Here are some pics of my 8" KICKER MID BASS install. I just have to wait for the silicone to cure and then I can put the door panels back in my car! I will post more pics of the amp and finished install soon!

 

Awesome! How did you mount it do the door panel? Is it secure? I ve thought about doing something along the same lines.

 

haha decent thats a good ass idea. I wonder what the bass quality will be like when u have it right next to you

 

The black ring you see on the back of the panel above (outlined in silicone) is made of 5/8" MDF. I put silicone between it and the panel. The speaker is screwed into the MDF with 12 screws. When the silicone sets up, it should be pretty rigid. They actually fire into the side of the seats, so they aren't pointed directly at me. I'm probably going to feed them frequencies between 40-200hz at about 150 watts RMS each. I'm at the shop now, I just have to put another coat of paint on my amp rack and run some wires and then I can put the panels back in and see how it sounds!

 

I like your idea, I just hope the door skin is stable enough. Even with the ring of re-enforcement you put, that will be a lot of force for door panels to hold. Good-luck, keep us posted.

 

Are those 8" midbass, or 8" subs? Based on your x-over points it looks like you re using them as subs?

 

They're mid bass speakers. What frequency range would you recommend for them? Any info is welcome, I'm new to mid bass! Kicker's spec sheet says they can handle from 30-500hz.

 

If you have subs, then your mid bass should take over where yours subs end. If you have a good eq, you can ramp your subs down slightly at the top of their range, ramp the mid bass down at the bottom, and have a little overlap so that sound moves smoothly up and down between them without instant cutoff.

IE: Your subs are set for 20hz to 80hz, set your mid-bass for 80 to ~400hz if you don't have fine gain tuning. If you have the ability to tune precisely, I would do something like subs set 20hz to 100hz, mid-bass 80hz to ~400hz, and for 80 to 100hz I would tweak the output of each until the transition was smooth.

Bass tuning cds with something like a 800hz drop would work great since this would also let you tune the top range of your mid-bass speakers. Just keep tweaking and balancing till the sound rolls smoothly through the whole drop.

 

Thanks for the info! What if I low passed my sub at around 70hz and went up from there with my mid bass speakers? How would that sound? It will probably take a bit of trial and error to find what sounds right to me. I have all my wires run, now all I have to do is put my amp and amp rack in, add some more Dynamat to my doors and then I can put the panels back in.

 

Here are some pics of the finished product. Please excuse the grime, I didn't have time to clean my interior after I finished.

 

Looks very good. And Ill bet it sounds amazing aswell.

 

How you set it depends on your tuning options Rev. If your just using the internal cross overs in the amps, then your pretty much limited to having one cut off and the other start at a freq. I would try it at different points until you found one that sounds best.

With the way modern subwoofers are designed, your best spot might be half of the listed max freq it can produce. So if your subs are rated to 150hz, then that 70hz you mentioned would most likely be your best point.

 

gotta subscribe to this one

 

Overall I'm pretty happy with the way these sound. I may add some silicone back-wave dampers or enclose the back of them with fiberglass to reduce resonance a bit. Although they are free-air capable, I think they would sound cleaner and tighter if they were in a sealed enclosure. I am driving them with an Alpine MRD-M300 amplifier. I have an MRD-M500 driving my sub and I really like the built in BASS ENGINE tuning features, so I bought the MRD-M300 used on eBay. I was pretty happy to find it was pretty much in mint condition when I received it. For now I have it set as follows: SUBSONIC- 50hz (I can set the high pass on my head unit to 80hz if I want to cut off more of the bottom end). LOW PASS- 200hz (as high as it goes, I don't see a need to go any higher than this anyway because my components are more than capable of producing 200hz and up). CENTER FREQUENCY- 125hz with a wide bandwidth and boosted 6db. GAIN- right now I have it turned all the way down, although I'm sure I could turn it up a bit if I wanted. I have my sub low passed at 80hz for now, but I think I'm going to try dropping it to 75 or 70hz. I have both my front and rear speakers high passed at 200hz and with the mid basses located near the center of the cabin, they seem to fill in the gap between the mids and sub really well.

 

Nice.

 

looks good, seems like the seat would block the waves, does it?

 

Not really, the seat just prevents it from being overwhelming. Low frequencies aren't really directional any way. They still produce sound pressure regardless of where they are pointed.

 

Mid bass speakers really do make a system sound more complete. I'm now hearing frequencies that I couldn't hear from my mids, even with my EQ boosted heavily in the 125-250hz range. My mids also sound a lot cleaner now that they only have to play above 200hz. It was well worth the money I invested in the Kicker SSMB8's ($68 on eBay + shipping) and Alpine MRD-M300 amp ($100 on eBay + shipping). The only problem with my system now is that I need a bigger cap! The pursuit of the perfect system continues!

 

I played around with my cross-over points and equalization this weekend and got my system sounding amazing! I lowered the low-pass frequency to my mid basses to 160hz (my components now handle 160hz and up). I then lowered the parametric EQ center frequency for the MB's from 125hz to 100hz. They now sound tighter and have more bottom end punch. The MB's are now playing from 50hz to 160hz and really bring drums into the front sound stage. I'm finding that the system is more satisfying at lower volume than it was before the MB's were added. It sounds more mellow and balanced and the higher frequencies don't seem so harsh anymore. I also dropped my sub low-pass frequency from 80hz to 75hz. This made the sub sound more accurate on the bottom end and reduced body resonance slightly. I'm really happy with the way my system sounds now! If your looking to add some presence to your front stage, add some mid bass speakers!

 

nice to hear...

 

Do I sense sarcasm? Sorry if I'm imagining things! How's your system coming along EmperorJJ1? Have you added anything more to it?