Need audio Guru help

**kbrownmann** · 05-26-2010 12:16 PM

So i bought my wrx a few months ago and it had a great sound to it. i have a kenwood sterio and i later found out that i had an amp under the seat (PIC #4), no subs though, but the trunk was dynamatted, so the previous owner definately took them with him.

I still have the amp because the highs are still hooked up to the door speakers and it would have been a pita for him to revert them back to factory.

anyways, i was listening closely and found out that my front driver side speakers werent working. so i took off the door handles and this is what i found. (PIC #1)

i could not find out where the wires went to, they were just hanging there so i took of the passenger pannel and found this. (PIC #2&3)

my question is what is this box? is it wireless. i dont even have a clue so i figured id ask you guys.

**Heide264** · 05-26-2010 12:37 PM

The box is a (passive) crossover. He probably had components in there, so the crossover took the signal and filtered out frequencies for corresponding speakers (ex, only high freq to tweeters, mid to low for doors). You put your door speaker signal in, and it splits it out to woofer/tweeter normally.

I can go into more detail if you want. If you just want to know what the box is, there ya go. If you let me know what speakers are in there currently, I can give you some suggestions as to what I would do.

**kbrownmann** · 05-26-2010 12:39 PM

well would i just need to buy one for the driver door and have someone program it. he had the wires labled inside the door there was the door speaker, the tweeter and one was to a sub it said.

**Skreekin** · 05-26-2010 12:40 PM

The box is a crossover. It's not intended to be wireless. Pretty good find though! Sounds like the car is at least partially ready for you. Just a matter of sorting out the mess and figuring out what the guy did before you.

**kbrownmann** · 05-26-2010 12:44 PM

yeah its gettin there. when i got it only the back 2 speakers worked, but it just turns out one of the fronts just werent plugged in, but i actually had to do a little diggin for the other one. it has potential to be a nice set up. the whole trunk and both of the doors under the pannels are dynamatted

**Heide264** · 05-26-2010 01:19 PM

Nah it's just a passive crossover - nothing to program. It is only a set of coils/caps to filter out various frequencies. Most component sets actually come with them.

It really depends on how they are hooked up now as to what you should do. If you have 2 or 3 ways in your door and hence don't need a tweeter, you have no real need for the crossover (those combination speakers have tweeters built in). If you buy a separate tweeter set to add to your setup, they normally come with a crossover anymore in my experience.

I would say just ditch the crossover if he took the one out of the one door. I don't know why he would take 1 crossover though... what a silly thing to do for lack of a better explanation. One passive crossover isn't really of any use to you though - they need to be matching for the most part.

Find the wire that carries the signal from the head unit. That is what he probably put "in to" the crossover. The wires coming from it aren't of use to you really. Plug those wires that were going into the crossover into your door speakers - should be good to go. Your door speakers will be running full frequency unless you change it from the head unit just a heads up. Not a bad thing unless your door speakers are only meant to take a certain frequency range.

If you have tweeters, check to see if there is a capacitor on them anywhere (small cylinder). That acts as a high pass filter (passive crossover example) for them to filter out potentially tweeter frying low frequencies. If there is a capacitor, just splice that output wire we found above, and connect it to the tweeters. If not, you need to buy a high pass filter for the tweeters - passive ones are cheap, don't worry.

If that didn't make sense, let me know. I might be able to explain a little more clearly.

**kbrownmann** · 05-26-2010 01:50 PM

haha i kind of understand. lets see, i do have tweeters just fyi. what i got out of that explination is that i should find the wires ran from the back of the head unit and follow them to the door. and i can hook them up that way. another thing i was wondering is if i could run a wire from the speaker itself straight to the amp. and what should i do with the tweeter again, im kind of a noob when it comes to some of the terms... and thanks again for all the help

**kbrownmann** · 05-26-2010 03:17 PM

after further investigation this is what i found. in the drivers door there are wires to 3 speakers. the door the tweeter and the subwoofer. (PIC #1) like i said before

for some reason the sub woofer appears to be hooked up to the stock speaker outlet, or its just ran somewhere far up in the door. (PIC #2) the wire to the speaker and the tweeter are just not hooked up to anything

**Heide264** · 05-27-2010 08:44 AM

Alright, my bad on that one. the crossover goes between the amp and the speakers, not head unit ><

If you have all 3 speakers in each door, you need to see if there is a crossover on them. You don't want high frequency noises going to your subwoofer, or low frequency (bass) signals going to your tweeters. You need something there. Passive crossovers (as opposed to active - passives are just inductors or capacitors) aren't too expensive, and they save speakers from being blown or sounding like balls.

If the 3 speakers in each door were the ones he gave you, they might not have one built in. The reason there are so many cables is that you run the speaker signal from the amp into the crossover, and the crossover modifies the signal for each of the individual speakers.

