IMPORTANT OBSERVATION: Audiofrog GB-40 in-dash

[8ronco]

BACKGROUND

I recently upgraded (my already upgraded) base audio system in my 4 door BD.

I am now running Audiofrog GB-10 Tweeters in the A-pillars, a pair of GB-40 the factory dash locations, a pair of GB-60 in the kick panels, and a pair of GB-60 in Mabett rear pods. The Audiofrogs are powered by an Audiocontrol D-6.1200: GB-10s / GB-40s on 2 channels using a GB-410 crossover, and then a pair of GB-60 on each if the remaining 2 channel sets. I also have a 12 inch JL sub powered by a JL RD 500 amp. Aside from constantly tweaking the DSP to find the perfect settings, the quality of sound coming out of the Audiofrog speakers is mind blowing.

IMPORTANT OBSERVATION

I noticed a slight vibration / flutter at certain frequencies from the GB-40 in-dash speakers. It seamed to disappear when I removed the factory speaker grills. Although the grills clear the speaker, the underside of the grills have a contoured ring to direct sound towards the center of the cabin. The lowest end of the plastic ring sits just low enough to make contact with the rubber around the speaker cone when the speakers are driven hard. My short term solution was to cut out the plastic ring, but I will be fabricating custom grills because I feel like the plastic grill may be reducing sound quality.

This may be happening with other brands of speakers I'm not sure but I thought i'd share.

Here's a picture...

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[gringoloco]

Good info. I think this is possible with the kick panels, too. Might be worth a look.

Any issues mounting you tweeters? How do they look?

 

[8ronco]

Good info. I think this is possible with the kick panels, too. Might be worth a look.

Any issues mounting you tweeters? How do they look?

I believe you are correct about the kick panel speaker grills - I did not put them back on after installing the GB-60 speakers because they have massive excursion when driven, but also with the huge amount of plastic I was sure it was degrade the sound and also reverberate. I did some further testing with the dash grill covers on and off after shaving them down and that plastic noticeably makes the sound more dull and takes away from the range and crispness of the GB-40s - putting aside the quality loss, I'm still not comfortable with driving those speakers with the factory grill covers on, so I've been running naked with those as well, but just placing the grill covers over the speakers when I park during the day to protect the speakers from the sun (sounds crazy but it is what it is for now).

The tweeters were a challenging install because I didn't want to disassemble everything required to remove the A-pillar covers - in retrospect, maybe I enjoyed the challenge but would have been smarter to disassemble everything. Directly behind the defroster vent, on the other side of the defroster air duct, there is a wire harness for the airbag - its a bit of a freaky situation, but I had to drill the mounting hole through the A-pillar cover, and throught the defroster duct. The biggest pain in that I sued the spring reinforced backing to secure the tweeters in the A-pillar and the nut that holds the back is tiny, and has to be screwed on to the back mount by putting my fingers through the defroster vent...I ended up putting glue on two of my fingers to make sure I didn't lose the nut, while also compressing the backing spring with a rig I built out of a tuning fork.

To clear the way for the tweeters back mounting spring situation, I had to cut out a fair bit of plastic and duct, and then when I had enough room for the spring and the mount, I plastic welded a piece of plastic that I contoured to reconstruct the duct so the air still directed through the defroster vent when turned on. Then I installed the mount. Looks pretty good though

The sound is orgasmic, I would say as good or better than the factory Burmester system I had in another car - Audiofrog is impressive!

Now the question is what to do about the grills in the dash and kick panels - I wonder if anyone has a solution for this. The GB-40 and GB-60 both come with circular metal grills and I've considered cutting holes in the plastic factory grills and fusing them with the Audiofrog round metal grills, but this may be ugly and also bound to fail / un-fuse from vibration. Maybe I will cut out the center of the factory grills and add some kind of cloth or fiber but I guess fabricating metal grills to match the factory ones may be the best route...

Here's a picture of the tweeter install...remember, we're fusing a design of high quality metal tweeters with a crappy plastic A-piller - but it's still not horrible looking...

 

[KirchTX]

BACKGROUND

I recently upgraded (my already upgraded) base audio system in my 4 door BD.

I am now running Audiofrog GB-10 Tweeters in the A-pillars, a pair of GB-40 the factory dash locations, a pair of GB-60 in the kick panels, and a pair of GB-60 in Mabett rear pods. The Audiofrogs are powered by an Audiocontrol D-6.1200: GB-10s / GB-40s on 2 channels using a GB-410 crossover, and then a pair of GB-60 on each if the remaining 2 channel sets. I also have a 12 inch JL sub powered by a JL RD 500 amp. Aside from constantly tweaking the DSP to find the perfect settings, the quality of sound coming out of the Audiofrog speakers is mind blowing.

