Alpine rear headliner speaker grill & crossover questions

[skates15]

Hello, I have a pair of Kenwood Excel KFC-X3C 3.5" speakers which are drop in on the front dash and rear headliner on my 9 speaker alpine system, 23 ram 1500 12" computer.

A couple questions I'm hoping I can get help with.

First, the Kenwood's come with inline crossovers. Should I use these? I installed them in the front dash without the crossovers and they sound good. I thought the Alpine already did the crossover?

Second question is how to remove the rear headliner speaker grill? Is there a specific corner to try and work lose? I read that the grills are hard to remove but can't find anything on YouTube to help.

Much appreciated for any tips.

 

[canadiankodiak700]

Technically all the Kenwood crossover is really would be a small capacitor. That is just keeping the extremely high frequencies going to the speaker and leaving the Lows out to protect the speaker. Basically the same thing The Alpine system is doing. You can either leave it installed or don't install it at all. Not really going to make a difference as the Alpine system already cuts off the signal to the speaker. Far before you'll ever hit the frequency that inline one will stop. The premium systems and these trucks are absolutely horrible when it comes to crossover points and the actual frequencies that they allow. Base roll off is just horrendous when you actually look at the signal output on the screen. As you crank the volume, the base drops instead of getting louder in order to protect their cheap big name labeled speakers that are not manufactured by that actual company.

 

[skates15]

Technically all the Kenwood crossover is really would be a small capacitor. That is just keeping the extremely high frequencies going to the speaker and leaving the Lows out to protect the speaker. Basically the same thing The Alpine system is doing. You can either leave it installed or don't install it at all. Not really going to make a difference as the Alpine system already cuts off the signal to the speaker. Far before you'll ever hit the frequency that inline one will stop. The premium systems and these trucks are absolutely horrible when it comes to crossover points and the actual frequencies that they allow. Base roll off is just horrendous when you actually look at the signal output on the screen. As you crank the volume, the base drops instead of getting louder in order to protect their cheap big name labeled speakers that are not manufactured by that actual company.

awesome, thanks for the details. I'm leaving them off. You wouldn't happen to know if the center dash is a 2 way or tweeter?

 

[canadiankodiak700]

I've never actually looked at one myself since I only had the six speakers system. As I don't believe it's worth getting the so-called premium system. They couldn't pay me to take that system. But everything I've read is that center speaker is just the exact same as the other 2-speakers. Therefore, it would be a two-way. If you would really like to improve the sound in your truck, you would be better off to bypass the entire system, save yourself from replacing all the needless speakers in the headliners and the center of the dash and the rear doors and just put a quality set of speakers in the front door and the dash speakers you already have, then buy amp them. Only mids to the door and highs to your nice little Kenwood dash speakers. And then pop in a nice little aftermarket subwoofer and that system will blow any oem premium system out of the water.

 

[skates15]

I've never actually looked at one myself since I only had the six speakers system. As I don't believe it's worth getting the so-called premium system. They couldn't pay me to take that system. But everything I've read is that center speaker is just the exact same as the other 2-speakers. Therefore, it would be a two-way. If you would really like to improve the sound in your truck, you would be better off to bypass the entire system, save yourself from replacing all the needless speakers in the headliners and the center of the dash and the rear doors and just put a quality set of speakers in the front door and the dash speakers you already have, then buy amp them. Only mids to the door and highs to your nice little Kenwood dash speakers. And then pop in a nice little aftermarket subwoofer and that system will blow any oem premium system out of the water.

I like rear-fill and have yet to replace the rear door speakers, but so far have done the dash and headliner speakers. I'm thinking that I'll never get the rear fill that I want, so you may be right about front stage only. I'm holding off on ditching the rear-fill until I get an Amp/DSP.

Many people have said replacing the dash speakers makes a big difference, and many people say that you won't hear a big difference in new speakers until you upgrade the AMP and add a DSP (properly tuned). I'm leaning towards the camp that I won't be satisfied until I upgrade the amp/dsp.

down the rabbit hole I go...

 

[canadiankodiak700]

You'll definitely notice a difference replacing just those front three and a half inch. As for replacing the doors or any of the useless other alpine system speakers, you won't notice that big of a difference without a DSP. That center channel on the dash isn't tuned properly as it is, they're merely combining the left and right channels when you see it on a meter. So all you're doing is making your front sound stage muddy. As for rear fill, I agree with you on that you need a little bit of rear fill but that's where the factory speakers are fine for that. You shouldn't really be hearing much coming from behind you and part of the reason that it doesn't sound right is because you have speakers up high in the headliner behind you. That's throwing the whole sound stage way off. Most of my life. I believed in the four speaker and a sub theory. But I can tell you once I found out about doing the front sound stage with very minimal rear fill and a quality subwoofer not a loud beat your brains out boomie sounding piece of garbage. It changed the whole audio experience. I used to have a car audio install business as a side business with a buddy of mine back in the '90s and 2000s. I really wish I knew then what I no now about car audio. We really could have blown some of our customers away with pretty simple installs. Lol

 

[platoon2063]

I used to have a car audio install business as a side business with a buddy of mine back in the '90s and 2000s. I really wish I knew then what I no now about car audio. We really could have blown some of our customers away with pretty simple installs. Lol

No doubt. Loved the late 80' through the 90's car audio. Boston, MB Quart, Alpine, Pioneer.......it was great! Nowadays, with the intro to sophisticated DSP's........you can do awesome things with sound in an automobile. I've only recently jumped back into the car audio world.