Bought the Civic Hatch lease out, so rebooting the install thread

Made a slight tweak.
I had the right front panels shifted up slightly, during assembly there was a piece in the way - screwed it together thinking the 1/2" shift wouldn't really do anything.
But it did cause the front edge of the top of the dash to slightly scoop up...
I just didn't like that so I fixed it.

In other news-
The polycarbonate showed up, so I can make the side windows. Again.
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Something interesting showed up today...
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What is it? Another passive crossover?
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Actually, nope. It's an amplifier. Check it out, then I'll tell you why:
https://youtu.be/sB5hEe3IP70

For the overall system plan, I need DSP with 4 channels for front stage (tweets/mids), 4 more channels for midbass (because the fronts and rears both need different delay), and one channel for a sub.

But I also want 2 defeatable channels for differential rear fill.

For those who aren't familiar - differential rear fill is pure ambiance. It's to simulate rear reflections in a live environment, a live concert - sound that travels behind you, way back to whatever wall or building is behind you, and reflects back. And you only want the midrange... 400hz or 500hz up to about 2,500hz or 3,000hz.

Because it's simulating a reflection, it doesn't need to be super clean - in fact I thought it might be funny to buy a Boss or Pyramid or flea market amp, or amp from Wish... the cheesier the better.

But then I thought that would only be funny to car audio geeks. To everyone else, it might just look crappy and out of place.

So I figured I'd just pick something tiny (to fit my space restrictions), that looked funky.

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Speaking of that overall system plan, it's going to be...

One of these two.
Maybe I'll edit this post after I'm locked in, one way or the other.

The RF Power series option I was attracted to initially because of the ridiculously compact amps and my curiosity on the new technology that makes high-end class D possible. I was an RF dealer ten years back, I met some of their amp engineers at CES one year - I've always held their amps I high regard, even as I've grown pretty "meh" on the rest of their stuff. It seems they are still clean, powerful, and underrated - which is another way of saying "headroom". The Power were always their highest-end, so I'm optimistic - even though I've never touched one of these tiny guys yet

The Helix option is also promising for saving space. Nearly as compact as the RF amps, and the DSP is built-in to the V Eight, so I don't need to find a spot for a separate DSP. That also makes it pretty cost competitive, since I also don't need to buy a separate 12 channel DSP. This option *might* send me needing to buy another 2 channel DSP, either for the sub or the differential fill (the V Eight only has 10 DSP channels), but I might not need it for the sub anyway.

I listed the front mids as "TBD" because that's partly what I'm building my basement rig to help determine.

I listed the rear differential fill widebands as "TBD" also, but I'm sitting on plenty of 2"-3" speakers. I'll use something I have, I'm sure, I just need to find somewhere to hide them, back in the hatch.

But then I even thought about using a pair of exciters bonded behind the huge C pillar plastic that this hatch has - again, think the rough, diffused nature of "reflections" - but we'll see.
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Pics here for size reference - I'm confident both these are great compact options, for so many channels:
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First snowfall of the year.

This piddly amount of snow doesn't even count, but the snow is coming. It reminds me the snow tires/wheels are still in the shed. Oops. Probably should have done that swap before Xmas lights.

For the install - this is why I'm building a rig in my nice warm basement to experiment with the above-dash imaging. I have several ideas to try out that are fundamentally unconventional.

The whole reason for the rig is to mock up a reasonable acoustical equivalent of at least that above-dash region (dash/windshield/pillars/windows - possibly more) to prove/disprove things out before cutting things in the car.

And it's a lot more enjoyable - and should get me a better result - if am able to take my time in the comfort of my home. :cool:
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More progress to the listening rig...

1) cut and installed the polycarbonate windows. You can see I have them squeezed and blocked to make them curve like real car windows. I edited the one pic to trace the curve with my finger since it's hard to see the edge of clear glass.

2) cut and installed A-pillars. Just PVC pipe, cut on the bandsaw to the curve matching the window curve, and two layers of aluminum duct foil tape, to give them a shape and rigidity similar to actual A-pillar plastic.

The windows are curved into the right shape, but I still think I need to reinforce them a bit to make sure they are more rigidly held, since car glass is rigid.

I'm getting close, though - hopefully will mock up my first speakers by this weekend...
...and see how much more I need to add to this. [emoji38]


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You can see the space I left at the base of the A pillars, to use to mount experimental speaker/enclosure there:
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It's not getting any more attractive, that's for sure! [emoji38]
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:lurk:

Oh yeah -
Also, important: a key requirement for this install. Appearance.

This experiment isn't to arrive at some mad scientist kludge of speakers pointing every which way off a dashboard and pillars that are going to make my non-audiophile, very-professional peers wonder or ask questions.

This experiment IS going to arrive at an install that's relatively invisible, and not appearing extreme.
 
I picked up a couple additional toys to add to the eligible candidates to determine over the winter... Volvo junkyard 3" domes.