IMPORTANT OBSERVATION

I noticed a slight vibration / flutter at certain frequencies from the GB-40 in-dash speakers. It seamed to disappear when I removed the factory speaker grills. Although the grills clear the speaker, the underside of the grills have a contoured ring to direct sound towards the center of the cabin. The lowest end of the plastic ring sits just low enough to make contact with the rubber around the speaker cone when the speakers are driven hard. My short term solution was to cut out the plastic ring, but I will be fabricating custom grills because I feel like the plastic grill may be reducing sound quality.

This may be happening with other brands of speakers I'm not sure but I thought i'd share.

Here's a picture...

Where did you place the amp? I'm beginning my upgrades in stages and amp placement seems to be where I'm stuck. I'm wanting to hide it away from kids' feet and washout floors.

Seemingly that only leaves the mini amps which I think would be fine for my purposes. I was eyeing Audiofrog, but I don't know if such high end speakers are wasted potential on something like a kicker key amp and I should just get something cheaper. I'm pretty new to this and I figure I'll learn as I go.

 

[BlarneyStoned]

Seemingly that only leaves the mini amps which I think would be fine for my purposes. I was eyeing Audiofrog, but I don't know if such high end speakers are wasted potential on something like a kicker key amp and I should just get something cheaper.

I just met with Jacob from Audiofrog yesterday to hear the demo Volvo. That thing sounded *really* nice.

I asked him about if you can't drive the speakers with the kind of power they were throwing at it (300 watts to each of the mids & tweets alone) was it worth it, and he said if you're not using a lot of power just stick to the G or GS series. While you can run the GBs with less power, it's really a bad investment because part of the reason the GBs are as expensive as they are is to be able to take so much power. He did caveat that by saying you could probably be happy with pushing only 50-75 watts to the 4" and smaller, but anything less than 150 for the 6" was just leaving too much performance on the table.

He also said that the GS has more or less the same tonality as the GB just without the power handling capability.

I've got a set of STEG ML653s that I ordered from Germany on hand I haven't listened too yet, I'm gonna give them a test this weekend and if they don't sound substantially as good as the Audiofrogs did I'll sell them and get the Audiofrog GS components instead.

 

[8ronco]

Where did you place the amp? I'm beginning my upgrades in stages and amp placement seems to be where I'm stuck. I'm wanting to hide it away from kids' feet and washout floors.

Seemingly that only leaves the mini amps which I think would be fine for my purposes. I was eyeing Audiofrog, but I don't know if such high end speakers are wasted potential on something like a kicker key amp and I should just get something cheaper. I'm pretty new to this and I figure I'll learn as I go.

I have both amps and the massive Audiofrog GB-410 crossovers mounted to a simple rack on the floor in the cargo area that I built with hinges so it lifts with the floorboard to expose the tire tools and little storage compartment - I have the Ford cargo enclosure so at least there is a degree of security. I have also built a custom shelf that sits on top of the rack do there is a small bit of storage space, but not really much because my JL 12 box takes up the other / rear half of the cargo space.

The mini amps and kicker speakers seem to make people happy and they are plug and play so that is a good thing and likely sufficient for a substantial upgrade to the stock system - even that setup in night and day better than stock. The kicker key even has a built in DSP so it can be tuned to sound pretty good.

Now, if you want a mind-blowing digital sound extravaganza that will blow you away with musical bliss - its going to cost some money, and a bit more time for the install. Keep in mind, that the stock speaker gauge is somewhat puny, so while it is sufficient for low-powered input into an amp or Line Out Converter that feeds your amp, if you're going to be running high-end / high-output speakers like Audiofrog it would be a good idea to run some beefier speaker wire from your amp outs to each speaker location, which makes it less PnP and more PITA - but at the end of the day, the extra time and effort is worth it if you're like me and the music is one of the best parts of the driving experience. Admittedly, I find myself sitting in my car for sometimes more than an hour after arriving at my destination just because I love the immersive music experience.

 

[8ronco]

I just met with Jacob from Audiofrog yesterday to hear the demo Volvo. That thing sounded *really* nice.

I asked him about if you can't drive the speakers with the kind of power they were throwing at it (300 watts to each of the mids & tweets alone) was it worth it, and he said if you're not using a lot of power just stick to the G or GS series. While you can run the GBs with less power, it's really a bad investment because part of the reason the GBs are as expensive as they are is to be able to take so much power. He did caveat that by saying you could probably be happy with pushing only 50-75 watts to the 4" and smaller, but anything less than 150 for the 6" was just leaving too much performance on the table.

