Sorry to double post but no one seems to be posting in the speaker forum where I thought this was an appropriate question.
Anyway, been lurking these forums for awhile. Been away from the car audio hobby for about twenty years but have been wanting back in for awhile now.
I have a 2000 Jetta and recently upgraded my factory Monsoon system. First, I swapped the HU for a Sony mid-level featured cd/mp3 player. Then, added a Treo Engineering 12" DVC sub running 800 watts @ 2ohm via a Kenwood Excelon mono amp. The sub's in a sealed box in my trunk pointed towards the rear. I'm very pleased with the bass, both volume and oomph.
The problem is my front stage. I just installed a pair of 6.5" MD Quart Premium Series PSD-216's running off a 240 watt 2 channel Audison amp. So, I'm sending 120 watts to each MB Quart. The volume level is disappointingly too close to my old factory Monsoon speakers that only had 20 watts going to them from the Monsoon amp.
When I started this upgrade, I wanted VERY loud and VERY clear mids and highs with tight, hard bass. I've got what I want from the sub/amp combo. The MB Quart/Audison front stage combo is a dissapointment.
Shouldn't this combo produce a pretty strong, clear front stage?
it takes ten times the power to get twice the audible volume, so going from 20 watts to 120 watts really going to be as big of a change as you might initially think. speaker positioning can also have a large effect. generally, component separates will sound better than coaxials as well in my personal findings. you tend to get better power handling and better speaker positioning.
I can tell you one of the other problems is using Sony anything. their head units are notoriously weak for pre-out signals and generally sound lousy compared to better products like pioneer premier or alpine or eclipse.
Thanks for the input. I currently have the tweets and mids in the A-Pillars and doors respectively(same as factory sets).
Was running the factories off the same HU though. To be honest, I can't really tell a difference in volume at all. The Quarts/Audison combo might be a bit clearer than the factory speaker/amp combo.
My install took a bit longer than expected so we haven't tuned it much yet other than to set the tweets to -3db on the Quarts (yeah, they're bright). I'm kinda hoping that something's off in the setup that will be uncovered when we tune.
I'm glowing the heck out of the crossovers though trying to get some volume out of this setup. Can see the light from around the door skins.
could be amplifier gain setting as well if it's too low and you're under-driving the input of the amp with a weak line voltage, that'll make it suppressed too. try setting gain on the amp to about 1/2
yes 4 volt is considered the standard for better units. the higher line voltage makes for a cleaner, higher resolution signal which will yield better detail and clarity. it won't really make the system any "louder," just cleaner.
think of it as the same signal (waveform) with twice the voltage. you've got twice the data being sent, essentially, to represent the same source signal, so you not only get better information at the other end, but your noise floor is lower, and THD is improved, etc. usually 4 to 5 volts is ideal. anything higher and you start to encounter the issue of finding amplifiers that will accept higher voltage inputs. remember, to work ideally, line voltage and amplifier input stage have to match. if either one of the two is outside the value range of the other, they won't mate up very well and you'll overdrive the amplifier inputs, or underdrive them.