Change Harman Kardon midrange speakers Kia Stinger

[andrew tay]

Been testing the door speakers. I have changed the woofers in the car door. Some improvement but not as much as I hoped for. Tested the door speakers and realised that the mids are the weakest link. The ones at the door are 2 ohm 2.5 inch and the centre one is 4inch. The 2 inch tweeters are pretty good but there are crossed at around 8000 hertz producing an annoying peak at 8000 htz. It needs to be crossed lower around 4000 hertzAfter doing some testing with various mids and crossover settings I found a solution. The mod cost 200 us dollars which significant improved the mids and high.
Get 5 X 2 inch vifa ne75 Melo David speakers from Aliexpress. They are really one of the best sounding speakers for cars. They have a peak at around 8000hz so need to be filtered off around 4000hz which is perfect match for the tweeter

Get 4x audiopipe crossover from eBay. They use good quality capacitor (I tested them) with around 4000hz crossover with is perfect for this purpose. The tweeter attenuation resistor is a little low which is OK for car as you like the high to be a little louder. You can get them from ebay.

 

[andrew tay]

T

 

[andrew tay]

Now remove all the midrange speakers, one from each of the 4 doors and one from center dash.
The middle speaker cover needs a Little prying to get it off.


Use the factory mids as template to cut out 3mm mdf as braces for the new mids.
Solder wires to new midrange speakers after mounting on the braces.


Solder wires to the tweeter terminals bypassing the factory capacitors. Refer to photo. Detach the factory wire connection.


Unwrap the factory wires to the mids. They are brown and white. Remove the plastic covers of the Audiopipe crossover. Attach the wire to the input terminals.

You can slide the plastic joints out by putting a small screw driver to the end bit as follows


Attach the tweeter and mid wires to the terminals of the crossover



Attach the crossover with silicon onto the dead space in the door arm rest.



Attached the centre speaker. The centre speaker does not need crossover which also gives it extra 2 to 3 db to match the factory tuning.

All done

 

[andrew tay]

The setup will decrease the loudness by 6dB in theory, up to 10 in real life. So if you listen to music with volume set to 20, you will now need to turn it up to 26 -30 to get the same volume. I was able to turn volume up to near maximum without any issue Nice and warm sound with no high pitch distortion. You can even keep the factory woofer and I think it will still sound great. I can now hear the blowing air of a flute and the the cello's string resonating. Interesting,I can also clearly hear the distorsion produced by the surround sound processor when I turn it on at high volume.
The only thing that is less good is that there is less attack and kick which most obvious in piano and symbol. That unortunately is very common in class D amplifier. Maybe one day I will put in a class AB amplifier .

 

[robz32]

Wow....Excellent information, and great research.
Good write up.

 

[Stinger GT SS]

Great continuation of your sound system upgrade, I’m very impressed at your tenacity to achieve the perfect sound system, with all the work your putting into that I hope you achieve your desired result....
Oh, by the way are you going to take it on a national tour so we can all appreciate your handy work....

 

[andrew tay]

Frequency response, now nice and smooth.
Flat


A weighted


As expected just a little bump at the treble. Those who want less treble replace the resistors in the crossover to 4 ohm resistors. Those who want more high frequency solder a wire between the 2 ends of the resistor to bypass it. The bump at the bass in the none weighted 'flat chart' is partially caused by engine noise. I may also have to turn down the bass alittle bit.

 

[andrew tay]

Great continuation of your sound system upgrade, I’m very impressed at your tenacity to achieve the perfect sound system, with all the work your putting into that I hope you achieve your desired result....
Oh, by the way are you going to take it on a national tour so we can all appreciate your handy work....

Thanks. Its fun. I am happy for now. May one day I will add a class AB amp to give it a little more sparkle.

 

[Stinger GT SS]

Thanks. Its fun. I am happy for now. May one day I will add a class AB amp to give it a little more sparkle.

Enjoy your handy work.

 

[OliverNuther]

The only thing this thread is missing is another audiophile “tuner’ who has a better ‘tune’ than you so that you two can flame each other while we all watch on.

But seriously mate, wow, just wow.

 

[andrew tay]

The only thing this thread is missing is another audiophile “tuner’ who has a better ‘tune’ than you so that you two can flame each other while we all watch on.

But seriously mate, wow, just wow.

Thanks. Love to compare notes.

 

[OliverNuther]

Thanks. Love to compare notes.

I’ve got nothing to compare sorry. I’m a total dunce when t comes to this sort of stuff. But I love seeing people displaying expertise in any field so I’ve been following your posts with interest even though there is zero chance of me actually following in your footsteps.

 

[brancky3]

The only thing this thread is missing is another audiophile “tuner’ who has a better ‘tune’ than you so that you two can flame each other while we all watch on.

