Dissapointing sound system installed

[NomadicCreatives]

Hi Group! I got a sound system installed by a local company to me, I did contact a few of the recommended companies on this forum but the location was important as our van is in constant use so we chose a company 15 minutes away from our office. But I am starting to regret that decision. I won't name and shame, but I'm pretty disappointed with the sound. It's very loud, but there's very little depth and bass considering there's an under-seat subwoofer. I had much more bass from a halfords sub I installed in my Fiat Punto 10 years ago.

I went with a package they recommended and spent a lot of money on it. I have a SWB T6 2018 van with a bulkhead so the subwoofer was put under the passenger seat and it's a bit meh. Just now I went for a long drive in the van, and when I got back to our office I was listening to some music on our google home max speaker, which just sounded infinitely better so something doesn't seem right with this install.

The setup:

Positives - It is loud, so so loud! And it's got a lot of power. When you stand back and listen from outside with the doors open, it sounds a lot better.

The main issues are -
1. Lack of depth and mid-tones, vocals aren't that clear. The tweeters are a little overpowering compared to the rest of the system.
2. Lack of bass, it shakes the hell out of my driver's seat but I don't really hear the bass, just a vibration. This might sound counter-intuitive but
3. The seat vibration is pretty aggressive on the under-seat subwoofer and it's not that pleasant.

The package I was sold:

Hertz Millie Pro MPK165.3 door speakers and tweeters (swapped out for the original speakers)
Audison SR5.600 amp running actively and also sub
Audison APS10d in an off the shelf under seat enclosure in the driver's seat
Door Sound Insulation

This package uses the factory head unit and that high-level input goes straight from the head unit to the amp. Is this causing quality loss or lack of bass/depth? I was thinking of bypassing this head unit altogether and plugging directly from an iPhone into an amp, would this help at all?

I complained and they agreed it lacked something and managed to increase the bass a little, but it's still vastly unchanged. They have said there are two options to improve the sound, move the subwoofer to the passenger seat in a new encloser (at the cost of hundreds of pounds) or introduce a DSP sound processor (also £400-500 + fitting) to help balance out the sound. I appreciate that the sound coming out of the Google Home Max I have has been heavily processed to sound that good but at the moment the upgrade doesn't seem worth the money.

I just need a sanity check, is this all I can expect to get sound wise from a van, or is there any good solutions?

 

[Steve Hales]

I have that amp fitted under my driver's seat and a sub fitted under the twin passenger seat. The bass is really good, just out of interest have you got a remote knob which is plugged into the amp to adjust the bass?
If I turn mine fully anti-clockwise the bass doesn't do a great deal but I usually leave mine around half way which is wicked, turned fully clockwise the van is bouncing

 

[dubber36]

What are you listening to? Highly compressed Spotify and the like files will sound rubbish.

 

[Howzat]

Have you got access to the amp? There's high/low pass filters and gain control which can be tweaked and that setup should sound pretty awesome once balanced correctly.
Did they rewire the speakers? It's possible to have a 5 ch setup where the amp drives the tweeters and door speakers separately each with their own low and high level filters which would allow you to balance those components better. If they've just used the oem speaker wiring then you have less control to balance the sound so I'd seriously consider running some high quality speaker wire from the amp to the tweeters and use the OEM wiring for the door card speakers only.
As for the sub that may just be a case of tweaking the sub low pass as mentioned above then maybe reducing the level on the main speakers to let the sub shine through.

Audison SR5.600 Manual.

 

[Absolut5]

The Audison amp, and hertz speakers work very well Together but it’s all down to how well it’s been installed and setup, even the most expensive kit will sound terrible if both of these are not done correctly,

if you ever down our way, pop in and we will point you in the right direction..

or drop us a pm and any pictures of the install inc amp settings

ps it sounds like they are guessing

 

[NomadicCreatives]

I have that amp fitted under my driver's seat and a sub fitted under the twin passenger seat. The bass is really good, just out of interest have you got a remote knob which is plugged into the amp to adjust the bass?
If I turn mine fully anti-clockwise the bass doesn't do a great deal but I usually leave mine around half way which is wicked, turned fully clockwise the van is bouncing

Thanks for getting back to me, I don’t have the sub controller, the bass just doesn’t seam to do much other than shake the seat. Compared to subwoofers I’ve had in cars before.

 

[Absolut5]

Thanks for getting back to me, I don’t have the sub controller, the bass just doesn’t seam to do much other than shake the seat. Compared to subwoofers I’ve had in cars before.

Very odd they didn’t install a sub control

 

[Deaky]

It sounds to me that the crossovers and gain on the amp are not set correctly. I have practically the exact same setup from @Absolut5 and it sounds amazing. There should be crossovers somewhere, there is a jumper on them that will boost or cut the tweeters slightly, you could try adjusting those. Perhaps you could post a pic of your amp so we can see what the high pass and low pass filters are set to?

 

[Mccoatup]

Agree with the above, but in addition it's a possibility that one of the main speakers has also been connected the wrong way round, which would tend to cancel out some of the lower frequency response as well as messing up the stereo imaging.

 

[NomadicCreatives]

Thanks all, it sounds like this is all solvable which is great! Don't get me wrong, there is bass there, it's just underwhelming.

This morning I dropped in the van for the rear bumper to be sprayed but managed to snap some photos before it went in. I got photos of the head unit I'm using, the amp settings and the sub enclosure. I couldn't get the door speakers as I'm not too familiar with taking door trims off!

Does this all look in order?

Tom

 

[Deaky]

Cant really see which buttons are up and down but......

You don't mention rear speakers so the amp should be running in 3 channel mode. 2 for front L/R and 1 for the sub.

