Center Speaker Replacement Help

Mike,

Before you decide to replace the center speaker, why don't you try disconnecting it for a while? I did this after about two weeks of living with the JBL 9 speaker system, and I was surprised at how much of an improvement was made by eliminating the center speaker.

The result was better stereo separation, and cleaner, more articulate midrange and highs without the cheap center speaker in the circuit. You should know that the front door speakers and the center speaker are digitally filtered in the JBL amp, and they definitely sound it (not in a good way).

The center speaker couldn't be easier to remove. I picked up a set of three plastic body putty spreaders in varying widths from the local NAPA auto parts store to use in prying things apart without marring plastic panels -- they work great.

I used a spreader just slightly narrower than the width of the rear edge of the center speaker grille and gently levered the rear edge of the grille up and out of the dash cutout. The front edge, closest to the lower windshield edge, hooks in place, so you need to pry up the rear edge (closest to you). After the grille and speaker pop free, you can unplug the speaker leads and examine the speaker to your heart's content.

But do try your system without the center speaker and see what you hear. You might just want to save a little $$ to put toward something else.

Steve Zettel
near Libby, MT USA

 

Its the mids and highs that give us a sense of directions, and its the lows that are directionless. Therefore it was a bad idea to put a mono speaker in the center exclusively producing mids.

Now if they had TWO small speakers in there, directed to supplement R &L with separate channels, kind of like Bose does, then maybe it would have been better. But sending mono in the center, without regard to separation just kills the directionality of the soundstage.

At least with 5.1, the center speaker only operates on signals that would otherwise be in both R & L channels in a 2 channel system, and doesn't produce anything that is exclusively R or L.

 

Hi Mike,

>1. Steve, if I understand correctly, you used a plastic spatula about the width of the ENTIRE speaker grille, slid it under the rear edge and gently lifted. Once opened, it seemed as if the speaker and grille were removed in one piece.

That's correct. The speaker and grille come out as one unit.

>3. How much trouble is it to remove the unit and, if possible, reverse the front/rear tweeter feeds. I believe one member did this and was pleased as the (current) rear tweeter signal is not filtered as much.

You've got me a bit confused here Mike. If you are referring to the front center dash-mounted speaker, there are only two leads. The signal comes digitally processed, homongenized, and bandwidth limited from the JBL amplifier under the front passenger seat.

If you are referring to swapping the front door speaker tweeter leads and rear door tweeter leads, you should be aware there are no rear door tweeter leads coming from the underseat amplifier. One set of leads goes to each rear door, and the lows are rolled off for the rear door tweeters by means of a simple first order filter (a capacitor) at each rear door tweeter.

The front door speakers do have a separate set of leads for tweeter and midrange/bass. The filtering is again accomplished in the digital domain inside the under-seat JBL amplifier.

Mike, there are some very extensive threads in the Audio section that go into a lot of detail about the JBL amplifier, the speaker systems, and various users' experiences replacing speakers or routing rear door signals to front, to external amps, etc.

I, too, would like to read some how-to posts from folks who have successfully replaced either front or rear tweeters without destroying the factory grilles *and* actually improved the sound in the process. What I've gathered so far is that replacing the front speakers, either the door mounts or the tweeters, hasn't been much of an improvement because the digitally-filtered and processed signal to the front doors is so poor. I'd love to be wrong.

Good luck, Mike. I'd be very interested in learning what your experience is disconnecting the center speaker.

Steve Z

 

The only way others have gotten improvement is by bypassing the DSP for the speakers. Only way to do that is to use ONLY the rear speaker outputs, as they are not digitally processed, and using one's own additional 2,4 or 5 channel amp to power all speakers. You lose fade control, but the rest of the signal conditioning (volume, bass, mid, treble, balance) still will exist.

Of course one person suggested that even though electrically the signals look bad, they may be properly tuned for the acoustics of the car. As he correctly assesed, nobody has done a room sound analysis from the perspective of the driver or passengers.

By the way, I have been able to pop off the center speaker assembly with junk mail (still in envelope) and my fingers. Any size plastic will do, though the wider, the better in distributing the prying force and preventing noticable scratches.