He also said that the GS has more or less the same tonality as the GB just without the power handling capability.

I've got a set of STEG ML653s that I ordered from Germany on hand I haven't listened too yet, I'm gonna give them a test this weekend and if they don't sound substantially as good as the Audiofrogs did I'll sell them and get the Audiofrog GS components instead.

That Volvo sounds fricken sweet for sure! I'm glad you posted a reply because it clarified something for me.

Really interesting about the investment / power situation - and very correct. My GB-40 and GB-10 sharing 4 channels total with the GB410 crossovers sound pretty close to their potential. the GB-60s running on 2 channels per pair at 250 watts RMS sound pretty good, but do not thump as hard as the GB40 speakers that are running on a little bit more than half of the power out of the crossovers. I would have never believed it and it has been on my mind for a while - your post solidified my feelings about this.

With all of that said, my main reason for going with the GB series is because I wanted to have the piece of mind of knowing that I would likely never get distortion or blow my speakers, while still getting great tonality at a substantial volume - very necessary with the top down and 37 inch tires on the highway.

Back to your post once again, I think I'm going to have to get an additional high powered amp for the GB60 speakers because they do deserve to shine and pound as intended. Thankfully I ran 0 gauge from the battery to the cargo area, so another fuse block and amp is all I need to optimize my system to it's potential.

 

[BlarneyStoned]

With all of that said, my main reason for going with the GB series is because I wanted to have the piece of mind of knowing that I would likely never get distortion or blow my speakers, while still getting great tonality at a substantial volume

He said he's never met anyone who was disappointed in the GS speakers until they hear the GBs properly powered. Having heard them now first hand I can see why and if I could throw the power at them they needed I wouldn't hesitate to build around them (my wallet would though, haha), I just can't afford the space loss to power them and a sub properly. I've got a mObridge amp on the way so I can push ~150 watts RMS to the kick speakers.

Now that I won't need the trunk space regularly I may put a serious audio system into my Mustang just so I can finally go with fewer compromises .

 

[Hockey13]

I have both amps and the massive Audiofrog GB-410 crossovers mounted to a simple rack on the floor in the cargo area that I built with hinges so it lifts with the floorboard to expose the tire tools and little storage compartment - I have the Ford cargo enclosure so at least there is a degree of security. I have also built a custom shelf that sits on top of the rack do there is a small bit of storage space, but not really much because my JL 12 box takes up the other / rear half of the cargo space.

The mini amps and kicker speakers seem to make people happy and they are plug and play so that is a good thing and likely sufficient for a substantial upgrade to the stock system - even that setup in night and day better than stock. The kicker key even has a built in DSP so it can be tuned to sound pretty good.

Now, if you want a mind-blowing digital sound extravaganza that will blow you away with musical bliss - its going to cost some money, and a bit more time for the install. Keep in mind, that the stock speaker gauge is somewhat puny, so while it is sufficient for low-powered input into an amp or Line Out Converter that feeds your amp, if you're going to be running high-end / high-output speakers like Audiofrog it would be a good idea to run some beefier speaker wire from your amp outs to each speaker location, which makes it less PnP and more PITA - but at the end of the day, the extra time and effort is worth it if you're like me and the music is one of the best parts of the driving experience. Admittedly, I find myself sitting in my car for sometimes more than an hour after arriving at my destination just because I love the immersive music experience.

Would you mind sharing photos of your amp mounting setup? I have a D-6.1200 i'll be installing and also have a security drawer. I'm curious to see how you fit it under the drawer/etc.

 

[8ronco]

Would you mind sharing photos of your amp mounting setup? I have a D-6.1200 i'll be installing and also have a security drawer. I'm curious to see how you fit it under the drawer/etc.

Sure - have her up on the lift now doing some maintenance stuff (tightening bolts and doing fluids) but as soon as I bring her back down I'll snap some pics - happy to share.

 

[8ronco]

He said he's never met anyone who was disappointed in the GS speakers until they hear the GBs properly powered. Having heard them now first hand I can see why and if I could throw the power at them they needed I wouldn't hesitate to build around them (my wallet would though, haha), I just can't afford the space loss to power them and a sub properly. I've got a mObridge amp on the way so I can push ~150 watts RMS to the kick speakers.

Now that I won't need the trunk space regularly I may put a serious audio system into my Mustang just so I can finally go with fewer compromises .

