I ran across this statement in one of your recent posts, "The Morels also use shallow slope crossovers and will need a lot of attention to positioning to get the imaging right."
Does this mean that speakers with steeper slope crosovers such as 24db/oct (CDT satnet 480 with a cl 61/62)will allow me to have less than perfect positioning (stock door 2002 taurus) with a decent result? Thanks.
Yup. CDT designs their systems more to the average installer. With a steeper slope, the drivers modulate each other less and the off axis dispersion is much better due to that. Also minimizes beaming (directionality) and the driver lobing isn't as bad.
Lobing has to do with dispersion, and is dependant on the position of the drivers. The response will have a dip off axis because of interference between the drivers. Lobing can occur with ANY crossover, and some higher order slopes are actually worse when it comes to lobing. Some higher order designs can minimize lobing, though, and those are the ones I'm referring to.
Modulation in this case is a phase modulation. When you have a tweeter and a woofer playing, they inevitably have pathlength differences, and their relative phase will cause cancellation or boost at given frequencies, resulting in peaks and dips in the frequency response. With a higher order crossover, you are cutting the drivers at a higher rate and they will not affect one another as greatly.
"CDT is quite good in their designs, but they're more inclined to those that can't/won't go far with the install. Go to a competition and see if competitors are using their front component/front fill/rear fill/upstage/centerstage image "solution". Doubtful."
seeing that I am planning on getting a CDT set (cl 61 or 62) and wanted to install it in the factory location of my 02 taurus, would the upstage system be helpful for me? or is it just a marketting scheme that appeals to people with less car audio knowlede like me?
The upstage system helps. I was referring to their overall idea for a soundstage. A good 2 way component system and possibly (but not always) a good tweeter in the A-pillars is all you need for a good image.
with all of that out of the way, should i go for a satnet 456 and add an upstage system (8khz cutoff for image tweet) later OR get the satnet 480 with built in image tweet connections (4.3 khz cutoff for image tweet, which is the same as the main tweet, and -3 db attenuation)? The 480 will save me about $125 in the long run, but is the $$$ saved worth the extra octave that will come through the imaging tweeter. This is all IF i decide to opt for imaging tweets in the future. Thanks again.
with all of that out of the way, should i go for a satnet 456 and add an upstage system (8khz cutoff for image tweet) later OR get the satnet 480 with built in image tweet connections (4.3 khz cutoff for image tweet, which is the same as the main tweet, and -3 db attenuation)? The 480 will save me about $125 in the long run, but is the $$$ saved worth the extra octave that will come through the imaging tweeter. This is all IF i decide to opt for imaging tweets in the future. Thanks again.