05 Scion xB SQ with a little extra oomph!

[dumdum]

@geolemon- Definitely a great car to build a system in! My fiance had one the same color when we met. After driving it around a bit, I started to REALLY enjoy it. The seats suck for long drives but the convenience of being able to carry almost anything I could think of, easy to get in and out of plus ideal path lengths is what sold me on it. Yes it's thin and kinda funny but I think I can overcome that with sound deadening material and some creativity. A guy from a local shop has owned a handful of them and swears by midbass drivers in the doors provided that they're fully deadened and braced which would be extensive. Not a problem for me really but I was running for the kicks, again for the sake of path length. Scott Buwalda says that's probably the most important part of good sound BEFORE processing. A guy named Peter from PSSOUND on YouTube did a build with 8's in the kicks and used the floor area attached to the panels in order to add lots of airspace to the pods. Basically raising the floor up to level with the door plates. That's an idea I'm considering. That said, I'm able to use the full amount of the lower half of my doors and still be able to roll down the window all but 4 inches which wouldn't be too bad either. Idk. I'd hate to chop up the doors only to realize it just isn't going to sound the way I want. I'm going to try the kick panels first. I'll snap some pics of the door and kick panel area and post them up.

@Haakono That euro Versa had rear discs!? I think I'll be doing a rear axle swap so my xB has those! There was small strips of styrofoam under the heel area by the pedals. I removed it. Gave me an extra inch of depth. I'm planning to go all in on my midbass setup. That is priority 1. Same with deadening. Right now I have free time so I'm getting as much done as I can in between rain and work. My front stage is always first. But I do love bass. I'm trying to make them blend well... until I want it to go boom. That's why the (3) JL 12's. Eventually I'll trade those in for Hybrid Audio Clarus 15's. Probably in like a year. There's a ton of work ahead. It'll be fun though. Thank you everyone for going on this adventure with me! I love car audio. Makes me feel like a big kid lol

peters build in the insignia didn’t raise the floor one bit as it’s built for Emma, he simply removed the padding and deafening under the floor and made the floor the exact same height, for Emma you aren’t allowed to raise the floor on the drivers side due to safety and brake pedals being present

I would definitely position the mids first in this build and see where the edges of the sound stage are, then position the tweeters so they present the same width and limits to the sound stage otherwise the edges of the stage potentially can be different, possibly by varying amounts and therefore the centres will then be skewed and also left centre/right center can be negatively effected, basically for perfect staging you need all boundary’s to be in line

[Haakono]

@Haakono That euro Versa had rear discs!? I think I'll be doing a rear axle swap so my xB has those!

..............

I love car audio. Makes me feel like a big kid lol

Yes, I think the 1.5l has disc brakes in the rear, mine was a 1,3 and had drums. 1,5l in Versa(van) form was pretty rare, but in hatchback form it was called T-Sport and more common. You also got Yaris Turbo over here, 1,5 liter - 150hp turbocharged.

Yeah, that is the joy of car audio

[geolemon]

I love Peter from PSSound. If you are an old guy like me you probably remember chuckling at the 'euro systems" back in the 90's and early '00s, wondering what they were thinking with their horn tweeters firing out of their hatches and doors loaded with so many speakers that the word "pathlengths" apparently didn't translate from US English to British English... And finally, this year, from one of HIS videos I sort of "get" what those silly cars are doing... there's some sort of distance SPL competition that they do over there that apparently sometimes includes people in costumes LARPing around their cars as the music plays and they are judged from 50 yards away or something crazy... So I'm still chuckling at them.
But - I'm reassured that this isn't the British idea of how good sounding stereos should sound.
If you haven't already, Peter has a fantastic series on tuning. Where you are in your install planning, this would be a great thing to binge watch right now, if you haven't before:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...xduQPpCUwRv78r

Also, ErinH's video on using your subwoofer to resolve the midbass NULL also includes a discussion on an alternative strategy (that I'm going to use myself) for using otherwise-terrible rear door locations for midbass:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIAV-jDafq0
In both cases, the bottom line is "lots of cars have a midbass NULL due to nothing but location and acoustics" and "you can work around that by having another speaker/speakers covering that midbass null from another location". Don't know if your xB has that issue but most vehicles do - and probably like you said before why even kickass midbass drivers in a top-notch baffle with everything done right and plenty of power can manage to still not make midbass - that's all cancellations and that video will help.

[Driftdad541]

It's been a bit since my last post. Been busy with traveling and birthdays. Just got back from Utah. It's a sweet pla e to visit but I love living in Oregon. Much cooler weather lol. @geolemon - I'll check out the links you put up. I've watched about half of Peters videos. That guy in my opinion is a straight up ace at installing. If any of you know of others I should check into, by all means do send recommendations. I'm super addicted to car audio. I have a drift car and also a Lexus is300 because I like hauling ass but car audio is my first love. I'm all about sound quality foremost...but I have a love for loud, deep, accurate bass as well. That's just the kid in me @dumdum - Thanks for the tips on sound stage and placement. I'll keep this in mind when I get around to glassing the tweets and L4's in. Speaking of kids, I just did an install in my son's Pontiac Vibe with a single 12 in a custom ported box we built together. He doesn't hear or differentiate yet between loud and clean loud yet so we just pieced together some craigslist gear and made it go boom. It's probably hitting about 140 DB...or was... until we smoked his sub lol. A 300 watt Memphis 12 didn't appreciate 1k watts. I had forgotten the smell of burnt coils��. Anyway, I haven't gotten around to doing much on the scion yet. Added some rims and tires. Still needs coilovers. I need to do a clutch job on it and replace the aging motor mounts. I'm planning to pull the engine and transmission, do the clutch and mounts and while I'm in there I'm going to paint the bay after a thorough cleaning. I'll probably get the big 3 and my battery, cover and wiring started too. I'll post up pics as I go. Here's a couple of the rims and tires I picked up. It's in dire need of coilovers!

[Driftdad541]

[Driftdad541]

[Driftdad541]

[Driftdad541]

[Driftdad541]

Forgive me for the double photo lol. I'm still figuring this forums system out

[Driftdad541]

I was planning on running my three W6 12's in sealed...but I think I'm going to go ported tuned really low and try to make up the higher bass with my midbass drivers. Obviously they won't keep up at full tilt but when the bass is turned down some I'm hoping it will work well. I'm planning for the L8's in the kicks...but recently I saw a video on YouTube of a 2 time UK SQ champ who had his midbass drivers in the doors. I've Also heard fr a few other xB owners that with some work, these doors can create incredible sounding midbass. We'll see how it goes. I've purchased extra door cards, a-pillar panels, kick panels and sail panels so I can do as I want. If they don't workout I'll have the originals to go back to.