Makes sense - I'm definitely feeling enough FOMO right now to buy another amp

With audio stuff, it can be an expensive quest that never ends cheaply because our minds and ears are asking for more until we are absolutely sure that it just couldn't possibly sound any better

 

[BlarneyStoned]

With audio stuff, it can be an expensive quest that never ends cheaply

Statements I wish weren't true....

 

[Tye]

He said he's never met anyone who was disappointed in the GS speakers until they hear the GBs properly powered. Having heard them now first hand I can see why and if I could throw the power at them they needed I wouldn't hesitate to build around them (my wallet would though, haha), I just can't afford the space loss to power them and a sub properly. I've got a mObridge amp on the way so I can push ~150 watts RMS to the kick speakers.

Now that I won't need the trunk space regularly I may put a serious audio system into my Mustang just so I can finally go with fewer compromises .

Ive been looking at the mobridge amp, do you think it has enough power to push the GB speakers? Was thinking of running an active 3 way setup up front with the GB

 

[KirchTX]

I just met with Jacob from Audiofrog yesterday to hear the demo Volvo. That thing sounded *really* nice.

I asked him about if you can't drive the speakers with the kind of power they were throwing at it (300 watts to each of the mids & tweets alone) was it worth it, and he said if you're not using a lot of power just stick to the G or GS series. While you can run the GBs with less power, it's really a bad investment because part of the reason the GBs are as expensive as they are is to be able to take so much power. He did caveat that by saying you could probably be happy with pushing only 50-75 watts to the 4" and smaller, but anything less than 150 for the 6" was just leaving too much performance on the table.

He also said that the GS has more or less the same tonality as the GB just without the power handling capability.

I've got a set of STEG ML653s that I ordered from Germany on hand I haven't listened too yet, I'm gonna give them a test this weekend and if they don't sound substantially as good as the Audiofrogs did I'll sell them and get the Audiofrog GS components instead.

I have both amps and the massive Audiofrog GB-410 crossovers mounted to a simple rack on the floor in the cargo area that I built with hinges so it lifts with the floorboard to expose the tire tools and little storage compartment - I have the Ford cargo enclosure so at least there is a degree of security. I have also built a custom shelf that sits on top of the rack do there is a small bit of storage space, but not really much because my JL 12 box takes up the other / rear half of the cargo space.

The mini amps and kicker speakers seem to make people happy and they are plug and play so that is a good thing and likely sufficient for a substantial upgrade to the stock system - even that setup in night and day better than stock. The kicker key even has a built in DSP so it can be tuned to sound pretty good.

Now, if you want a mind-blowing digital sound extravaganza that will blow you away with musical bliss - its going to cost some money, and a bit more time for the install. Keep in mind, that the stock speaker gauge is somewhat puny, so while it is sufficient for low-powered input into an amp or Line Out Converter that feeds your amp, if you're going to be running high-end / high-output speakers like Audiofrog it would be a good idea to run some beefier speaker wire from your amp outs to each speaker location, which makes it less PnP and more PITA - but at the end of the day, the extra time and effort is worth it if you're like me and the music is one of the best parts of the driving experience. Admittedly, I find myself sitting in my car for sometimes more than an hour after arriving at my destination just because I love the immersive music experience.

Appreciate both of your replies. I should have specified yeah I'm in the market for the GS or similar. The GB's I'm sure are amazing but I've got to draw the line somewhere. Frankly it probably should be drawn well before the GS series but hey I'm liking the idea of a project. I've never owned a vehicle worth tinkering with and plan to keep the Bronco forever.

Crutchfield was recommending the GS's with Alpine's new Optim8 for what I'm wanting to do. It's brand new and doesn't have any reveiws/feedback yet, but seems like it checks all my boxes for a relatively straightforward install. I've seen one professional install where they placed an amp under the rear seats and that could be an option where it won't get kicked. It seemed well out of the way.

For the moment I'm going to install the 6.75 kicker sub that seems to be plug and play and just add components over time. I think. I'm not ready to commit to the larger subs and I frequently need the space in the back. Is it crazy to have a small sub with a high-ish end speaker setup? I figure I'll try it and if it just doesn't sound right I can always upgrade but for very little money I can get started.

 

[BlarneyStoned]

Ive been looking at the mobridge amp, do you think it has enough power to push the GB speakers? Was thinking of running an active 3 way setup up front with the GB

My impression is that it will work and sound decent, but it won't get as loud as they are capable of.

I'm presuming that the numbers published by by mObridge are relatively accurate RMS numbers, the recommended fuse size was 100 amps, so using the general rule of x10 (for class D, x6 for class AB) the fuse that means 1000 watts RMS output should be expected out of the amp so their output claims seems to be inline with that.

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