When you say the door, tweeter, and woofer, do you mean each door has a tweeter and normal speaker, and the wire comes from the sub? I think it's coming from the amps, not the actual sub.

Let me know; I should be on here pretty religiously until 4:30ish.

**kbrownmann** · 05-27-2010 08:54 AM

Originally Posted by Heide264

Alright, my bad on that one. the crossover goes between the amp and the speakers, not head unit ><

If you have all 3 speakers in each door, you need to see if there is a crossover on them. You don't want high frequency noises going to your subwoofer, or low frequency (bass) signals going to your tweeters. You need something there. Passive crossovers (as opposed to active - passives are just inductors or capacitors) aren't too expensive, and they save speakers from being blown or sounding like balls.

If the 3 speakers in each door were the ones he gave you, they might not have one built in. The reason there are so many cables is that you run the speaker signal from the amp into the crossover, and the crossover modifies the signal for each of the individual speakers.

When you say the door, tweeter, and woofer, do you mean each door has a tweeter and normal speaker, and the wire comes from the sub? I think it's coming from the amps, not the actual sub.

alright i understand now. this could be a real possibility because the ones that are labled "woofer" are the only ones that are actually hooked to anything, which is probably the amp. I think i understand how you are explaining it. the way i am seeing it as the crossover acts like an internet router (in concept) where i hook up the power outlet to the crossover (the amp) and from there i can insert the tweeters and speaker.

and after looking at it, it is clear that he did have something in place of where the crossover would go, because in that door i see screw holes where something was previously placed.

**Heide264** · 05-27-2010 09:15 AM

Yeah, just to clear it up, I will go with your router analogy. Your router does not require power in here...

The cat5 that goes from the cable modem to the router that "supplies internet" is the wire from your amp to door. That is your original amplified signal persay. This is the connection you'd plug into your computer if you didn't have to share your network. You'd get everything. Good speeds and mad p0rn.

On the output side, lets say you have 2 (maybe 3 depending on component set, normally 2 though - sub isn't in doors to my knowledge ever) output "ports".

port 1 goes to your dads computer. You only want him to have good speeds, but access restrictions. So you filter out all the p0rn access. This is similar to the tweeters not wanting bass/low frequency sounds.

port 2 goes to your junk computer that you don't care if it gets viruses. You don't want printer sharing or file sharing. You make that port so your junk laptop can watch stuff all day and be fine. Nobody will know. That is like your door 'woofer' not wanting high frequencies. It junks it up.

Now that is having a router as a crossover persay. Another alternative, is to use individual filters. Imagine putting a seperate firewall on your dads computer to block whatever, that would be like a capacitor across the leads of a tweeter. Does the same as it would router side, but thats local instead of remote...

I think that clears it up a bit. See what you have to do at all?

**kbrownmann** · 05-27-2010 10:03 AM

ok yeah i get it pretty well now. i looked up capacitors and crossovers on ebay, and it looks like the easier route would be to install a crossover. i looked at the one on the passenger door and it makes sense to me.. it looks as if there are certain spots for each speaker. there is one for the tweeter which im guessin filters out all of the low frequencies. but i cant distinguish what the other two are for. one section is labeled woofer and the other says "in" which my first guess would be the amp, but now im kinda guessin the amp would plug in to "woofer" and the door speaker plugs into "in"

**Heide264** · 05-27-2010 12:22 PM

Nope, close though...

My guess:
In = signal from amp
Woofer = main door speaker (probably)

It depends, he might have had 3 way components in each door, meaning a woofer for low, woofer for mid, tweeter for high... never know.

Make sure your crossovers are the same in each door, they are all made to cut out different frequencies.

You don't need to get a cap off ebay... tweeter caps are tiny and you can get them from any small electronics store - probably radio shack for maybe a few bucks. They act as high pass filters (only let high frequencies through). On the other hand, the coils/inductors act as low pass for your bigger speakers. They are opposites.

It depends on the configuration you wire them. For a simple filter, coils are in series (goes between a speaker lead and the wire) and caps are in parallel (across leads of speakers).

Bit more advanced: This will create a 3-dB/decade filter. If you are curious, which very few are (myself included normally), there are 6-dB and higher filters that are created using more than just one cap/coil. You can always look on a car audio forum for some, they aren't hard.

I would suggest just putting a cap across your tweeters and running your door speakers full band. You can always put a coil on them if you want, but I don't normally. As for the cap value, you'd have to let me know what tweeters you have so you know their lower cutoff freq.

Word to the wise, unless you plan on doing a lot of reading and playing, stick with "Passive" crossovers. They are just plug and play. Active crossovers require some more advanced tuning and more tinkering. They are normally more than a few bucks to say the least too unlike passive.

We can do this the easy way. What speakers do you currently have in your door. I will just give ya a simple easy way to clean it up a bit. If you can get brand/model it'd be easiest.