These are supposed to be the same as the Dynaudio Esotec MD142 - the price was right and the sealed backs will make them easy and fun to play with.
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They showed up today!

A bit bigger than I was anticipating (my very adult hand for reference), but will be trying something unorthodox with them.
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Some of you may have been following the unnecessarily detailed review process I've been going through, attempting to identify locations/alignments and speaker candidates for the actual car...

I've been rushing through, lately, thinking spring has sprung and it'll be warm enough to start enjoying some garage and driveway sessions and get this install going...
View attachment 15651
...well, I'm sure, soon. :banghead:
 
Theslaking said:
Man do I feel your pain.
Click to expand...
Not too painful - it's been tons of fun playing with different speakers and alignments in the crazy basement faux dashboard rig.

Auditioned a bunch, ruled out a bunch of experimental alignments, got to 3D print some audio reflectors that I won't be using but did spark even more thinking and I think I've even found an alignment I can start installing that will let me keep experimenting.

I haven't put those notes up there yet, but probably tonight. :cool:

But I think I hear you-
Last blast of snow where you are too?
 
Nice - basically my old backyard.
I grew up in the village of Hamburg, now I'm on the near fringe of Orchard Park though.

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So glad I held into this piece for the past two decades.

It was unique back then, I thought SOMEONE would make something similar to this today, but I'm not seeing anything.

Basically this is a fused block with two 1/0 in, and four 4 gauge out. It's made for the special rectangular IXOS 1/0 cable they used to make - and fortunately I have a whole spool of that too - and a battery terminal or two for that cable too.

What I like about it is it uses standard mini blade fuses - if I need 120A on one output, I can install four 30A fuses on that leg. If I need 5A on another output, I can install one 5A fuse on another branch and be all good.
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Finally back to building!

I decided I'm ditching the spare tire. If you look at the pic with the tire, I split it into three planned areas-
The area to store a pump/slime/patch kit to replace my spare, the amp rack, and the sub box.

Today, I cut down the original base for the box for the planned expansion.
Then I made a panel for the bottom of the tire well that has a hole to utilize the spare tire mount. After sacrificing much cardboard for templating, I made walls for the lower portion of the sub box.

Nothing is screwed together in the pic, just set in place for today. They'll be screwed and glued tomorrow, then the first rounds of fiberglassing for the bottom can begin.

Actually first I may need to lay out the amp rack side before I commit to this height.

After buildup and final cure, I'll add a top to the lower section, add the baffle up top, then 'glass the front upright.
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So for the "green" area, the amp rack - it's a little tighter than I was anticipating, but they'll just fit.

I'd love to have them horizontal so the badges are correctly oriented to the viewing position, but that's feeling too tight for comfort. If I do that, I would need to have 11 runs of RCA cables coming out of the miniDSP, and I don't think I have enough room before interference with the first CCi 44 is an issue:
View attachment 15856

I have just enough room if I orient them vertical, assuming I bundle all the RCA cables down the left side to the bottom of the image where the RCA inputs are on all the amps. In this case however, my power wiring needs to be pretty tightly managed if I don't want it to look all bunched up. [The lengths of the RCA ends (over 1" each) would make it difficult to do this but with the amps spun the other way, so the RCA's were up top and power down below]:
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Note I also included the holes for my 60mm fans in that second image - that's where they'll need to be, I do have grilles/filters to cover them from the inside, and their orientation will be fine for airflow and yet also for keeping the actual intakes and outputs of the fans in "buried" areas that will help suppress any noise - but I did shop for silent fans and picked nearly the lowest dB available, that still have good ccf.

The thing is, I also have this little fun toy that I picked up specifically to run my two rear fill channels - it's definitely not an SQ amp... that's actually good for simulating some always-dirty reflections, and I'm only running it on a pair of widebands, so I certainly don't care if it plays anywhere near 20khz. It's ridiculously tiny, but even still - now I don't really have room to keep this inside the amp rack:
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I do have room down below, and am planning to hinge the amp rack because I do have 3" of height available down there. I was planning on using a 1F cap I'm sitting on as I could fit it. I could fit the miniDSP down there as well since it's a pretty boring black box.
Or, I could fit the IXOS distribution/fuse block down there - it's just cool and rare and interesting and I feel like that's nicer to have on display - but on the other hand, if it's down below it would be easier to get to the fuses, since the upper amp rack is going to be truly under glass. I'd have to unscrew the whole glass cover, then remove the distro block cover, then I could get to the fuses...
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Probably also makes sense to have this located right next to the cap, down below. I guess I might have to go with the more practical choice.

Somewhere I also had a linear actuator lying around that might be fun to use to tilt up the amp rack... probably in the storage unit. If not, I'll have to decide if I'm picking one up, or using struts. I always complain about vehicles with hatches that have actuators you have to wait for, rather than struts you can just slam the damn thing shut and get moving, so people might find it weird for me to have my hatch floor motorized, but it could be slick.

Back to the drawing board to swap in that Banda amp I suppose.
 
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