Interesting. I will check it sometime to see, but I can say that I have not noticed any performance degradation and I have had them installed for a couple months. Either way, thanks for pointing it out. That's the reason I like this forum and joined.
I would like to add that my factory door panels had a circular ring of plastic sticking out from the grille, but I had to trim that off of all 4 doors because it actually touched the aftermarket speakers, plus it likely would have made the rings fit poorly.
I did try the ring on one door and the other front door without the ring briefly for about 5 minutes, just switching the balance from L to R so I could see (subjectively not measured) if it made a difference. I then tried it without the door panel at all for a couple minutes just out of curiosity before I installed the foam on the right door.
It wasn't a night and day difference, but the ring did help enough that I could hear it. I do think that ideally I would make a custom door panel with MDF so I could have a more ideal speaker location, and this would especially help with my 3" mids that I currently have mounted right next to the 6.5" so I could have them mounted above the 6.5. Of course if I'm going to make such a modification, I think I would upgrade to an 8" mid-bass or even a 10" (like the Stevens audio that everyone loves). At that point, I'm in another rabbit hole where I would need to be fully active (I'm currently 3-way passive), and then I also feel like it would be best to sell the Recoil 3-way set as a complete set (I kept the original box and packaging for this reason).
The initial goal when I first started was simply to get a head unit with Bluetooth and hook up a sub. Mission accomplished. After that, the next goal was to upgrade all of the factory speakers and amplify them. Mission accomplished. Around the same time as this is when I found the Skar EVLs on Facebook marketplace for $300 (basically brand new), and I so sold the single kicker L5 I had for the $120 I paid for it, so another pretty good upgrade for $180 - I doubled my cone area, lowered my box tuning to 32 Hz, and was able to finally utilize all of my amps power at 1 ohm (the kicker was wired to 2). All of these initial goals are taking into consideration my factory electrical system, which is 100 amp alternator with standard lead acid battery.
If I bought what I really wanted, I would get 2 SQL 15s and build a nice ported box tuned even lower. I don't consider any of the gear I've bought so far to be permanent. However, everything is working quite well considering I have just over $1000 in total equipment cost so far.
I think what I'm going to do next is simply add a DSP with at least 10 channels out. I think what I should do initially is just leave everything else as is with the passive crossovers, so that way I can just upgrade one component and keep the cost down. It won't be much of an upgrade by itself except for having 31 EQ bands on all 4 corners, but then I can buy another 4 channel amp later and make the switch to fully active. I think what I will do is keep the blackbrick 100.4 I'm using now for the tweeters and mids, and get an even more powerful amp to run my rears and front mid-bass (180-250x4) This is an expensive hobby lol. Once I'm fully active, then I can look into getting better drivers than the Recoils I'm currently running possibly.
On the other hand, I'm pretty happy with everything for now, and I think that if I add another amplifier that I will likely be stressing my factory electrical, plus my amp rack design was built for 2 amps bc at the time I didn't think I'd ever want more lol. Of course, I suppose I could build a 2nd rack in the mirror image of the first... Ok I have to stop!! It's getting ridiculous lol.
I did check my voltage, and my battery was resting at 12.7v after sitting 8 hours at work. My charging voltage was 14.37v, and then I turned the AC on full and turned the headlights on brights and played a bass heavy song at the max volume I use and my voltage never dipped below 14.17v. I was very happy to see this. I checked it again bc the first time I checked the 9v battery in the multimeter was the crappy carbon zinc one that came with it and it had likely sat forever before I bought it ($7 from Sonic).
Considering I don't want to upgrade my electrical, perhaps i should just be happy with what I have lol. Without buying another 4 channel amp, I don't think that adding a DSP is worth it.