Gold! lol.

Seriously nice work - I have not been in the SQ / SQL / SPL realms in a long time now so I think my ears have forgotten what a good quality car audio setup sounds like (which is fine, my wallet appreciates this). I'm completely happy with my H&K setup but the only thing I think it lacks is midbass when comparing it to my outgoing Audi's B&O system. Deep bass is perfectly adequate.

 

[andrew tay]

Gold! lol.

Seriously nice work - I have not been in the SQ / SQL / SPL realms in a long time now so I think my ears have forgotten what a good quality car audio setup sounds like (which is fine, my wallet appreciates this). I'm completely happy with my H&K setup but the only thing I think it lacks is midbass when comparing it to my outgoing Audi's B&O system. Deep bass is perfectly adequate.

I retrospec I should have done this before I changed the door woofers and install a subwoofer. Changing the mids, adding a crossover and removing the thick felt covering the mids and tweeter is probably good enough to turn it into an OK sound system. It would have cost me only $200 instead of $2000.
PS It is not even a serious SQ system. Lack a lot of sparkles. No one will missed the class D amplifier signature. Missed the 90s with all the legendary SQ class AB amplifiers, although they did blow up or catch fire....

 

[M'Kehyah]

Great write-up!
Thanks for taking the time.

Yeah.. the 80's and 90's... when OEM car audio was soooooooo ...bad. I remember doing the Harmon Kardon headunit, H/K active crossover, H/K and RF amps, and Boston Accoustics separates paired with a deuce of Kicker ten inch subs in a sealed enclosure for my '86 Mustang. King Shizzle fo' sho'

"...back in the day"

 

[andrew tay]

Great write-up!
Thanks for taking the time.

Yeah.. the 80's and 90's... when OEM car audio was soooooooo ...bad. I remember doing the Harmon Kardon headunit, H/K active crossover, H/K and RF amps, and Boston Accoustics separates paired with a deuce of Kicker ten inch subs in a sealed enclosure for my '86 Mustang. King Shizzle fo' sho'

"...back in the day"

Back in the days, it all started when I was given a RF hd 25, 25watts. Power up a kicker sub and 2 mids so loud and you can hear it down the street...before it smokes and died one day . Love my PPI's and my OzAudio speakers and subs. Still have a Boston pro 10 in my other car. And don't forget the legendary Pheonix . My pheonix amp actually caught fire in one hot day. Lucky my VW survive with just minor carpet singe.

p/s i hope you still have the Mustang. Its one beautiful machine.

 

[andrew tay]

PS It is not even a serious SQ system. Lack a lot of sparkles. No one will missed the class D amplifier signature. Missed the 90s with all the legendary SQ class AB amplifiers, although they did blow up or catch fire....[/QUOTE]

I take my words back. The high frequency has improved significantly last 2 days since I installed it. Probably from the crossover capacitors breaking-in. Its now clearer and more sparkly. I don't think you can easily tell that its class D amp easily anymore. THe HK amp is better than expected.

 

[sting me]

I take my words back. The high frequency has improved significantly last 2 days since I installed it. Probably from the crossover capacitors breaking-in. Its now clearer and more sparkly. I don't think you can easily tell that its class D amp easily anymore. THe HK amp is better than expected.

I think you've convinced me to try this. If I don't like it I'll rip it all out and throw in the Focal K2 stuff I've got from my old car.

 

[andrew tay]

I think you've convinced me to try this. If I don't like it I'll rip it all out and throw in the Focal K2 stuff I've got from my old car.

Ya give it a go. its a simple mod and it only took me a day. Easily reverse to factory if you don't like it. The focal k2 woofer has 77mm mounting depth. I was looking at those. Magnet may get in the way of windows machanism at the front doors. Rear doors OK. My woofers are 70mm which fits in confortably (STEG ST650C). if you install the woofers at the doors you will need to add an amplifer to adjust the volume to match the mids and tweeter which is what I did. It's a lot of work with not a lot of gain. I think the factory woofer and underseat sub will do just fine with the midrange speaker change. You get 6 - 10db boost from those factory woofers as you turn the volume up to conpensate for the lost of 6-10 db from the mids and tweeter. You lost 3db from going up from 2 to 4 ohms, and a few more db from the crossover coils and from having a mids with smaller aluminium cone instead paper cone.

 

[Dia1Up]

I used to sell car audio (Actually stopped only a few months ago). Even the cheapest set of aftermarket speakers were SIGNIFICANTLY better then generally ANY factory system. Most of the time the car maker will just pay Bose or HK to put their name on the system... usually not much else.

I dropped 300+ (even with my discount) on just a pair. Fully planning on taking them from car to car overtime