924Board.org

[lcbleuchef]

Anybody have advice for a basic sound system? I've heard of mounting 2 3" speakers in a frame to fit in the dash single speaker bracket and pairing that with a couple of 4x6" rear speakers. Sounds kinda peculiar-no pun intended.

[ideola]

If you don't want to cut up your door cards, you could consider getting replacement door cards from a salvage early 944 or 924S. These will have speaker holes already cut that will accommodate a 4x6 speaker in the door. You will need to cut some of the sheet metal in the door for the speaker to fit because the early doors didn't have the hole in the same place.

If you don't mind cutting your door card, you can fit a 4x6 speaker a little lower down. Here's how I did it in my "941". Note the 4x6 door speaker, and the 1" tweeter up by the window switch. This is a really cool arrangement because the angle of the door card up by the window switches is perfect for aiming the tweeters at the driver's ears. This vastly improves the stereo image when compared with just the door speakers alone because the tweeters are much more directional, and because the high end frequencies are what creates most of the stereo image.


This setup is complemented by two 4x6 speakers in the stock location in the rear seats, along with a powered bazooka sub in the hatch.


The Kicker 1" tweeters have a passive crossover and are wired in series with the door speakers. The front 4x6 and the front tweeters are run off of the front channel on the head unit; the rear 4x6 are run off of the rear channel of the head unit; and the sub is powered. This setup is quite loud and clear, although it would be even better if I installed a separate amp for the 6 passive speakers.

The head unit I have (a Pioneer DEH4100PB) has an excellent built-in active cross over feature that allows me to fairly precisely control which frequencies go to the bazooka sub, and also includes a high pass filter which allows me to prevent the low end frequencies from being sent to the 4x6 speakers. This is a critical capability for good clean sound, and many people are quite surprised at how good this simple setup sounds with no add'l amp. This head unit also had the best specs I could find in terms of signal-to-noise ratio, and best (highest) voltage output on each of the channels (I think it was 3.2 per channel, but it's been a while since I looked). These specs are more important than the wattage output cited because the voltage per channel is what allows you to send a hot signal to the speakers without distorting. You can have 50W output per channel with low voltage, and the speakers will never be able to draw that power without it distorting. Much better to have lower wattage and high voltage outputs.

The head unit also has an iPod port and full iPod interface support. I have routed the iPod control line under the center console carpet and into the cassette holder where I can hide it and my iPod:

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erstwhile owner of just about every 924 variant ever made

[Mars478]

I can attest to the quality improvement by adding tweeters to your stereo system. I did it in my ML and it alone seriously improved the audio system very noticeably. I used some infinity reference 1 inch tweeters and they are a great addition to my system.
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924, 82, 5 speed, dark red, 500 dollar special.

Daily: 99 ML320, 210k and still trucking.