Recommendation for component speakers

[Guest angela]

Wow...very chim. Need to go back to school to study on ICE. hehehehe.

BTW, thanks for sharing these info.

[keltanky]

wa lau,

me too must go back to school, revise on the ohms, dbs, WRMS & etc...

:o

[Guest jenvid]

Absolutely no way the detoxification program is effective, not even a teeny weeny bit man...

But anyway since the guru is on a roll... ;D ;D ;D

Here's my setup

Bremen 74, powered by a Diamond Audio 7056 driving a pair of Rainbow P265 Extreme & a pair Coral PCF 165 & a Moral 8 inch sub.

Any comments?. All I know is the amp is rated 50WRMS/C at 12.5v...

Somehow dont find it that suitable for female vocal esp unplugged.

Also just realised that the Rainbows 110Watters...

All your talk abt WRMS,Voltage, ohms made me dig out my pack of instructions & scrutinised...

May be I shld just transplant them to my W211 less the HU & sub..

What's your view ?

[Guest kepiting1sg]

Absolutely no way the detoxification program is effective, not even a teeny weeny bit man...

But anyway since the guru is on a roll... ;D ;D ;D

Here's my setup

Bremen 74, powered by a Diamond Audio 7056 driving a pair of Rainbow P265 Extreme & a pair Coral PCF 165 & a Moral 8 inch sub.

Any comments?. All I know is the amp is rated 50WRMS/C at 12.5v...

Somehow dont find it that suitable for female vocal esp unplugged.

Also just realised that the Rainbows 110Watters...

All your talk abt WRMS,Voltage, ohms made me dig out my pack of instructions & scrutinised...

May be I shld just transplant them to my W211 less the HU & sub..

What's your view ?

IMHO,

I am not familar with your amps & speakers.

If you are comfortable with the rainbows, go & transplant it into your new W211 and

I assume your Diamond Audio is a 4 channel amp and is bridgeable into 2 and 3 channels.

Although bridging of an amp will double the distortion rate, I dun think we have ears that are so discerning to hear the difference.

Option 1. Bridged the diamond audio into 2 channel to run your rainbows and get another amp to run a 10" or 12" sub. Forget about the rear fill. (This is assuming your Diamond Audio beside taking RCA inputs also takes High Speaker Inputs or U will need a Hi/Lo RCA converter)

Option 2. Get 2 channel of the Diamond Audio amp to run your rainbows and used the other 2 channel to bridge & run your morel sub. (cheapest option). Forget about the rear fill.(This is assuming your Diamond Audio beside taking RCA inputs also takes High Speaker Inputs or U will need a Hi/Lo RCA converter)

Option 3. Get a Hi/Lo RCA converter and convert your W211 stock system signal into a process eg. Alpine 701 processor. Use your Diamond Audio 4 channel to run your Rainbow in active and another amp to run a 10" or 12" sub.

All option here, you still retains your steering wheel audio controls.

There're lots more options, all depend on your requirement & budget.

I believe you must have a good relationship with Sam SM.

Go ask him for his opinion.

Cheers!

[Guest angela]

I thikn i'm a little late to chime in on the component speaker topic, but nevertheless, one day someone might find this info worth reading.

When shopping for speakers, this is what i do:

1) set a budget

2) find out what is below your budget and audition them (you may already be happy with that)

3) find out what is above your budget and audition them (you may get poisoned, but at least you know why u bought them)

4) find out what even more money can buy you and audition that too (just so you know what you are giving up)

5) pick the right amps and source for your speakers.

point 5 sounds obvious but most people still overlook it. If you buy top end speakers, you will probably need better power not for SPL, but for dynamics and headroom. this is entirely up to you. my mids have 500W rms each, and it's not for SPL. when you play a drum and bass track, that's where the dynamics and headroom comes into play. you don't need 500W rms, but maybe 100W of good clean power would be the minimum i would put to any high quality driver. if you put 100W to your speakers, and then one day you audition a 500W rms driven set of identical speakers, you will hear the difference, and it will probably blow you away just how different the control of the driver is, but you have to remember.. different price point, different performance.

the source also plays an important role. before you buy the speaker, you really need to know what its strengths are. some speakers can drop low and handle power effortlessly, but may not be as fast or detailed as other drivers. the drivers that are fast and very detailed often have some other weakness, like say poor power handling, or some frequency response anomaly, or inability to respond below a certain freq. range. SO. If you buy a tw/3/6 3-way combo don't expect the 3" driver to drop below 300Hz comfortably. most struggle below 300Hz. a 4" would get you well into the 200Hz zone, but they are harder to install. a 5" midrange even better still, can drop to say 100-125 hz and blend very well into the Midbass while giving rock solid vocals up to 5kHz and beyond, but where the hell are you gonna stick a 5" driver? and can your midbass keep up? All these questions need answering before you even consider taking the speakers near your car. Your source also needs to be able to control the cutoff frequencies for each driver set. the H700 or H701 is a good processor to do this. (i have one H700 spare to let go. hehehe)

How much are you willing to sacrifice to get the sound you want? If you feel you're gonna go deep, then bite the bullet. your door panel may need butchering. Once i met this guy who bought a used BMW. and he wanted top end sound but would not even consider cutting the door panel, let alone the metal behind it. if it was my beemer.. hehe.. straight away cut liao.

so it all depends. ask yourself where you are going to install the speakers. can you afford the space? can you live with the install locations? what will you drive the speakers with? how are they going to be run? active? passive? what kind of performance are you going to squeeze out of the driver? can the drivers take that kind of freq range? Once you sort out all these questions, you will find that your speaker choice will have naturally narrowed down to a couple of options. from there your wallet and plain logic will help decide which one you end up with.

