Sexual intercorsa...

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Progress pics, I’m also starving as I’ve not eaten for 7hrs now... best feed myself and see if the passenger side mid behaves itself

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Got the passenger side done to a point where it will play and it’s not gonna cut the mustard for Emma... the left speaker presents as 6-8” inside where the speaker is... the only difference between this aiming and the one without a dash top... is the dash top... even packing it with 6” of egg crate and towels only made it a little bit better, so I guess I’m gonna be doing a skeleton dash top in grill cloth....

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So a few observations I have made while playing with smaart...

Clean phase traces are very good, I had a play with the seat that I did the boot on earlier in this thread, the drivers midbass is reflection/room mode central and won’t ever sum with the left nicely like mine do through the passband, you can learn so much from phase information once you learn what you’re looking at

Speakers have phase characteristics unique to themselves, if you are using a centre make sure it is the exact same speaker as the left and right, otherwise you will time align the drivers by tape and effectively then have to battle with phase differences to get a good front stage image...

following on from above, if blending left and right midbass from my experience you don’t need to adjust phase as most of the phase will track once the time alignment is correct, however be prepared to set phase for mids to midbass for example, but make sure you adjust both mids or midbass to the same phase angles, the relation between both mids or both midbass needs to be maintained but you need to get the time alignment accurate as that relates to phase also

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So a bit of a development... off with his dash!!

the dash top is the only difference between the 5” with a dash and a 6” with no dash at freqs below beaming for the six...

my five inch pods have now been added back in with less of a dash top... and bang the reflections are lots better... albeit the left stage is about 4-5” narrower with the 5” vs the old 6”, but I can cope with the mid sounding like it’s between the mid and the corner of the windscreen vs it sounding like it’s coming from 10” across the screen

i have started making the rear section of the dash top which will be hollowed out and covered with grill cloth to make a non reflective dash top and fitted back one piece at a time to check for any issues arising, I will also make a vent for the window demister on top of the heater box which will have to have some body to it, but it’s 12mm birch ply so should have plenty of strength if I make the surround 20mm wide around the vent and the exterior

i love it when a plan comes together

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So a bit more progress, I have cutout the under the screen dash board... not sure how it’s all going to tie together yet, but I will use my best creative thinking brain to put it all together... I may do the top of the heater box as yet to give a steadier taper to the opening atop the dash...

im not 100% happy with the blower shape although a quick knock up of the funnel with just two dividers at angles to fan the air out onto the screen did seem to work extremely well...

the idea is to trim the sections in grill cloth and effectively make a solid looking dash but in reality it will be acoustically transparent

[preston]

thanks for sharing your work, I think the transparent dash is an outstanding way to go.

I'd love at some point to transfer some of our conversation about SMAART and phase alignment on the other location be movedf here or updated into an explanatory tutorial. That was some fascinating stuff, looking foward to buying the right sound card and playing around with it myself this Winter.

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Something a bit different... metallic black car and I didn’t like the rims it came with... so on with some 17” Sri spec wheels... brighten the car up a bit I think 😎

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Caps meet wheels, will take them to work and drop em on tomorrow evening

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More none audio stuff...

wheels are on, debadged the tailgate and colour coded mirror caps and a few bits

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Got a new boot handle, tried it orange, don’t like it, it will go black when the rest of the car gets painted, painted the normally chrome part of the front grill and the badge in the centre orange, jury is out on the grill... might try a rear tailgate badge in orange which sits above the handle and can be seen on other pics

someone has suggested getting a boot spoiler for the top and painting that in orange also... again, not sure on that bit