ICE Basics....

I used to meddle with ICE alittle in the past... but stopped for quite some time liow.
Anyway, hope to share some info here and in the hope to "recall" the details back.

ICE = In Car Entertainment.

Speakers are like cars... they need to be run in.

Do not... I repeat, do not blast your sound system once you get you car with 2 fast 2 furious sound track on the first day.



Rule of thumb...

Play @ a level where you can speak normally for about 12 to 24 hrs before increasing the volume.

This allows the speakers to "run" in.

Will share more later.

Why reinvent the wheel?

Here's some good reads on ICE.

http://forum.astraownersnetwork.co.uk/showthread.php?t=9030

ICE Basics - Speakers, Power Ratings, Crossovers & Filters

Speakers

Speakers come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The reason for this being that each type speaker is role specific for what it is good at e.g. small tweeters for high frequencies and larger subs for big bass.
Here are some definitions of speaker types:

The three basic categories of speaker are tweeters, woofers and subwoofers. These three types of speaker are used either on their own
or are combined together to make another variant of speaker suited to a different role. These variants will be covered later.

Tweeters are very small speakers that are best used for reproducing higher frequencies.

Woofers are mid sized speakers best suited for low to mid range frequencies.

Sub woofers are larger speakers used to produce your lower bass notes.

Co-axial speakers

The most common form of speaker found in a cars system, they usually consist of a larger cone at the back to handle lower frequencies and a smaller cone to the front to handle higher frequencies. When the audio signal comes into the speaker it will pass through a “crossover”. A crossover is a device that will split your audio signal passing only high frequencies to the tweeter and low frequencies to the woofer.

2-Way Speakers - A 2-way speaker consists of a of a woofer (to reproduce low frequencies) with a tweeter mounted in front (to reproduce high frequencies).

3 Way Speakers - 3-way speakers look the same as 2 way speakers but they have an extra mid sized driver between the woofer and the tweeter to handle the midranges. They are also known as tri-axial speakers.

4 Way Speakers - 4-way speakers look the same as 3 way speakers but again, they add another driver as "super-tweeter" for extended high frequency reproduction.

The reason for adding extra drivers is improved sound quality. The less drivers you have the wider the range of frequencies each one has to handle and so you get more distortion. If the frequency ranges are split between different sized drivers specifically designed to handle a smaller range of frequencies then each driver has less work to do and can produce a clearer sound.

Component speakers

Component speakers work in the same way as co-axial speakers but each driver is mounted separately around the cabin for optimum sound and minimum distortion. The crossover is also mounted separately and can sometimes have changeable cut off frequencies to suit the speakers and set up where as co-axial crossovers are fixed.

6x9’s

6x9 refers to the cones physical diameters of 6 inches by 9 inches, so it is oval rather than round. 6x9’s are made in the same way as co-axial and tri-axial speakers. The larger cone can help create extra bass/volume and can help them to handle slightly lower bass than an average co-axial speaker.

Subwoofers.

Subwoofers are larger speakers with larger magnets on the back. These speakers usually require an amplifier to power them due to their size and weight. These speakers handle the bottom end frequencies of your music and are usually felt as well as being heard. The larger cone can move more air as it goes backwards and forwards and the larger magnets give the speaker a bigger “throw” which is the distance that the speakers can move backwards and forwards. The more air the sub can move then the bigger the bass and the faster it can move the more “punch”
you will feel.

Power ratings.

You’ve probably all looked around various ICE shops and seen the speaker boxes with things like 300 Watts written in big letters across the front and, like most people, you probably think the bigger the number the more power it’ll handle so the better the speaker. Right??
Well not always as there are two power ratings that you need to be concerned with when buying speakers which are the peak power or max’ power rating and the RMS (Root Mean Square) power rating.

The peak power rating is what manufacturers like to flash across their boxes as it is always a bigger number and it tells you the largest amount of power that a speaker can take in a single hit without damaging it components. A hit is a sudden rise in volume for example a bass hit or an explosion in a film. These are both events that cause the volume to rise and then fall, so the larger amount of power being supplied only lasts for a split second and if you continuously played the speaker at the peak power level then you would burn out its components in the same way that continuously redlining an engine will
blow it up.

The RMS power rating is the one that you need to be more concerned with when looking for good quality speakers as this is the power rating that the speaker can continuously handle or work at with out distorting.

All speakers should have an RMS and a Peak power rating on them. So if you see two sets of speakers with one saying 300 watt max and 300 watt RMS you now know that the 300 watt RMS will happily play at a louder level and have a much higher peak power rating than the 300 watt max speakers whos RMS rating is well below 300 watts.


Crossovers, Low Pass, High Pass and Band Pass filters. (Something a little more "deep" - joepele)

As mentioned earlier in the component speaker section a crossover is a device that will separate the frequencies from an audio input and feed them all to speakers best suited to handle their reproduction.

A crossover can have several sections inside that deal with filtering. But some set ups will have a full range of frequencies amplified and fed from a head unit straight to a tweeter, woofer or sub woofer. As there is only one speaker then a filter is used instead of a cross over as the filter only allows one set range of frequencies through as opposed to the crossover that splits all frequencies to several ouputs.

The high pass filter will block mid and low range frequencies so these are used to pass high frequencies to tweeters.

The band pass filter will block high and low frequencies allowing a mid range band of frequencies to pass through to a woofer.

The low pass filter will block mid and high range frequencies allowing only low range frequencies to pass to subwoofers.

Most modern amp’s will have a switch labeled HPF for high pass filter, LPF for low pass filter and OFF. This will allow you to chose which frequencies are blocked and which frequencies are amplified and output to the speakers. There is usually a built in crossover switch with set frequencies so you can chose the cut off level of the filter to suit your setup or music.

Another one of my fave place for ICE information.

http://www.bcae1.com/

With picts, flash demos, calculators etc etc

After all these...

The you decide if
1. Grounding
2. Capacitors
3. Voltage stabilizers
etc etc

are neccessary or not.



Have fun ya

thank you very much.... i learn something new today.
and still learning.....
never learned electronics properly in school....always slacking..