car stereo

redcube

I drive a old Transit van the noise 2.5di one and i need some music to help me drive it as the engine is defining on the motorways Now i have a great Cd Player it a sony xplod with usb and a rear in and out audio port hooked up to a 10 disc cd changer the problem is the speakers i have 8 of them 4 up high in the cab above seats and 2 of them in the base of A post and 2 in the front doors and there not lound enough there all sony speakers i can just hear them over the engine.

What i want is a nice set up for playing a mix music i.e Emmine, Shinedown. Johnny cash ect. I need it to be lound enough so i can hear it over the engine whats the best set up for this and the best place to put my speakers I don't want to spend a lot on it as I'm converting it to a camper and fixing the body work at the moment but i want a good sound system and don't tell me to go to Halfords i hate it in there i have my reasons for not likely them

Oh will a subwoofer and a amplifier be a good idea or a bad idea

And whats a coaxial speakers

Thanks for the help

wires

a subwoofer will only help bass so if you cant hear all those speakers as is a sub wont cure that.

aftermarket car speakers will usually have a mid-bass driver (thats the big speaker) and a tweeter.

in co-axial speakers these two are combined into one speaker.

component speakers have these two seperate with a little box of tricks to split the audio frequencies to the two pieces. this is mirrored for both left and right.

component has much better sound quallity.

you say you have 8 speakers in there
how have you wired them?? the amp in a car stereo is only capable of running 4 x 4ohm speakers. if you wired them in parallel you risk damaging your stereo. if you wired them in series you will not get the volume you want.

if it was me i would get me a 4 channel amp which can run 4 channels at 2ohms or even better a 5 channel amp so there is one spare for a sub.
you need an amp wiring kit as well and a phono lead if that not included

redcube

i have them wired in left front 2 left rear 2 right front 2 right rear 2

So an Amp will help improve my sound a bit what type of amp will i need as i have seen some with power in put out put and it a bit confusing you'd never think i work with cars alot would you

wires

a. you dont need 8 speakers in a van cabin, unless they are really crap speakers but you said they are all sony so they cant be that bad.

your stereos internal amp can run 4 x 4ohm speakers. if you wire them in series like this...

you will end up with 4 x 8ohm load and half the power on each channel but will not damage the stereo.
if you wire them parallel like this...

you end up with 4 x 2ohm load and are putting pressure in your stereo - risk damaging it.

if you want an amp to run just your best 4 speakers you can get pretty much any 4 channel amp and it will do the job.

if you want to run all 8 of them you need to pick your amp a little more carefully. first off, watt ratings can be misleading. your stereo says 4 x 50w which means 50watts per speaker but what it doesnt tell you is that its watts MAX. max watt figures mean nothing. when you are specing speakers or amps you need whats called watts RMS. rms is a true measure of what an amp/speaker can do. rms figures are always a lot lower than max. your stereo is actually 4 x 26w rms. good amplifiers will usually be either rated in rms or will give both figures. so if you go for a brand name amp which is 4 x 50w rms you have twice the power straight away. be careful though...if you want to run all 8 speakers on a 4 channel amp you need one which will run 4 channels at 2 ohm each.

you seem to like sony...this is just an example
http://www.sony.ie/product/icp-stream-amps/xm-gtx6040#pageType=Overview

as i mentioned before you could also get one with a 5th channel for a subwoofer. you could then add a sub whenever you have the cash but 5 channel amps are not as popular so it might be hard to find one at an affordable price.

installing and setting it up correctly is a whole other story. i would suggest before you do anything to just try your best 4 spekers (assuming they are placed in nice loctions) just run the 4 because when you run a mix of speakers you will often find that the lowest spec ones will hold back the good ones.

another thing you may not know is that they are polarity sensitive. ie. they must be wired the correct way around. you see they all have + and - markings on the speaker itself, well you need to make sure they are all wired the same or else sound quality will suffer.

redcube

Thanks for the info i'm going to go see what amps i have in the shed from cars i scraped but not sure what way they are i may just buy a new Sony one

And i never new about speakers have + and - markings that's new to me going to check my system out in the morning as the vans in bits at the moment