[Guest jenvid]

When shopping for speakers, this is what i do:

1) set a budget

2) find out what is below your budget and audition them (you may already be happy with that)

3) find out what is above your budget and audition them (you may get poisoned, but at least you know why u bought them)

4) find out what even more money can buy you and audition that too (just so you know what you are giving up)

5) pick the right amps and source for your speakers.

so it all depends. ask yourself where you are going to install the speakers. can you afford the space? can you live with the install locations? what will you drive the speakers with? how are they going to be run? active? passive? what kind of performance are you going to squeeze out of the driver? can the drivers take that kind of freq range? Once you sort out all these questions, you will find that your speaker choice will have naturally narrowed down to a couple of options. from there your wallet and plain logic will help decide which one you end up with.

So the bottomline is hor..make real good friends with ICE gurus... get them to know what u like to listen to, have a budget n ask them to recommend... ;D ;D

So many variables so little time.... :laugh:

[Guest angela]

When shopping for speakers, this is what i do:

1) set a budget

2) find out what is below your budget and audition them (you may already be happy with that)

3) find out what is above your budget and audition them (you may get poisoned, but at least you know why u bought them)

4) find out what even more money can buy you and audition that too (just so you know what you are giving up)

5) pick the right amps and source for your speakers.

so it all depends. ask yourself where you are going to install the speakers. can you afford the space? can you live with the install locations? what will you drive the speakers with? how are they going to be run? active? passive? what kind of performance are you going to squeeze out of the driver? can the drivers take that kind of freq range? Once you sort out all these questions, you will find that your speaker choice will have naturally narrowed down to a couple of options. from there your wallet and plain logic will help decide which one you end up with.

So the bottomline is hor..make real good friends with ICE gurus... get them to know what u like to listen to, have a budget n ask them to recommend... ;D ;D

So many variables so little time.... :laugh:

So the bottomline is hor...go to every since ICE gathering....listen to all the gurus system...best still, bring your favourite CD. When you find a system that you like and within your budget, ask the owner where he install the system and copy his setup. Preferably he drives the same model of car too. hehehe.

I'm sure most of the gurus here are proud of their setup and willing to share what they have and also will unselfishly recommend the installers.

As for advise, I don't have any as I'm a newbies in car audio. My philosophy is always that if you have say $3k for budget, don't spend all 3k buying middle range equipment. This way, if you find out that you are not happy with your setup, you have to replace everything and that cost a lot of money. I would spend the say 3k on some higher end equipment and some low end equipment, that you know even when you upgrade the system, you will be happy to keep the high end ones, and only have to upgrade the low end ones. So I will definitely go for high end headunit, and good component speakers, the rest can be cheap stuff and upgrade later.

[Guest kepiting1sg]

So I will definitely go for high end headunit, and good component speakers, the rest can be cheap stuff and upgrade later.

Good conclusion!

IMHO

Amps/cables for ICE is the least important after HU & Speakers.

BTW we are not qualify as ICE guru but siow ICE enthusiast nia:-[

After reading your ICE postings,

1. HU:- I think a Clarion HX-D2 HU suit you fine in terms of requirement & budget.

2. Speakers: It more of a "personal liking" but you can't be far wrong with speakers from the higher range of DLS, Focal or DynAudio or MBQuarts

3. Installer:- You might wanna go to Ph@tboy installer CS. U might wanna ask him for contact & check them out.

Cheers!

[Guest mekenics]

adding fm unker's points:

we are not ICE gurus but siow ICE ppl who r poisoned & wan u to follow suit ;D

1. HU:- I use a Cl@rion D2 HU.

+ pts: no face plate movement for disc load/unload. 1 less item to spoil!

simple lookin, does not invite prying eyes

seperate pwr supply unit hide-away

- pts:not as tune friendly as say pine-neer P9

less eq bands but finer TA adjustments

cos simple looking so doesnt look the asking price tag

2. Speakers:"personal liking" other brands worth a look r sc@n-spk r@inbo but make sure ur amps can match! no point gettin a set of Be's but use a 25w/rms amp to run,chances are it will not sing like its meant to. same like u will not put 20" rims with 255 wide tyres on a 800cc car & expect it to go like it looks!

Cheers!

[Guest angela]

My current favorites are my Alpine #F1 3-way which are scan speak revelators with tweaks, and the focal BE 3-way. both are very nice.

that's all the poison i have to recommend today.

[Guest jenvid]

Value for money wise, do you guys think it is worth matching SEA Lotus or Scan Speak speakers to an alpine IWA200, that double din media station ? More especially so if one listen to iPod 100% of the time... mostly AAC 320kbps sound files.

I know as far as setup is concerned speakers are impt but I like to balance $ spending vs benefits...