kickpanel question

[33lop]

Hi. I just got an e30 tourer and I'm thinking of putting new drivers. I just noticed that the speaker location in the kickpanels look a little small. Looks like a 5 incher.

Haven't removed them yet but will 7" midbass fit in without cutting through metal?

[anton]

hi there. nope.

and there is nothing wrong with 5.25" speakers, if you buy quality it will outperform a 6" or so of a cheaper quality.

for my frontstage of my pickups i used a set of woofers,tweeters,crossovers from KEF CODA 7 hifi bookshelf speakers.

they are awesome!!!! provided your enclosure is decent. custom kickpanels well sealed.

anton

[33lop]

hi anton,

i'm looking at scanspeaks or dyns 5.25" to put in my kicks. i'll make sure i'll do a good job in sealing it.

[anton]

hi there
youre definitely going about things in the right way!
just for interest sake, i participate in iasca(international autosound challenge associatian)(www.iasca.com)
sound quality competitions. going to be building the e30 325i 4dr i have up soon.
my pickup took 3rd place at last years south african finals.

cheers
anton

ps: u want to get as much volume/litre-age as possible, a good 5incher needs approx 4 - 5 litres of sealed enclosure
space to operarte optimally... make ur kickpanel out of fibreglass...

[33lop]

Hey anton,

Congratulations on your 3rd place finish! I'm also thinking of joining the iasca competition here in my country. But I want to be patient on my next install. Can't wait to open up the kickpanels and plan it carefully. The cargo space of the wagon is another thread waiting to happen. I see a lot of sub and amp install ideas there.

[anton]

dewd, PM me anytime with questions, i love helping people out with SQ.

wanna a know a trick for a really kick-ass install?

ok here goes:

for the kickpanels, look, i have no idea at how handy you are with working with your hands and fabricating things, so i'll just try and explain anyway:

To make some kick ass kickpanels:

1) remove factory kickpanels
2) get what we call masking tape, i think its called GAFFER TAPE in the uk
3) now paste this tape everywhere, you'll wanna paste it inside the cavity behind the kickpanel and over the wires etc, basically you'll paste this tape everywhere where the plastic kickpanel USED to be, except the tape will cover the "cavity" aswell. make sure you use 2 or 3 layers of it
also make sure you cover half of the area where your floormat is.
you then smear petroleum jelly thickly allover the tape. this can be found(the petroleum jelly) at any chemist or healthstore, this will be a relase agent for the fibreglass, and it is really cheap. you'll need about 3 tubs of the stuff,
i usually buy these from like 3 different stores or else the shopkeeper might think im gay or something

you then cut little pieces of fibreglass, little pieces measuring roughtly 5cm x 10cm will do, you gently place these over the petroleum jelly.. you'll kinda find that they'll stick to it...

you then mix up some fibreglass resin, around 500ml for each side,
you then apply this resin over the fibreglass...

what now happens is the following:

The fibreglass "sets/cures" this now forms the solid backing for your kickpanel.
just watch out the amount of fibreglass you use, fibreglas can get VERY HOT when curing, dont want to set anything on fire or anything.

now you cut 2 speaker rings for each side, one 5.25inch ring, this is basically a speaker mounting ring made out of wood, the inner will be about 5" the outer part of the ring about 5.9"inch

you do the same for the tweeter.

you then need the following:

8mm wood drill bit & drill
8mm wooden dowel rod

you then drill 2 x 8mm holes anywhere in this ring, you then cut various lengths of dowel rods, for e30 purposes thay will vary between 4 & 8cm more or less..

whats going to happen now is you are going to place these dowel rods thru the holes you just drilled in your speaker ring, you are then going to angle this ring in the right position, you then use a hot melt glue gun to glue the dowels to the fibreglass backing you made.. this ring is obviously where your speaker isgoing to mount into.
what u need to do aim this ring, for optimal soundstage the best "target" position would be like 5cm above the centre air-vent. aim the tweeter along the same path. the opposite speakers must obviously fire in the same position. you might not have enough room to angle the speakers completely due to too things,
one, the globebox needs room to open, and 2) your accelerator needs about 1inch clearance between ur kickpanel and your pedal.
not too worry.. good quality speakers like scanspeak etc normally have good off axis response, this means you dont really have to be right inline/line of sight of em to get the best of them when listening.

