Time for a small update, back when I had the Audi I always enjoyed the effect of rear fill, so once I got the front stage dialed in with the Volvo have started to think about the rear fill. Knowing that rear door locations don't typically work well I had to look further back and higher up. Unfortunately, there are no speakers in the D-pillars and none available from the factory either with speakers in them. Likely because the pillar is pretty small and the way the metal is shaped behind them there is not actually all that much room for speakers either.
Before tearing into things too much I wanted to temporarily mount some speakers in the rear to see if they would work out. Enter a spare set of Dayton RS75 I had (used to be in the kick panels in the Audi) and a pair of PVC cups.
Yes, the PVC cups look awful! I covered them in black electrical tape just to somewhat disguise them. Anyway, so they work as expected so the next step is to try and figure out a way to mount them. In that 3rd picture above, the red outline is about where I plan to mount them. However, as I previously wrote there is not much room at all behind the pillars. So, I am going to have to likely use some fiberglass to build them out, similar to A-pillars. I ordered a new pair of pillars last week, thankfully they are cheap, $12 each brand new. Even if I royally screw them up, it's not a bunch of money down the drain. In my head I want to make them appear as stock as possible so am somewhat hopeful to shape the baffle similar to this:
But make the grill flat, not with that step on it. There are a few problems with this approach....
1) I'm not that skilled.
2) I don't own a router.
3) I don't have anything I can press a grill with
4) My fiberglass skills extend to a single subwoofer enclosure, never attempted pillars.
5) Did I mention, I'm not that skilled?
Ultimately, this could end in disaster. But we'll see.
I'm also trying to figure out how to run the rear fill through Dirac. With Dirac 3.0 I can assign speakers to zones, but what I cannot yet find out is that can I assign the front stage and sub to zone 1, then assign that Dirac calibration to preset 1 on the DSP, then assign the rears to zone 2, run calibration on that and also assign it to preset 1, but without the zone 2 calibration messing up the zone 1 calibration. Running them all on the same zone, Dirac basically lowered the output of the front stage to match the rears which just caused me to lose a ton of output.
[FONT="]Edit: Dang, just got an email that one of the D-pillars is on nationwide back order with Volvo. That throws a spanner in the works. If I remove my current ones and screw them up, I am stuck with no d-pillar for who knows how long. [/FONT]
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