car audio experts: are these components worth keeping?

[kjb]

Hello,

My 911's stereo doesn't sound right. The head unit is an Eclipse ESD 310 and I've identified the speakers are A/D/S 320s (tweeter / driver combo in the doors). There are also some unknown speakers in the back.

I'm about to check if there's something wrong with the wiring, but maybe someone can tell me if the headunit and speakers are worth keeping?

In its current state, I don't even want to listen to talk radio in this car. Voices sort of crack up, as if there's some intermittent high-frequency noise.

I'm grateful for any opinions,

Johan

edit: a/d/s model number

[bell]

sounds like the a/d/s speakers need more power......however if they've been lacking power for a while they may already be "damaged", you could try a small amp to see how they sound as they are nice speakers, even new though the bass response was limited.......but nice stuff.

[kjb]

bell, thanks for your response.

I just took off the passenger side floorboard and found all these things. I've identified one Blaupunkt 4x30 W amp and two A/D/S crossovers duct-taped to thewall.

I feel like such an idiot not doing this earlier. I can't believe I've owned this car for over a year and not bothered to do this earlier.

I guess I'll start trying to figure out where all the wires go and how things are hooked up. The big, honking cell phone cradle was stashed underneath the passenger seat.

/ Johan

[kjb]

OK,

Back from the garage again. The mid-range speaker in the driver side door sounds like it's busted or has a bad wiring problem. Other than that, everything sounds great.

The cross-overs are a/d/s 320i passive crossovers and the amp seems to work well and power up as it should.

Now I guess I'm just looking at verifying that the speaker is bad and replacing it if necessary.

/ Johan

edit: a/d/s model number

[bell]

you could contact a/d/s and see how much it would be to recone the mids, may not be too much $$$ ($100 or so).
the amp should do fine although the speakers would be happier with more power.
can you post pics of the door speakers?
if you switch speakers with another brand you'll want to remove the a/d/s passive crossovers and use whatever comes with the new speakers, as crossover properties vary from different mfg's components.

[kjb]

Big thanks again, Bell!

I'll definitely check how much reconing the midrange speakers would be. After playing around a little more, I notice there are crackles and pops from both front woofers, so I might be looking at reconing both. Is it worth looking into the shape of the wiring to the woofers?

Another question, is there a better way to mount these things than using duct tape? Everything was neatly ziptied and bundled behind the headunit, but behind the plywood things were not as neat.

The rear shelf speakers turned out to be a/d/s as well, but I couldn't find any model number.

Neglecting the crackles and pops, the system sounds pretty good, but it definitely lacks the bottom notes.

/ Johan

Front woofer


Front tweeter


Very dusty rear shelf speaker

[jcwade]

The rear speakers are A/D/S also.

john

[jcwade]

I couldn't edit my last post, so I'll have to post again.

I had the same speakers and they sounded awsome.
The PO spent a lot of money on them about a billion years
ago.
Although apparently not alot on installation.

john

[911boost]

Johan,

make sure that goofy butt factory fader control knob is disconnected if you have it. That this messed my speakers up big time until I disabled it.

Bill

[kjb]

The a/d/s people referred me to four different repair centers. The first one I called rather sell me some Boston 6.5" woofers for $45 a piece than recone my old woofers for $55 a piece. I guess they didn't want my business.

I also spoke to caraudioinnovations in Sacramento, and they just want to tear out all my old stuff and put new things in. I think I rather spend the money rebuilding my suspension.

I think I'd be quite happy with the current system if I could just get snap, crackle & pop out of the front woofers.

Different question: what does the three-position slider switch on the a/d/s 320 crossovers and my rear shelf speakers do?

/ Johan

[Jay H]

I agree with others. a/d/s speakers are some of the best car audio speakers you can buy.

I would suggest re-wiring that car audio system correctly (using the same amps and speaker for now) with less spaghetti, good (new) interconnects (RCA cables) and new speaker wire. There could be some loose connections that might causing this breakup you are hearing.

Getting the speakers re-coned or having new surrounds fitted will probably be the cheapest. I would search the internet or yellow pages for local speaker re-coning shops instead of car stereo shops. These specialty shops can fix up old speakers in many cases for minimal dollars. a/d/s is relatively well known and are high enough quality components for it to be worth restoring them (if they are not really fried).

