...what to about speakers? There is no way I'm going to butcher door panels - what are the options?
The door panels were never the best option as a location for speakers anyway- they get damp too easily and they're pointing straight into your legs usually. The factory location is behind the map pockets in the footwell- there is actually a circle cut out of the metal to allow a speaker to be set into it. Poor location, poor directional sound and way too small for any bass response.
I plan to make some kind of speaker enclosures where the map pockets were in the footwells- something that will allow the speaker to be angled upwards towards the driver, and then fit a subwoofer in the boot area; probably tucked into the left-hand side opposite the spare wheel. If you have a separate bass enclosure it removes the need for your other speakers to be spectacularly good or unnecessarily large- the difficult thing for a small speaker to reproduce is bass. Asking a door panel mounted speaker to reproduce deep, convincing bass is too much; you'll only be disappointed. It'll either be sadly lacking in low frequency response or it'll vibrate the panel like crazy.
And the thing that is always totally overlooked by virtually everyone who is attempting to fit a stereo (or improve on what they've got) is sound deadening. Older cars, such as ours, are seriously pathetic in this department. People fitting bigger amps and bigger speakers; not realising they're not tackling the very reason as to why they're doing it- noise! I'm currently about half way through applying some noise killing sound insulation- a multi layered, multi material installation that is proven to be effective in reducing vibration (structural) noise and higher frequency (airbourne) noise. I'm hoping it'll negate the need for any silly big amps. As a musician and a recording engineer I am quite fussy about sound/frequency response etc. A car is the worst possible environment to attempt to get a good sound but it can be done with a little planning and some money. It's never going to be cheap but there is absolutely no point in spending money on a nice hifi if you're going to be competing with big dbs of road noise and wind noise. Obviously, some people aren't so critical of sound and are quite happy as long as they can hear it- tolerating all kinds of hiss and noise and distortion. Me? that drives me nuts! I have to have nice audio in a car as sometimes it's the only thing that keeps you focused on a long journey. If it sounds $hite I'm more likely not to put it on as it'll just annoy me!
Having said all this it is possible to get a
reasonable quality of sound in most cars for a few hundred quid; you don't have to go crazy. But by fitting speakers into the footwells of a Beta where Lancia intended them and coupling them with a standard Blaupunkt spindle radio from the 70's (which is exactly what the dashboard aperture was designed for) isn't even going to get you close to
reasonable. It'll just sound crap. The very least you must do to get anything like a 'hifi' sound is fit a separate bass speaker somewhere.
Once I've built my front footwell angled speaker boxes I will of course post the results here and if they prove to be good I'll gladly post a 'how to' guide for them with all the measurements etc. so it'll be quick and easy for anyone else to build some.
But it ain't gonna be anytime soon as I'm already 2 years behind on my interior retrim...
Andrew.