I've dont some tests, i've installed my kef coda 7 woofers and tweets in factory locations, for the tweeters i cut a hole in each plastic kick panel and mounted em in. the imaging is quite good, i'd say just a tad higher than dash level. the midbass response lacks due to the "metal" being the enclosure and not perfectly sealed either.
but the bmw e30 seems to image well. i'd say that designing and building good kickpanels will provide a soundstage around 6inches below the rear-view mirror. this is considered very good in sound quality terms.
and will score high in the imaging/soundstaging department at any iasca competition.

my pickup scored 46 out of a possible 50 for imaging!

the only problem i forsee with the bmw e30 is that the enclosure "volume" in litres, i dont think it'd be possible to do more than 3litres each. this is less than optimal, so bass response/midbass will be less than optimal, but a well tuned sound quality subwoofer can help mask this.

1 x single high quality 10inch in the rear, fire-ing directly thru the rear parcel shelf and perhaps angled slightly to the front is all that'll be required bass wise. ohyeah, the metal in the vehicle will definitely have to be dampened slightly to get rid of the "tinny" sound, that metal ringing sound you hear when example slamming one of your doors shut. this is the metal "echo-ing" if i could put it that way.. some sound deadening in the right places will sort this out. not much work compared to some vehicle as the e30 seems to generally be quite a solid vehicle,

remember, you could remove your ski hatch, or cut holes in your rear shelf for the sound to literally leak through, but this isnt optimal and will lead to what they call time-alignment errors. the sub-bass will not blend into the audio properly, there will be a slight delay.

since ive only had my e30 a few weeks i havent dont my install yet. will do so when the pickup is done. busy spray painting it. but basically you want the cone fire-ing towards the dash, and ideally simply an acoustically transparent mesh to protect the woofer.

The only way i figure this is possible is to basically cut an 11 - 12" hole in the centre of the rear shelf, then to build a 0.9 - 1.0cu'ft enclosure which bolts under-neath the parcel shelf, the subwoofer will then fire directly thru this hole and into the cabin, one should seal between the subwoofer box and the parcel shelf somehow. you dont want the sub-bass leaking into the boot, the enclosure must ultimately be one with the rear shelf.

The enclosure MUST be air-tight, and as "sound-proof" as possible, thick 22mm mdf should do the trick.

At the end of all this, if the boot of the vehicle was wide open it should make too much of a difference in the sound.
a wooden "frame" can be made to go onto the rear-shelf of the vehicle. this frame can then be covered with acoustic cloth.. this would HIDE the subwoofer, but at the same time let the sound through.

i think the e30 will sound very good if the above guidelines are used.

ohyes, when installign your amplifier, make sure your fuse is WITHIN 18 inches of the battery.

Also, try and run a GROUND cable from the front of the vehicle to the back and connect this to the same ground point as the amplifier. your SOURCE UNIT will perform better when given its own dedicated/shared ground with the amplifier. this is much better than factory head unit loom ground. much over much-ness i suppose. but at the end of the day it all counts..

this is how (by paying attention to details) i managed to score 350.5 points for sq at the finals last year. i might add that the setup in my vehicle was the cheapest and the most basic out of all the installs.

i've been competing since year 2000. so you can PM me anytime with questions as how to start competing..
its very easy to get into it... and LOADS of fun once you compete. you get to meet lotsa fellow competitors and learn lotsa tricks etc...

the above was just a rough crash course. hope there is some useful info there

Cheers
Anton

[ed325i]

That is useful good read Have you got any pics of the kick panals

[33lop]

hey anton,

Great read! any pictures of your install?

I think a 5.5" midbass will do on my kicks. Sadly i don't think the big revelator tweeter will look good on the a-pillars. I'm also thinking of installing a single 8" or 10" sub at the back of the tourer.

[anton]

hi there.

tweeters on the A pillars are NEVER good!!!!, the sound quality competitions get judged on a 450odd point scale.

so that 350.5 above equates to a 76% score or something...

anyway, tweeters on the A pillars arent good for a few reasons:

1) Smearing, sometimes non-audible distortion, or upper high frequency getting magnified, this is the effect GLASS
has on high frequency sound, This is identifyable by vocals that sound overly sharp, especially female vocals, if you
find that at above average volume the high frequency/vocals are hard on your ears after some time then smearing is a possible cause, the high frequency should be smooth and natural,well balanced and should integrate and blend in with the sound as a whole and should not sound seperated.

