[WuNgUn]

2021 Bronco...4" drivers in the dash (with integrated crossover cap), sound utterly terrible.
So I bought a pair of Polk db402 coaxial as direct replacements.
Sound reproduction is definitely clearer, and punchier but there is an almost gut wrenching harshness to the highs. Just too shrill, no matter what tone settings I use. It's fatiguing and almost painful at higher volumes.
The DB's have a cap for the tweeter (unknown)...it's a silk dome tweeter so I was definitely expecting a much smoother sound...

Would high passing the entire speaker at maybe 250Hz help? Mess with a different tweeter frequency cutoff?

I feel like I just flushed money down the toilet. 🤷

 

[lithium]

The cap for the tweeter is a high pass. High passing the entire speaker will just reduce the low freq playback of the 4 inch woofer. If you're on a factory headunit then your choices are, without buying more equipment, is to use the factory EQ to reduce the highs OR using your phone with a music app which has EQ like foobar.

 

[WuNgUn]

The cap for the tweeter is a high pass. High passing the entire speaker will just reduce the low freq playback of the 4 inch woofer. If you're on a factory headunit then your choices are, without buying more equipment, is to use the factory EQ to reduce the highs OR using your phone with a music app which has EQ like foobar.

Understand...I mean add a 200uF cap on the entire network to cut out anything under 200Hz as well...
Maybe 40-100Hz audio is overwhelming the 4" driver, causing the harshness?

 

[SSinstaller]

What was the impedance of the OEM speaker? A lower impedance or higher sensitivity will make the new speakers louder than the OEMs in relation to the other OEM speakers.

A filter cap on the new speaker will help the mid a little, but you might also try a variable Lpad so you can adjust the actual volume of the new drivers.

 

[WuNgUn]

What was the impedance of the OEM speaker? A lower impedance or higher sensitivity will make the new speakers louder than the OEMs in relation to the other OEM speakers.

A filter cap on the new speaker will help the mid a little, but you might also try a variable Lpad so you can adjust the actual volume of the new drivers.

4 ohm factory, 4 ohm replacements ..
Sensitivity of the Polks are 90dB

 

[SSinstaller]

4 ohm factory, 4 ohm replacements ..
Sensitivity of the Polks are 90dB

Have you tried swapping the phase?

Caps would be a good place to start. If it's still too much try the lpads.

 

[WuNgUn]

Have you tried swapping the phase?

Caps would be a good place to start. If it's still too much try the lpads.

Swapping the phase from each other, left/right, or reverse polarity on both speakers?

 

[SSinstaller]

Reverse phase on both, in phase with each other. It doesn't cost anything and sometimes fixes issues like this.

A 200hz highpass would still be a good idea.

 

[edub13]

I think that eq is the only way to help this. Have you measured to see where it is "hot"? The free version of Audiotool would be a quick and dirty way to do accomplish that if you don't have a measurement setup already.

I think that the factory signal is probably boosted in the upper ranges to make up for the frequency response of the factory drivers. From my projects, replacing factory dome tweeter with a dome tweeter is fine, replacing a factory widebander with a dome tweeter sounds bad.