speaker upgrade from manufacturers oruginal

[4 forty]

as the speakers fitted by volvo are phillips, i understand that pioneer make better upgraded quality speakers that fit straight into the existing holes, no modifications required.
can anyone comment if the quality is better, and which speaker model number they have used,i have just got the pioneer catalouge and there seems to be 5 different variants.

thank you.

paul [4 forty]

Give ans ICE shop a call. Most manufacturers make speakers for to fit existing holes. I have kenwood in my car (and they sound brilliant!)

Chat later

Stu

[Networkguy]

Have a look here for some interesting info:

http://www.monmouth.com/~rothe/volvo-dynaudio.html

[tonyflynn1]

I'm just about to rip the originals out of my 850, they sound pretty good but distort at high volume ie. when I turn it up to drown out other car horns, pursuing police sirens etc. Seriously, I picked up an sc901 really cheap on Ebay, fitted a 4 channel amp and now need to change the speakers. I'm away for a couple of weeks but will post after I get back. In the meantime, if you're in the Surrey area, check out Phil's setup ( Noiseboy ) he knows How to p**s the neighbours off and his main drivers fit in the standard slots.
( apart from the phat sub )

Tony, try this.

Turn the bass down to about 1/2 of its max, perhaps slightly more.

Set the treble to just over 1/2 way as well.

Set the fader so that the system is about 2/3 in the back of the car.

That is the advice of the guy who designed the system, it does seem to help a lot, but I know bugger all about em anyhow :)

[roy chu1]

Hi Alex,

The stereo system in v70 series are great and are actually quite bassy. I have heard that volvo do the standard audio systems overall.
If you like listening to the music a loud volume without distortion and good bass, then the above settings are correct, this varies due to what sort of sound quality of music you play on the car.

One question, are the tweeters connected to the head unit independentl or is the wiring in the block connectors?

I have fitted a kenwood aftermarket stereo and the boot tweeters are not functional. I might suspect the wiring for the tweeters are separate from the main, can anyone give me any info on this?

look forward to a reply

Roy

[don kalmar union]

I don't know what car you have, but, I do have a complete set of speakers out of my S70 for sale, plus the high power amp. 'Phone me on 0208 959 3230.

[foggyjames]

As far as I know, the 850 uses standard sized speakers, so speakers of the correct size from any manufacturer will fit.

Just one point though - I am extremely critical of audio quality, but in my 360 I am using the standard 4" dual cones with a pair of £16 (incl del) sony tweeters. The results are really excellent (not far away from my £300 mordaunt-short hifi speakers), and certainly better than a friend's JBL GTO (not too cheap!) 3-way speakers. (BTW, I currently use them with a 2x10" sub :) - not that i am comparing their bass response - he uses a sub with them too!)

My point is that up to a point (£100/pair?) the way you set-up car speakers up is as important as anything. Position them well, and feed them a linear signal (as that linked article showed, this isn't as easy as you might think!), and you are likely to get good results, even with stock speakers.

I am working on a theory that the 'component' configuration - mids (ie: w/out tweeters) in doors, tweeters on dash - almost automatically gives higher fidelity than two-way purely door-mounted speakers. Given chance, I may use smaart (acoustic analysis tool design for pro-audio industry) to see if there is any science behind this statement.

I expect that the reason for it is that frequencies above about 3kHz do not carry much information, rather they 'gel' the sound together, so if these frequencies are transmitted in an optimum fashion (eg: straight at ears from about 30deg to each side, and at ear level), you get a higher percieved fidelity level. Bouncing the sound off the windscreen seems to be a popular way to do things - and this would, if anything, give better vertical alignment.

just some thoughts! too late really - time for bed!!

cheers

James