2) seperation, the ultimate sound system would be one where all the different frequencies come from one single point, that point should be away from glass!!! for the simple reason that a subwoofer cant produce high frequencies or midrange this is not possible, but having drivers delivering different frequencies all over the place in the vehicle is not a good thing. The tweeter should be as near to the midrange woofer as humanly possible. what you want to do is mount the woofer at a higher level than the tweeter, then angle the tweeter so it fires more or less along the same axis as the woofer, the result? midbass/midrange & tweeter playing in unison as if its one single source of sound.

in my pickup the speakers are located in kickpanels, when i demo the vehicle to people especially layman/joe soap the last place they look for speakers is by the floor. the very first reaction i get from people is that they look for the speakers as the entire sound seems to come from the dash, 1metre high, the full width of the dash, and some sounds even create the illusion of coming from slightly outside the vehicle.

The reason you can get away with putting the subwoofer in the boot of your vehicle is that sub-bass is generally non-directional, in otherwords our ears cant localise them very easily, sometimes not at all, keep in mind, sub-bass STARTS getting directional from around 80hz onwards, so you'll wanna cross your subwoofer on LOW-PASS and at 80 - 85hz. the only problem with this is that your midbass woofer must be able to accurately produce 80hz - 120hz(which is also BASS frequencies), if your midbass cant do this either due to shitty speakers or improperly designed enclosures you'll end up with the typical "midbass upfront lacks" scenario.

what you want is that say for instance you disconnect your subwoofer, the overall sound should be very listenable, kind of like a 5yr old merlot red wine, smooth and palatable.

to test your sub bass integration, you must be able to enable your subwoofer and instantly the sound is "RICH" and "FULL", but you shouldnt HEAR sound from the BACK.

most car audio guys cross their subwoofers over at like 120hz sometimes higher,this is generally to get more BANG out of things and for the system to play louder.

problem is, this does absolutely NOTHING for your staging and imaging, as it tends to pull the soundstage to the rear of the vehicle, and imaging as in FAR LEFT - LEFT - LEFT OF CENTRE - CENTRE - RIGHT OF CENTRE - RIGHT - FAR RIGHT tend to suffer.

what you want is good solid sound upfront without a subwoofer, you then add a subwoofer at a relatively low crossover point like 80hz-85hz, and YOUR in business!! infact your sound will then actually be "THE BUSINESS".

my woofers and tweeters which came out of some kef coda 7 loudspeakers have big tweeters, the magnet is slightly over 2inches in size. so the "tweeter" ring for the kickpanel that i cut out tends to look more like that for a 4inch woofer.

scanspeak, youre on the right track!!

another VERY important point, use the crossover designed for the woofer/tweeter!!!

for now, ive gotta run. work.

cheers
Anton

[Mahmood]

you'll need about 3 tubs of the stuff, i usually buy these from like 3 different stores or else the shopkeeper might think im gay or something

Great advice by the way...I know nothing about ICE.

[33lop]

hey anton,

i'm learning a thing or two from your posts. thanks dude.

mahmood,

ICE rules. careful though: once you start, there's no turning back.

[tomtomiS]

one thing anton. the earth for the amps should be as close to the amps as possible and not back to the battery as you stated. just wanted to set the record straight there.

[anton]

Hi there. that must of been a typo on my part.

The earth should be as close to the amp as possible. But its a good thing giving the headunit its own dedicated earth too. in one particular vehicle which i did an install i had a very bad ground loop/interference problem. with that
specific vehicle it actually helped when i earthed the headunit at the exact same point as the amplifier(s).


cheers
anton

[tomtomiS]

anton i agree with u totally on giving the headunit its own earth. mine has its own and it sounds more musical than when it went into the vehicle loom. bizarre but it works so this is a good one to try to give ur sounds a little boost. helps to reduce ground loop feedback

[tomtomiS]

ive heard u should earth all ur sound sytem at the same point

[anton]

hi there. yip this is what im saying. the earth from your amp to your body, in this case your BOOT/TRUNK
should be as short as possible, this is because your amplifier is going to draw the most current in amps.

this is ohms law. you see, if you have a device drawing lots of current, then that very device is easily effected
by electrical resistance on your ground point. so it should have good ground. The source unit should preferably also have its own power feed. take for example my nakamichi cd 700, this is a high end unit, and even though im using pre-amp and not onboard power of the deck, this is like a dual 24bit dac unit etc.. so it can easily draw upto 10amps.

in short, yes definitely earth all your sound at one point. even better, get a really thick welding cable...
and replace the earth from your battery negative to your chassis with this thicker uprated one,.

cheers
Anton

[placey]

an earthing trick i've used successfully in the past is to run a flat matted type earth cable (can't remember where i got it from now) from the headunit to the amp rack earthing point, thus eliminating earth loop problems.

