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Car Speakers & Subs
Car Speakers - What's the Difference? How do they work? Which one is best?
When shopping for car speakers you'll need to decide on which speakers will work best for your specific vehicle year, make and model. There are two types of speaker systems to consider, Coaxial (full range) Speakers and Component Speakers.
Sound is created by the vibration of an object, which causes the air surrounding to vibrate. The vibrating air then causes the human eardrum to vibrate, which the brain interprets as sound. When an object vibrates it pushes against the surrounding air. The vibrations cause the air to expand and compress. This causes areas of high and low pressure as the sound moves towards your ears in form of waves. The shorter the wavelength, the higher the frequency of the sound.
Frequency is measured in Hertz (Hz). This determines the pitch of a sound. High pitched sounds have a high frequency. Low Pitched sounds have a low frequency.
Component Speakers:
This speaker type is designed to give you a perfect sound stage because it consists of separate speakers, you can mount them in the locations that best serve their purpose. These speakers are perfect for customization but far more complicated to install. You will need to get separate speakers to handle the bass (generally a subwoofer), middle (midrange speakers) and high frequencies (tweeters), and external crossovers to control the signals. The sound gets separated by the crossover and sent to the speaker that best handles that frequency. For highs the sound goes to the tweeter, the middle sound goes to the midrange, and the low sounds (bass), gets sent to the subwoofer.
Coaxial (Full Range) Speakers:
This speaker is a standard speaker that most car manufactuerers use in their factory setups. Coaxial Speakers have the full range of sound built into a signel contained unit. The coaxial speaker consists of different sized woofers with a tweeter attached either to the top or on a pole running to the middel of the speaker. They generally have a simple crossover built in that takes the input signal and splits it into separate bands of high, middle and low frequencies and directs it to the part of the speaker that best handles that sound.
Coaxial Speakers can be 2 Way, 3 Way or 4 Way; meaning the speaker itself is separated into bands. The most basic band (2 Way) has one single driver. 2 Way speakers typically consist of a woofer and a tweeter. The larger the speaker will handle the lows and middle frequencies, and tweeter for the highs. 3 Way Speakers have an additiona midrange speaker. You get the bass woofer, mid-range speaker, and tweeter. This will give your sound system an extra oompf to give the sound more depth. The 4 Way Speakers consist of all the same things a 2 way and 3 way speakers consists of but it also provides you with an additional super-tweeter. This makes it the most comprehensive model of coaxials available.
Subwoofers:
This speaker produces the lowest sound frequencies possible, ranging from 20Hz-200Hz. This bass adds deptha dn power to your music. These work best with an amplifier and an enclosure to contain and direct the air to product the sound desired. They typically range from 8"-15" to move a lot of air to product the low pitch sounds.
Midrange:
This speaker controls the middle range frequencies in your music, typically the 250Hz-2000Hz. These add the main detail of sound clarity. These typically range in size from 3.5" to 6x9" to move the right amount of air for the middle sounds.
Tweeters:
This speaker produces the highest sound frequencies, ranging from 2000Hz to 20,000Hz. Tweeters are the smallest speakers in a component setup, and are placed higher up in the car than the other drivers. They range in size from .05" to 2"
Super Tweeters:
This speaker is even smaller than a typical tweeter and used to supplement the high frequencies. A typical tweeter can sometimes distort or fail to handle ultra high frequencies in your music. A super-tweeter solves this problem by producing frequencies around and over the 20kHz range.
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