
Successful installation of new car audio speakers is a task that relies on the engineer
understanding that the performance of the finished system is squarely in his or her hands
to even more of an extent that it is us, as the driver manufacturer. For this manual I’m
going to concentrate on actual training in terms of understanding the topic, rather than
stating the obvious in a “prepare the mounting hole, drill the holes, run in a wire, screw in
the speakers” kind of text. In home audio, the customer purchases a complete speaker
system – that is – a driver in a properly designed enclosure that the manufacturer has
tested. In car audio, marine audio and “custom” audio our involvement and help can go as
far as providing you with a great RAW DRIVER and this manual and the rest is down to
installation.
The first part to learn about is the “baffle plate” – the actual mounting plane you are going
to screw the speakers to. In a car, this is normally the inner metal door panel via a plastic
adaptor. In an ideal world the baffle plate would be infinitely strong and free of any
vibration reaction to the speaker itself. A typical car door panel is of course nothing at all
like this. Installations where the speakers are mounted into wooden rings or into the floor
panel or kickwell area via custom solutions are normally at a terrific advantage to a typical
door installation from the very start. Benefits to firming up the baffle plate are enormous –
from deeper, richer bass to sweeter midrange and high end performance there will be
nothing that isn’t improved. In fact the difference between a well installed driver and a
badly installed on is absolutely, absolutely, absolutely game changing and unrecognizable
that the sound is produced by the same physical product. You can use fiberglass resin,
bitumen or butyl based sound deadening, wooden structures or even metal reinforcement
panels to help stiffen things up.
Secondly, you should pay attention to the area that forms the effective “enclosure” around
the back of the speaker. If we remember my example earlier of the home hifi speaker unit
that would generally have a neat and thick wooden enclosure with carefully positioned
Dacron wool. We potentially have a tin car door with a glass window and a tonne of wire
and rattly mechanism to play with. To say we are at a disadvantage is understating it! Our
advice is to stay out of the doors as much as you can but I have to concede that so many
times you have no choice. So if you are faced with a door install the plan for the backwave
is to work hard to sound deaden the door card itself and the metal shell of the door. Modern
products are available that can even be sprayed into the door shell to achieve this aim as
well if not better than traditional soundproofing material. Finally, take care to work out
where any water ingress will affect the installation, and loop any cables at a low point under
the speaker so droplets form on the bottom of the cables and drip down into the door drain.
If you suspect that the speaker will be subject to water from above (apart from waterproof
speakers obviously) we recommend that a simple hood be made and fastened above the
driver to protect it as constant attack from the elements will eventually damage the
speaker. Also pay attention to the mounting depth of the speaker to make sure that the
window can pass behind it as it drops, if applicable.
If your speaker system is one of our component sets with a separate crossover then again,
please pay careful attention to mounting and keep the crossover out of the door. If this
simply can’t be done due to wiring constraints then make sure the crossover box is on the
interior side of the door splash sheet AND PAY ATTENTION TO THE NOTE BELOW. Mounting
a crossover in the main cavity of the door results in failure (in the UK anyway!) within a few