Good Luck
Jay
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[Jared at Pelican Parts]

a/d/s makes good stuff.... However it might be cheaper for you to simply buy new speakers that to have those re-coned.....

[david914]

I may be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure your front speakers are a/d/s/ 320i's. I would spend the money and have them looked at. Try Orange County Speakers They can probably help. BTW, those speakers were about $500 a pair back in the 80's. I have a pair that I bought new back then and they still sound great. Definitely worth keeping! Oh, and if you don't want them, let me know!

[bell]

the 3 way switch is most likely attenuation for the tweeters.....0/-3/-6db, the switch lets the tweeter signal run through impedance resistors raising the impedance which will lower their volume.
car audio innovations has a strong competition background from the ol' iasca days.

[kjb]

Hello,

Thanks for all advice.

David: thanks for the URL and yes, they are probably 320s. I don't know much about car audio and I may have misread the labels in the general euphoria on Sunday afternoon. I will definitely look into having the woofers reconed.

Bell: thanks for the info on the switch. I've only heard good things about car audio innovations. However, I can't afford to sink a lot of money into my car stereo right now. When I do, I'd ask for their help.

Jay: thanks for the advice. Rewiring everything sounds like a great weekend project and I would most likely learn a lot too. I remember there are some very good posts on this board on good installation practices. I would shoot for something considerably less messy than the current installation.

The speakers actually sound great as long as there's no real bass content in the music. Any deep notes and the rattle starts in the woofers.

Thanks again for all help and encouragement!

/ Johan

[Jay H]

Johan:

Also, you may want to insure any eq settings on your head unit are set to a 'flat' response when initially dialing in your system.

Shut off any loudness contour, set the bass control(s) to it's unboosted (flat) setting, etc and see if that helps reduce the noise you are hearing when there is significant bass content in music you are playing back.

I'm not familiar with those amps either, but some amps have a low frequency 'bass boost' control on them and if it's set to a too high of a 'boost' level, it might be causing the amp to overdrive the speakers.

If you can't get adequate bass out of a system with minimal eq settings, it's time for a sub, more power or both...

Good luck!

Jay

[kjb]

Hi Jay,

All equalizer settings are flat and the loudness is turned off. The bass distortion is present at normal listening levels.

The amp only has a gain control on it, and the noise is independent on the setting. For now I dialed the gain to the lowest setting since I can't listen at any higher levels anyway.

/ Johan

[Jay H]

I'm only guessing since I can't sit in the car and listen, but it kind of sounds like a fried voice coil on the driver(s) that make the noise you are experiencing.

In very simplistic terms, voice coils are what moves the speaker cone and the power amp energizes the voice coils. If you either put too much power into a speaker or not enough power (much more common and called 'clipping' and amplifier) for the listening level required, too much heat can build up in the relatively fragile voice coils and damage them. Then, when the speaker is asked to play at moderate to loud levels, the damaged voil coil affects the output of the speaker (and could be this noise you are hearing).

If you push in on the speaker cone gently and with equal pressure on all parts of the cone (while the system is off) and hear a scraping noise, it usually means the voice coil is damaged. If you don't press on the cone with equal pressure, you can also hear this noise, so you have to be gentle/precise. Push on the cone (gently!!!) until you reach it's maximum depth and then let the cone release to see if you can 'find' any scraping noise.

If voice coils are damaged, it's probably cheaper (on these older, smaller car audio speakers) to toss the driver and replace with a whole new one. You can have them repaired, but I only do that for large, pro audio system type speakers.

Again, this is all just speculation as to what the actual problem may be...

Jay

[kjb]

After listening to the good old flat-six for over a year, I decided to pull take a speaker out and see what's wrong with it. Here's what I found:

The brown weave above the a/d/s logo in the image below is not attached to the lower portion of the speaker anymore. When a bass note hits it it starts rattling. Pushing it down stops the rattle.



The question is: is this fixable?

/ Johan

[Jay H]

I definitely check with some speaker repair places (either locally or on the net). Since they are high end speakers, someone might be able to recone those drivers (verses a very cheap speaker where there probably are no direct fit aftermarket parts).

The new a/d/s isn't as good as the old school a/d/s from the '90's... So, it's probably worth some searching to see if someone will recone that driver.

Jay
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