Car Speaker Placement
Car speaker placement is very important to the overall sound of a car audio system. When installing car speakers there are two choices. Factory locations or custom locations. Factory locations are convenient for drop in replacements but for the best sound, custom work is needed. Let me offer some car speaker installation advice.
Factory locations are often chosen by the manufacturers as an afterthought. After the rest of car is designed, car speaker placement is decided. The most common locations for installing car speakers are the dash, the doors and the rear deck. These will be adequate for most of the population and are good choices for simple speaker upgrades.
The custom location of choice is usually the kickpanel. The kickpanel is the area under the dash in the far left and far right corners of the car's interior. It may seem that installing car speakers in this area is foolish. After all, how can having speakers at your feet be the best choice for car speaker placement? The answer has to do with time alignment. Think of how your home stereo is set up. When you sit in front of your speakers they are probably both an equal distance from you while you sit in the middle. This gives you perfect balance. Now think about your car. With the factory car speaker placement in the dash or doors, how far are you from the left speaker? Now how far are you from the right speaker. There is a big difference.
That's why the best car speaker installation advice I can give is to put speakers in the kickpanels. Speakers in the kickpanels will be more close to the balanced ideal of your home stereo system. The soundstage will be placed more in the center of your listening area instead of skewed to one side. The distance from the floor to your ears will probably not be noticed. This is because humans are more sensitive to location in the horizontal plane than in the vertical plane.
Q-Logic makes a line of custom kickpanel speaker pods for a variety of vehicles. This may be cheaper than having true custom work done. The price is about $200 a pair. Compare this to your local shop to see which is a better option for you. If you want to build your own kickpanels then you might be interested in one of our DVD packages that includes Car Audio Fiberglass Fabrication I.
The Car Audio Help DVD catalog includes five different videos covering many areas of car audio installation and custom fabrication. Topics range from basic system installation (head units, CD changers, amps, speakers, etc.) and mobile security (car alarms and remote start) to subwoofer box design and fiberglass fabrication. If you're interested in custom fabrication and car audio installation be sure to check out what we have to offer.
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