Whats up guys. I recently got the Focal 165kp2's and am not to happy. First, the highs are wayyyyy to loud and taking up to much of my amps power (Rockford Fosgate 300) and is missing to much midbass. Also, recently, their has been vibration in the panels ( piece of crap plastic!) and it sound if the speaker might be rattling the window. This is annoying the fck out of me. The crossover is set at the lowest and still these things sounds like ****! Help!

 

Start dynamatting your door/speaker area to kill vibrations (trust me it takes a ton). I personally used about 2 sheets of extreme per door.

Take your speaker covers and drill out all the closed holes. This help me a ton because my sound waves could now escape the door panels instead of just vibrate them.

As far as your highs go, that's how Focals have always been. Try putting your tweets in the kick panels aimed straight back to get better balance and staging.

As far as the speakers using too much power, it's probably more like your amp can't give them enough power. 300W should be enough but since RF likes to overrate their amps the speakers are probably only getting 100 if they are lucky.

 

Thanks for the insight man. I am really dissappointed thus far with the focals performance. I did use dynamat extreme on the whole car and will look into dynamatting it more. The vibration is coming from the speaker area and lately i have been getting a window rattling. I will look into the speaker covers but man, seriously, no joke, my ears are hurting sitting here at my desk because of those damn things. I gotta get em fixed.

I have heard some people unhook the tweeters completely. Do you think this would work? Also i know the RF amp is probably running around 75 watts X 2 but too much of the power is being distributed towards the tweeter and not the midbass and it kills! Thanks for the insight!

QUOTE]Originally posted by LS350Z
Start dynamatting your door/speaker area to kill vibrations (trust me it takes a ton). I personally used about 2 sheets of extreme per door.

Take your speaker covers and drill out all the closed holes. This help me a ton because my sound waves could now escape the door panels instead of just vibrate them.

As far as your highs go, that's how Focals have always been. Try putting your tweets in the kick panels aimed straight back to get better balance and staging.

As far as the speakers using too much power, it's probably more like your amp can't give them enough power. 300W should be enough but since RF likes to overrate their amps the speakers are probably only getting 100 if they are lucky. [/QUOTE]

 

Do you have your tweeters in the stock location or mounted with the woofers? If they are in the stock location (door a-pillar corner) - they will always be too loud (especially with focals). Trust me, if you've got the tweets there you need to move them to your kick panels . I'll give you a great way to test if you let me know where they are.

 

Awsome, yeah they are in the stock location and I have thought about putting them in the kick panel. That is near the stock speaker location right?

 

Also how do you have your crossover set.

 

It won't really help you how I have my crossovers because I run Boston speakers in my Z. I can tell you though that with my Boston 5T neo tweeters in stock location they were way to loud as well which is why I moved them to my kicks. I now run an extra set of 5T neo tweets set to ambient (5k+ frequencies only) at -8db attenuation in the stock location but that's only to raise the sound stage some. 98% of the time you can't tell they are even there except from it pulling the stage upwards. The good thing though is if you put your tweets in a good location the stage will still be high enough and only **** people like me will notice everything is on the ground.

The absolute best way to 'find a location' to mount your tweeters is to run some extra speaker wire and just start moving the tweets around. I used double sided tape and just kept moving them around until I found a stage that was correct.

If you look at your kicks (located in front of the doors about woofer level) mine are mounted facing straight backwards and slightly upwards (there's a natural bend in the kicks there). This gives a nice wide stage that is sounds natural in tweet level.

The test of this is free, just takes time (I played with it for a week or so before finally cutting the hole in my kicks).

 

How about the components in the door panel? Should I also move those over to my kicks for better sound. or do the panels do a good job of acting like a box. Maybe you are right and maybe it is the front plastic holes. Did you move your components as well?

 

I left the woofers in the stock location. Moving them to the kickplates with them aligned properly it would sound amazing but I didn't want to scrafice the room in my Z which I race often.

Definitely drill out the remaining holes (I've got a drill press in my garage which made the long boring process of drilling go way faster), make sure you've got sufficent damping on the doors (I've got 2 sheets of dynamat extreme per door and basically one whole sheet right next to the woofer (2 layers on the outer door skin in about an 8"x8" area, one everywhere around the woofer). Play with your tweeter locations until you get a stage and balance you want. Facing straight back will give you a really wide stage and the more upward you face it the higher. If you still find the stage too low or too far back, look into some ambient tweeters that a lot of companies offer. Put these in your stock tweeter location and attenuate as low as you can so you don't hear them when they are on but know when they are off.

 

Sorry if I am questioning the obvious. All I need to do is remove the speaker cover and drill out the holes that are not currently open or should I drill all the holes to a larger diameter?

Also on another post their was a picture that looked like someone took a sander and removed some additional plastic from the back of the cover.

Is this also desirable?

 

Where are you guys putting these tweeters in the kick panels? PICS?

 

jbw - I only drilled out the holes that wern't drilled already (which is a ton). I thought about sanding the backside down but decided to hold off until I thought it was limiting me. I promise results from drilling out the extra holes, sanding the backside down will give some results but I'd guess not as much as the hole drilling would. Obviously anything you can do to minimize objects between you and the woofer is desirable.

JasZ - I described quite acurately where my tweets are (in the kicks, facing straight back, angled slightly up on the natural curve of the kick). I don't have a picture but I'll try and grab one if I remember to grab my digi cam this weekend. If someone has a picture of a kickpanel I'll photoedit an arrow to where mine are.