The High pass filter to your front speakers is set to 500hz. meaning only frequencies above this will go to the front, there will be another crossover that will split this further and send 2.5k hz plus to your tweeters and anything below that to the door speakers.

Your sub Lo Pass filter is set in the middle so say around 225hz so the sub will get any frequency below 225hz. Already you can see that any frequencies between 225hz and 500hz are missing and are being filtered out.

Also IMO 225hz to the sub is far to high.

Set the Lo Pass to the sub to something around 80-100hz. The Hi Pass should be similar Then anything below 100hz goes to the sub, anything over goes to the front speakers.

 

[Skyliner33]

Thanks all, it sounds like this is all solvable which is great! Don't get me wrong, there is bass there, it's just underwhelming.

This morning I dropped in the van for the rear bumper to be sprayed but managed to snap some photos before it went in. I got photos of the head unit I'm using, the amp settings and the sub enclosure. I couldn't get the door speakers as I'm not too familiar with taking door trims off!

Does this all look in order?

Tom


View attachment 146746View attachment 146747View attachment 146748View attachment 146749View attachment 146750

I've just realised, I have that Audison amp and I had exactly the same problem.
I will go out and take a pic a bit later.

 

[Skyliner33]

Cant really see which buttons are up and down but......

You don't mention rear speakers so the amp should be running in 3 channel mode. 2 for front L/R and 1 for the sub.

The High pass filter to your front speakers is set to 500hz. meaning only frequencies above this will go to the front, there will be another crossover that will split this further and send 2.5k hz plus to your tweeters and anything below that to the door speakers.

Your sub Lo Pass filter is set in the middle so say around 225hz so the sub will get any frequency below 225hz. Already you can see that any frequencies between 225hz and 500hz are missing and are being filtered out.

Also IMO 225hz to the sub is far to high.

Set the Lo Pass to the sub to something around 80-100hz. The Hi Pass should be similar Then anything below 100hz goes to the sub, anything over goes to the front speakers.

These are the settings that Skipton Car Radio did:

 

[NomadicCreatives]

What are you listening to? Highly compressed Spotify and the like files will sound rubbish.

I tried everything through my phone, but running Spotify through my phone on my friends Audi Q3 sounds incredible.

These are the settings that Skipton Car Radio did: View attachment 146778

Thanks for sharing this mate. It looks like your system is set up very dfiferently. Is this amp running off the factory head unit too? Or an after market one? I think my speakers are split so that the tweeters get one input and the mid's get another, is yours the same?

 

[Skyliner33]

I tried everything through my phone, but running Spotify through my phone on my friends Audi Q3 sounds incredible.


Thanks for sharing this mate. It looks like your system is set up very dfiferently. Is this amp running off the factory head unit too? Or an after market one? I think my speakers are split so that the tweeters get one input and the mid's get another, is yours the same?

Factory head unit.
Then this is how the speakers are wired, except I moved the wire I had in the wrong connector (as in the blue arrow).
Those leads then go to the crossovers.

 

[NomadicCreatives]

Factory head unit.
Then this is how the speakers are wired, except I moved the wire I had in the wrong connector (as in the blue arrow).
Those leads then go to the crossovers.
View attachment 146804

Hey mate, thanks so you have no subwoofer? But getting good bass?

 

[Skyliner33]

Hey mate, thanks so you have no subwoofer? But getting good bass?

Yes, I have a sub as well. It just wasn't wired in when I took the photo.

 

[Absolut5]

These are the settings that Skipton Car Radio did: View attachment 146778

That’s about right, but it looks like his is running active, so different , but still needs quite a bit of adjustment

 

[Howzat]

Cant really see which buttons are up and down but......

You don't mention rear speakers so the amp should be running in 3 channel mode. 2 for front L/R and 1 for the sub.

The High pass filter to your front speakers is set to 500hz. meaning only frequencies above this will go to the front, there will be another crossover that will split this further and send 2.5k hz plus to your tweeters and anything below that to the door speakers.

Your sub Lo Pass filter is set in the middle so say around 225hz so the sub will get any frequency below 225hz. Already you can see that any frequencies between 225hz and 500hz are missing and are being filtered out.

Also IMO 225hz to the sub is far to high.

Set the Lo Pass to the sub to something around 80-100hz. The Hi Pass should be similar Then anything below 100hz goes to the sub, anything over goes to the front speakers.

What Deaky said. Set the lowpass to 100 and the highpass to 90 then have a play with the gains for the front and sub.
I'd be tempted to knock off the hi setting on the mode button on the front section of the amp and select full instead then your main speakers should get more range which should fix your vocal issue.
To set the amp gain turn it right down 1st, then up the volume on the headunit to 90%, then amp front gain up bit by bit until you start to hear distortion, then tweak it back a tad for safety and note this gain position. Then headunit to 75% then amp front gain up again bit by bit until distortion. Finally set this gain between the first noted position and this final position. Now go to work on the amp sub gain till you get the system volume balanced.

@NomadicCreatives. Your setup only has 4 wires from the amp to the speakers and 3 CH is selected on the amp so they've not wired your tweeters up separately but if you did wire them up this way then you'd have full control over the filters and gains the amp supplies to the tweeters, mains and sub. This is how I'd want mine wiring ideally especially if I'd spent that kind of money on equipment.

 

[Absolut5]

I tried everything through my phone, but running Spotify through my phone on my friends Audi Q3 sounds incredible.


Thanks for sharing this mate. It looks like your system is set up very dfiferently. Is this amp running off the factory head unit too? Or an after market one? I think my speakers are split so that the tweeters get one input and the mid's get another, is yours the same?

Yours is running active so totally different, but it’s not right, plus sub control missing…

however this looks like items we supplied a converter/installer. So would like a chat over a pm or phone as i need to know and talk them through the install