anton's advice is all good. i'd suggest an alternative solution: 6 1/2 inch drivers in door builds for front imaging as they can be angled closer to on-axis than kick panel builds and can be ported into the door cavity for a proper mid-bass kick, thus relieving any subs of this duty. i've had kick builds and door builds in mine and have stuck with the door builds because i think they sound better. to be fair however, they are a great deal more work.



the best that i have heard in an e30 however was both. 6 1/2" drivers in door builds, 4" and tweets in kick builds with the tweets behind the mid. now that sounded proper awesome. basically it was my friend that lives, eats, breathes and makes a living doing installs and he heard mine and could not bear to be out-done....

paul

[tomtomiS]

i have been toying with the idea of builds for ages as the factory location is not very good, but im torn between door builds and kickpanel builds. i want decent imaging but i dont want to lose the door pockets.

[placey]

the door pockets don't have to go - builds can be moulded to an original door pocket that's been cut down. it makes the builds harder to trim for sure. trust me - you won't miss the door pockets. realistically what's kept in there that couldn't live elsewhere? that's what the glovebox is for.

paul

[33lop]

Even i'm thinking of doing custom door builds but i don't want to cut through metal. That's why i'm toying around with the idea of using 5.25" midbass on kicks, do the proper angles, and seal them up correctly.

[tomtomiS]

hey 33lop have u had a look at wat size the rear speakers are? a whopping 4"!!! i was well shocked when i saw em, gonna need some work getting decent ones in there! ive just bought a touring too so i would be quite interested in hearing ur plans/ ideas/ brainwaves! do u have a luggage cover in ur touring? i gotta get one before i start playing with audio as where i work, the car is parked on an industrial estate which sees a lot of traffic, cars and pedestrians. i quote from human traffic, " thats paranioa!" i might install a big scary dog in the back before the subs come out to play!

[anton]

hi guys. ok i just wanna chip in

why kickpanels? the fundamentals behind kickpanels are as follows.

The DIFFERENCE between the distance from the driver and driver side speaker VS driver and passenger speaker
is less than with door locations. with door locations the drive is sitting right ontop of the driver side speaker.

with doorbuilds your imaging will always lack. your centre wont be centre,your far left will be left of centre, and your far right will be just above the instrument cluster slightly offset to the right. my pickup has kick builds and there are 7 positions in the soundstage all can be picked out easily even by a layman/joe blogs.

size of woofer doesnt really matter.. with the exception of 4", 4" doesnt reach the critical 80hz - 100hz region.

good quality 5.25"ers can reach down to 65hz at reasonably volume... problem is... as far as acoustics is concerned.
rule of thumb is, the average 5.25" needs about 8litres (almost 2 gallons) of ported enclosure, or 4-5litres of sealed enclosure.

6.5" woofers need about 6-7.5 litres of sealed volume. and about 10litres ported.

which can be attained in kick builds/panels?????

definitaly NOT 10litres... but, if you've got a big FORD F250 OR F150 pickup.. or some BIIIIIG vehicle. one could probably make space. but the accelerator pedal usually gets in the way.

a 5.25" woofer in a more optimal enclosure will ALWAYS outperform a 6.5" in a non-optimal enclosure.

what you want in a perfect world is:

GOOD TO EXCELLENT IMAGING (soundstage width,depth,height) good midrange response, good high frequency response. tweeters should ALWAYS be mounted at a physical lower level to midrange woofers, this actually LIFTS the soundstage height by often 15 - 20 centimetres.

in my pickup my soundstage height extends to 3/4 the height of the windscreen!!!!!
yet the speakers are located in the bottom corners(kick locations) of the vehicle.

installing kickbuilds also amplifiers the midbass ability of the woofers as they are located in the corners of the vehicle. to illustrate my theory... take a hifi speaker in a room. place it anywhere in the room but the corners...
now place it in the corner of the room, watch/listen to the amplifier bass response when in the corner....

you get artificial bass gain in about the 70 - 90hz region in the vehicle.. this can eliminate the stereotypical lacking front midbass problem most car audio systems have!

with door builds your imaging will ALWAYS to the unfocused...

DESIGN CHALLENGE #1:

to build kickbuilds with the most literage possible in the E30.

i managed 4.2litres per side in my pickup... with the E30 i doubt this will be possible. but pretty close..

anyone that wants pictures of my kickbuilds in the pickup to get an idea of what im on about are more than
welcome to email me at anton@compunique.co.za and i will reply with attached photos.
im not registered at imageshack yet.

cheers for now

Anton