in adjustable speaker load resistors which for our car I think may be necessary. When our oem amp doesn't see the normal resistance load from the factory speakers it gets pissed off and shuts down.

I can't say with certainty that they haven't changed things in later model years (though I doubt they would within the same generation), but for the '16 at least, the OEM amp doesn't have any problems with any of the speakers being disconnected. All the speaker output wires on my OEM amp are not connected to anything except for the front mid ones and no issues.

few35t · Jan 17, 2020

josby said:
That's me! I got some more confirmation of this recently,by the way..

I'd noticed that sitting still with the engine off, I could hear some hiss from my speakers even if the headunit volume was all the way down. If I hit mute on my DSP, the hiss would go away. So I thought maybe the DSP bringing up the rolled-off treble found in the door mid's signal was also raising up the level of random high-frequency noise. Not a big deal, since I couldn't even hear it once I started the car, much less started driving, but still worthy of note.

But recently I decided to rewire my system because I was getting some slight crosstalk at high volumes due to having signal-input and speaker-output on some wires inside the same runs of 9-wire cables. I also wanted to add pluggable connectors to all the wires at the DSP/amp end so I can easily experiment with swapping in different DSP's or amps.

Anyway, once I rewired it so all my signal-inputs are on wires within one 9-wire bundle, and all my speaker-outputs are in another (plus three more individual wires I had to run), the hiss went away without changing anything with the DSP or anything else.

So, there are no ill-effects from getting the full signal from the front mids. I don't think anyone would say my car lacks for treble (I actually keep my DSP's treble setting turned down two notches), and there's no lack of bass at the other end either.

Hey! Didn’t know if you were here or not. So basically you’re saying you had some emf issues with you speaker inputs and outputs being in the same cable? Mine aren’t in a cable but they’re next to each other. Hope I don’t have any issues there.

This is my first time using speaker level inputs. Thinking about picking up the SMD-DD1 to set my gains.

josby · Jan 17, 2020

Yeah, I think you will be fine. The wire you used probably has thicker insulation around it than the stuff inside that 9-wire, so the copper inside will be farther away from the copper in nearby wires.

dom_dub · Jan 24, 2020

Maybe its unrelated buy the factory HU support all this ?

few35t · Jan 24, 2020

dom_dub said:
Maybe its unrelated buy the factory HU support all this ?

Not sure what you mean.

visualabstrakt · Apr 3, 2020

So has it been confirmed that the mids give a full range? Thinking of adding an LC7I for a 6 channel amp and was trying to figure out wiring.

few35t · Apr 4, 2020

visualabstrakt said:
So has it been confirmed that the kids give a full range? Thinking of adding an LC7I for a 6 channel amp and was trying to figure out wiring.

Sorry I gave up on this thread. I've been planning on updating it with everything, install is mostly complete but having a couple issues.

I haven't measured with an RTA yet but I can say without a doubt that on the output side of the AP F8.9 there isn't significant rolloff under 80Hz or above 3000Hz. I'm not sure it would be the same for the LC7i, though it's always worth a try.

Starting a complete audio build, 2 way active front stage, DSP, sub.

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