tt061880

Here is the situation.

I put the w7 in there last night, it sounds loud but seem like something is missing. This is what I have in mind to gather the rest of the missing signal. I'm planning to tap into the wires from all the midrange speakers and woofer speakers and sum them all up into two RCA cable. I am not sure which speakers to tap into.

here are my questions

1. Please look at the link and tell me which speakers I need to tap the wires, there are a total of 14 speakers. I know I definately don't need to tap onto the tweeter.

2. If I tap the wires onto the speaker wires, will the speakers lose a significant amount of audio or anything?

3. On the RCA cable, there is an outter ring and there's also a male pin in the center. Which one is negative and which one is positive.

I'm a newbie to car audio and I tried to do a lot of researchs before I post this so please forgive my ignorant if any of the above questions is stupid . Thank you in advance for your helps.

TT

al503

Very nice set up.

For the SPL, try adjusting it with the gain/input sensitivity.

For the 'missing' frequencies, before you tap into anything else, make sure that you've set low pass x-over correctly. You might not have it high enough. I would experiment with something around 80 hz and lower. If you want it to provide more mid-bass, increase it by 10 hz and so on until you get it to your liking.

You can also boost a range of frequencies (narrow or wide) with the 500/1. Most people boost the lower range 30-50 hz but there's no reason you couldn't try to boost it closer to the midrange.

The only negative here is that you might get some overlap of frequencies between the sub and the mid-bass speakers.

tt061880

thanks for the reply, I am actually aiming for SQ. I have the gain set to MINIMUM and it's still loud. I will mess with it later today, thanks for the help.

al503

If the gains are set all the way down, you could adjust the bass setting in the head unit to take it down even further.

IS_NIICE

iTrader: (1)

i dont know if that will bring the sub to full potential. your best bet is calling up an audio shop and asking them what to do. why not get a monoblock and bypass the ML amp?

OC 335d

You need to get a separate amp. The JL W7s require a lot more power than what you have. You don't want to underpower a sub. It's possible when you underpower your sub, you keep turning it up louder and louder, but can't hear the "distortion". You could damage or tear a voice coil this way.

Different frequencies take different power levels to achieve a uniform balanced decibel lever out to the speaker. So when the power is too low, the low and mid frequencies are not getting the correct excursion of the speaker cone to accurately produce those frequencies. The minimum RMS value is the lowest power that is recommended to produce a balanced flat frequency response from the speaker.

Basically, it's better to overpower than underpower. If you are going to do something, do it right, preferably, the first time.

OC 335d

^^ All that being said, I don't know how much power how many channels the ML puts out. But based on car manufacturers and the amount of speakers in your IS, I'd bet it's not enough to power your JLW7 correctly.

It is recommended to run a minimum of 500 watts RMS with the W7 IIRC.

IS_NIICE

iTrader: (1)

that's what i was trying to say. i tried to do the same with the factory amp in my car and was disappointed with it. ended up getting a separate amp and im very happy.

tt061880

sorry for all the confusion folks. I meant to say I put in a 10W7 and 500/1 in there. I kinda fill up the missing hz last night. I have the sub wire going into the right and the midbass speaker at the front door going into the left. By doing it it fill up a lot of missing sound that I didn't hear when I only get the signal from the sub alone. I have yet tune the sub and the amp, I think it will definately sounds better once I tuned it. Right now i'm looking for an output converter that has 4 channel input and sum it into 2 channel output. I will then input the signals from the two front midbass speaker, one rear door speaker, and signal from the sub. I looked at the ML diagram and I found that the rear speakers from the rear door actually have one main wires and their own cross over. That means that the wires that go into the rear door are actually full range. Do you guys know any company out there make that output converter?

Does anyone knows which one is positive on the RCA cable? The outter circle or the inner pin? As of right now I have the inner pin as positive but I don't know if it's right, I don't want to mess up the input of the 500/1.

Technique

you are on the right track... I have almost the exact same setup as you... I have a 10W6V2 and a 250/1...

Here are a few facts that might help you out:

1) If you tap into the stock subwoofer speaker, it's already crossed over on the low and high... 30hz-80hz is all you will see from there... So anything below 30hz is filtered out and anything above 80hz is filtered out... So, what you feel is "missing" is probably the 80-120hz range...

2) If you tap the mid-bass speakers like you have, those are the only speakers in the ML system that are full range (no crossover)... That's the ideal IMHO...

3) If you have "SURROUND ON" in the ML system, the bass is boosted by like +12db or something insane like that... So keep that in mind!


Good luck and let me know what you end up doing... I ended up turning off all the crossover functions of my JL amp and left the subwoofer connected to the stock subwoofer outputs so my 10W6V2 is crossed from 30hz to 80hz... Ideally I'd rather have a full range signal going to it, and the do the crossing over myself at the amp, but whatever... It sounds 95% the way I want it...

passnu2

iTrader: (33)

since its a mono amp i dont believe it matters what way you connect the rca . Can some one confirm this please?

i would agree that if you can find a signal that is full range and run that to the amp and control your crossover manually sounds like you will get what you are looking for. this should also eliminate needing any other wires.

tt061880

okie, I found an output converter at walmart. It is made by Scosche and it has four high input and 4 RCA out put. Here is my plan for it.

For four high level input to the Scosche

Left Front : wires from the ML sub
Left Rear : none, left alone

Right Front: wires from the midbass woofer in the front door
Right Rear: wires from the rear right door( I looked at the diagram for the ML sub, the wires that go into the rear door might be full range, the rear door has their own cross over)

RCA output from the Scosche

Left Front goes into the LEft channel of the 500/1

I will sum both of the Right Front & Rear together with a Y RCA cable, I don't know if I will have any problem summing it up that way or not. I have to go to an installer and ask to make sure. Do you guys think I will have any problems?

tt061880

okie I just got back from an audio shop. One of the guy came out and listen to the system and he doesn't think I'm missing any frequencies but I think the high level input is too high for the amp to handle. That explains why it is so loud even I have the JL amp's input senstive to MINIMUM. I'm going to get a 2channel input converter and get signal from just the sub and the front midbass woofer.

Technique: that might be your better solution, that way you can turn the surround sound on and you won't be missing any frequencies.

Well, that would be my final solution for this, thank you all for all your help

Technique

Ya, the input is pretty high, it's just over the level of the spec that the JL amp can handle...

AZ IS350

If you're sure the rear mid-bass is full-range, why bother summing all those different signals together. Just tap the full-range signal only and set your crossover points on the 500/1. Besides, I thought I read somewhere on here that the factory amp adds individual delays to the different speakers for better imaging.