Again thanks

wires

yeah if even one of the speakers is the wrong way around it will cause a problem. think of it like this...the speaker cone moves in and out to make sound. if you have 2 speakers wired opposite to each other when one pushes out the other is pulling in. this happens real fast of course but it has the effect of they sorta cancel each other out.

you might have an amp lying around but you might not have the propper wiring. you need a nice heavy wire properly fused from the battery to the amp, a similar guage wire from the chassis to the gnd of the amp. you need nice speaker wire from all the speakers to the amp. a wire from the amp remote on your sony radio (any wire will do for this) to the rem on the amp. you also need signal leads from the radio to the amp. one pair for each pair of channels.

these things...
depending on the specs of your radio you may have 1, 2 or 3 pairs of plugs on your radio for these labeled front, rear and sub. if you only have one pair on the back of the radio you can just use one lead and then use a 'y' lead at the amp so it plugs into all 4 sockets at the amp.


if you manage to get an amp wired in and working get back on here and i can explain what the settings on the amp do

redcube

thanks going to have a look for an amp over the next few weeks want to pick the right one

Where would be the best place to put an amp in my van as i heard they need to be kept cool i was going to put it in the over head locker

wires

doesnt really matter where you put it. dont think your gonna have an issue with heat in the van as most amps are fitted in car boots. one thing is you want it somewhere out of the way. usually in a van they go behind driver or passenger seats if there is a bulkhead there. you also dont want it turning into a dangerous projectile in the event of a crash.

Owen

Does the van have a bulkhead? If it doesn't, get one. Then line every single part of the cabin, roof, doors, behind the dash with dynamat to kill the noise of the van and the engine.

I drove vans for years, and spent thousands on a sound system I'd transfer to each new van, and it was only at the end when I'd my last van that I realised that no matter how good the speakers were, it was like being inside a big tin of beans with someone pounding on the outside. You're trying to drown out one big noise with a bigger one. Get rid of the noise first, then you can focus on a tight sound system without needing 20 speakers and a shed load of amps to do it.

redcube

I have a 12mm plywood bulk head with dynamat stuck to the cab side but it will be going soon as I'm turning into a camper the hole cab is dynamat and the hole back insulated and dynamat but its still noise

I check the wires on the speakers and ya the wires where all over the place i rewired them and the sound as improved a bit going to ask the girlfriend for a amp for Christmas as she drives the van too

wires

you may want to put some of those speakers in the back for when its a camper, just remember to run the wiring before you cover everything up. you will also want wiring for better internal lighting and maybe a second battery on a split charge setup so you can use away with power in the back and not worry if it will start in the morning. you can get away with a normal car battery for this but it must be in an air tight box with a small breather pipe running to the outside...this is because a normal lead acid battery gives off hydrogen gas when charging, one spark and boom. if its in a sealed box it will be ok. OR if you can afford it get a dry cell battery which is fine for interior use (these are usually around €300 though)

a lot of lcd/dvd combo tvs are actually 12 volt in the back and are supplied with a laptop style switch mode power supply, if you can find one like this you can ditch the mains adapter and just run it on 12volt for some entertainment.

the previous poster is right though, your enemy is noise from engine/exhaust/road. while you are stripping it anyway sound deaden everything. might even be worth popping the dash out to get some in there too (engine is pretty much under the dash in transit, right?) does the van have any deadning material on the engine side of the bulkhead, might be easier to get it on there than getting the dash out. no getting around it though...those engines are LOUD...buddy of mine done the same as you but with a hiace, much quieter. he got a guy to put a thing on the roof which folds up when parked to give more headroom in the back. not sure of the correct name for it but you know what i mean, it has fabric sides on it when its up.

good luck with the build anyway

redcube

My van as some sound deading stuff in the engine bay and in the cab going to rip it all apart again to add more going to double layer it or put 3 layers on and going to fill every hole i find with expanding foam going to add more insulation too going to be like a cooker in there

and don't worry about height i have a lwb high roof transit and my second battery is going in the engine bay on the left bought the tray for it as mines diesel and the petrol transit is on the other side other words diesel transit battery on the right petrol on the left handy to know

going to add more speakers in the back on a second radio hooked up to the second battery i have been ebaying for the last few weeks looking for some goodies in the back so far no luck well had some but way to dear