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Sound Bar Woes

Joshooha

NAXJA Member
NAXJA Member
Location
Charlotte NC
'92 XJ Laredo

So I went to the junkyard and picked up a factory sound bar! I had two 6.5'' subwoofers laying around so I wanted to install them in which I did. What I had to do was just fiber glass the backside closed on the sound bar completely and they sound pretty good now.

The problem I am having is now, is a very unbalanced stereo system. It is loud as hell in the back, because now I'm running the factory rear hatch speakers, the sound bar and a 10'' sub. The front has to a-pillar tweeters, the factory "tweeters" and the front door speakers. I tried balancing it w/ the fader and the way I have it run through the amp it won't adjust any of my subs so they are always wide open. So I was wondering what I should do to balance it out..I had a thought of removing the factory "tweeters" and putting some mid's in there place to bring the noise level back up in the front, but in doing so I think I will need to add 2 more tweeters to get the high's back where they need to be.

Also the noise level from the sound bar itself really drowns out all of my speakers completly, now is that just because it's running through the amp and it is being supplied that much more power than the factory speakers, or am I crazy?

My goal is to have a nice balanced stereo system, nothing crazy, just a good stereo system, I'm not trying to win any sound competitions here.

Any suggestions on what you did to have a good balance on your stereo? I just want some ideas so I can get some sort of direction I should go. I was considering scratching the sound bar and just putting the 6.5's in the hatch replacing the stock speakers, but the 6.5's need to be fully enclosed to sound decent. I also have the doorless conversion on mine, so if your suggestion is to put some speakers in the rear doors or anything, I don't really want to go that route, it already sounds horrible enough w/ no doors haha.

any feedback at all would be great, even if its you saying I am a complete moron would help.
 
you should be able to turn the levels on your amp down to get a more balanced sound, but i would look into running another amp to the rest of your speakers as well, that would help quite a bit.
 
I'd also consider maybe ditching some speakers or rearranging them. With a 10", 2 6.5"s and the hatch speakers, you got a lot of output from a very localized area. Maybe try to spread them out some?
 
thanks so far for the ideas guys. Keep them coming. I turned down the level on the amp this morning and it helped considerably. Tonight I think I may run all my speakers through the amp to clarify the sound a bit, plus I def. need to change the ground wire...its and 8 gauge..I'm going to 4. The amp I'm running is a 720 watt kenwood that is a birdgeable 4 channel, so it should work well. I would move the speakers around a bit, its just tough in the xj's without making and moving a lot of stuff....

as for working well off road...I've come to the point where I need to just put a lot of money in the driveline that I don't have haha. Right now this is just stuff I have had laying around the garage for a while that I'm getting around to installing. Once this is all situated hopefully I will have some money saved up to go back to the offroad capabilities...I'm working on just trying to get more flex, lockers, and gears...hopefully a stroked 4 litre by this time next year.
 
I have the same problem as I'm running kicker KS series speakers in the stock hatch and door locations plus a sound bar, however people in the back often can't hear a word being said up front... I think it's just the nature of the beast with so many speakers in the back though.

It is nice to have all the speakers for cranking it up when driving alone though.

~Scott
 
thanks so far for the ideas guys. Keep them coming. I turned down the level on the amp this morning and it helped considerably. Tonight I think I may run all my speakers through the amp to clarify the sound a bit, plus I def. need to change the ground wire...its and 8 gauge..I'm going to 4. The amp I'm running is a 720 watt kenwood that is a birdgeable 4 channel, so it should work well. I would move the speakers around a bit, its just tough in the xj's without making and moving a lot of stuff....

When you say running all your speakers through the amp do you mean all the rear speakers? or rear + front? how are you planning on running that?

If I were you I would pick up a 2nd amp and some not-so-stock speakers. Non-stock speakers will sound significantly better amplified compared to stock.

Also, are you running stock head unit or aftermarket?

Either way, did the 92 Laredo have a remote amp somewhere? If it did, you should remove it. If you run an aftermarket amplifier you should remove all stock amps since putting the signal through two amplifiers makes it sound like poop. I.e. if you are running an aftermarket setup you should go deck -> [aftermarket] amp -> speakers. Granted you can power speakers off stock amp and subs and/or tweeters off an aftermarket, but just be sure no one speaker has the signal going through 2 amps. I told my friend that and he didn't believe me, until he brought his Jeep to have the stereo tuned and they laughed at his install job and removed the stock amp.. sounded 1,000 times better.

You should really be sure to amplify all your speakers together or you will sound out of balance like that. Use the 4 channel for the rear hatch + soundbar, use a 1 channel for sub, and a 4 channel for front + tweeters. That would be ideal.. or just get a 1 channel for sub and use the 4 channel for the 4 speakers (2 front 2 rear). just my $0.02
 
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I like the seperate amp idea, because I can remotely mount the big one on the back of the rear seat, and then take a small amp and mount it under the rear seat where the factory one would have been...We will see. But for now I think I'm going to run my entire system off of this one amp and see what we have. I'm running a new alpine head unit CDA-9884. I think the speakers have been replaced at one point because they clearly have been remounted (there are washers and newer screws holding the rear ones). The speakers sound very good, just unbalanced, and you can tell the factory ones are un-amplified
 
How do you plan to run all of your speakers off of a 4 channel? If you are planning on running multiple speakers from each amp output please note that that will change the impedance that the amplifier is seeing, which could end up doing more harm than good... That all depends what the speakers and amp are rated at.
 
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