945 Aftermarket Speaker suggestions/experiences?
 

Hi,

So a few years ago I swapped out my speakers in my 940 Estate for some Focal 2 way 5.25" Components at the front and Focal 2 way 5.25" speakers in the rear doors, as I could hear that at least 2 speakers were "ripped". I also installed a Alpine 10 inch sub-woofer for some added depth. I'm not overly impressed with the sound quality, where I should be hearing mid bass notes or higher frequency sounds I'm hearing nothing... It's not my hearing that's at fault as the same sample of music played in my daily driver with a Harmon Kardon system sounds impressive, but lacks deep bass notes.

Has anyone used Focal before and found this to be the case? Has anyone used another brand and found the sound to be close to audiophile quality? Or has anyone used any other 10" sub-woofers. I think this Alpine one might have a limited range of sound.

Any feedback would be appreciated.


Kind Regards,



T

The speakers are probably fine, the problem is with the doors in that they muffle certain frequencies.

I have the same front speakers in both my cars and the same/similar head units. In my other beast i get reasonably good quality (as good as you can reasonably expect in a car without spending £Shed-loads) from the front speakers but the reproduction in the Volvo is poor by comparison.

Difficult to make a comparison on the rear speakers as i now have 6.5" rears mounted in the parcel shelf as per the original 8" fitment fed by an amp, no need for a sub as there is enough bass to vibrate the rear screen and anything else close by. Also my other beast is a saloon so again, the comparison fails.

The eventual plan for the Volvo is a pair of 6x9s mounted somewhere in the back facing forward at an angle, fed by a separate amp and bypass the rear door speakers that are a bit of a waste of time in mine as i usually have the back seats down so the seat cushions mask the speakers anyway.

That's a good shout, I could modify the stiffness of the door card I suppose, or add some dampening material to the door cards to see if it improves the sound.

I was thinking of going down the 6x9 route and placing them in the back, but I'll end up having to run another amplifier and some more cables throughout the car. The current Focals are amplified using a 4 channel inline amplifier.

I'll start with your initial suggestion. I've ordered a calibrated microphone, so I check to see if there is a difference before or after using some audio spectrum analyser software.

Kr,

T

In my 740 estate, I've got 3 way speakers in the front doors, 2 way speakers in the rear doors, an 8" sub in the spare wheel and a decent head unit. All items are Pioneer and I'm pretty pleased with the sound quality.

All my doors have extra sound deadening, both dynamat style and acoustic foam.

Can't speak for whether it'd pass the test with your ears though :)

I generally leave OEM speakers alone unless they go faulty. Replacements are rarely a good fit. When I was forced to replace the OEM Nokia speakers in my 90s VW (because they were falling apart) I found the best place for cost-effective speakers the right shape/size was http://uk.farnell.com. A wide range to choose from, functional and cheap.

Ive got a poverty spec 940 and whilst working on the doors recently i noticed there were no speakers installed in the doors, but blanking plates behind the plastic grilles.

Can you recommend something that will drop straight in?

You may find you have dash mounted front speakers instead - check under the grilles on the top ends of the dashboard.

If you decide to go for door mounts, most 13cm/5.25" speakers will fit these :

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/324541107136

I'm fairly sure the original speaker grilles Volvo fitted to the doors will fit over them but Volvo used an offset screw pattern to fit the OE speakers. You can fit most 5.25" speakers using just two of the securing lugs and the edge of the fixing lugs.

Done a frequency sweep after tuning the headunits 9 band eq. You can see around 80Hz it's not great.
https://i.imgur.com/SmDf4WQ.png

I'm going to have a look at the door cards in the upcoming weeks, I'm thinking of using fibreglass to add some rigidity, then some more sound deadening material to add some mass, hopefully, this will help.

I'm guessing my subwoofer enclosure may need tweaking too.

Not just around 80Hz which looking at it, is more like 68-70Hz - now look at 6800Hz (6.8kHz) or there abouts which will be the 10th harmonic of that same frequency, another huge dip!

Have you checked your microphone/spectrum analyser to see if it drops out on those frequencies in a different environment?

Looking at the graph, i'd suggest the microphone has an inherent "dead-spot" at ~68Hz and the 10th harmonic of that.

I'll check the calibration file and try it in my other car. It could be the sound card on my laptop.