Soumatrix with Helix sub/DSP

I've searched for this, and it seems to be mentioned more of a either/or type of thing.

Has anyone added the Helix sub/DSP combo and upgraded to the Soumatrix speakers? I'm really pleased with my Helix for the money, but I really wished the speakers were a little more full and crisp. I don't see why the little bit of amplification would hurt anything or unplugging the stock tweeters would be adverse.

I am really looking for a simple plug and play install. I've done aftermarket stuff before, but I'm looking at no cutting, splicing, etc.

I appreciate any feedback on this, Jason.

Following.

i've been thinking about the same thing. Don't like the idea of loosing the tweeters though.

Baskets said:

i've been thinking about the same thing. Don't like the idea of loosing the tweeters though.

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As soon as I read that Soumatrix tells you to disconnect the A-pillar tweeters in favor of their "superior" ones mounted in the front of their door speakers, I completely dismissed these guys. Moving the tweeter to the lower door is a horrible idea - I'd rather have a cheesy factory paper cone tweeter up high than a "better" one below my knee on the door. Silly for them to even be calling this an "upgrade" somehow.

Just following what we know, the sound matrix speakers are an upgrade from the OEMs while using the factory headunit, and the helix is an add-on DSP and sub for use with the factory headunit, it SOUNDS like they would be compatible/complimentary.

However...for the price, and like KevinC said, their method of making products compatible over multiple applications and placing the tweeter co-axially is not ideal for imaging and stage, I'd rather skip all of it and go full aftermarket.

I know that the Helix is more DSP than dedicated amplifier. My logic is that, from my experience, superior speakers seem to always make a difference. I've seen the Inspirits for under $400 for 4 speakers, and I'm on the fence. I was hoping that someone would have tried them to give me a 'don't do it' or a 'do it'.

I'm pleased with where my current sound is, but the change from the base to the Helix programmed is so drastic... my curiosity has me. I have access to the dongle, and figure that I may try some of the other programs with the Soumatrix, if there is any issue.

Honestly, I am usually a big fan of components and tweeters at the higher elevations, but I think these tweeters are probably just crap. I notice that much of the high-mids come from these and it almost makes the sound seem to 'forward' for me. My Focus ST was similar, and I bought some Focal speakers that made a world of difference. I just am unsure with the processing side of it.

gamille said:

I know that the Helix is more DSP than dedicated amplifier. My logic is that, from my experience, superior speakers seem to always make a difference. I've seen the Inspirits for under $400 for 4 speakers, and I'm on the fence. I was hoping that someone would have tried them to give me a 'don't do it' or a 'do it'.

I'm pleased with where my current sound is, but the change from the base to the Helix programmed is so drastic... my curiosity has me. I have access to the dongle, and figure that I may try some of the other programs with the Soumatrix, if there is any issue.

Honestly, I am usually a big fan of components and tweeters at the higher elevations, but I think these tweeters are probably just crap. I notice that much of the high-mids come from these and it almost makes the sound seem to 'forward' for me. My Focus ST was similar, and I bought some Focal speakers that made a world of difference. I just am unsure with the processing side of it.

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Totally Agree with you, when you said - "but I think these tweeters are probably just crap"

I installed the 6.5 inch Co-Axial Speakers (JBL X603 i believe), with adjustable tweeters on the front doors., the new set of tweeters sitting on the door speakers sounds much better than the factory ones (even though, they are not disconnected).

Also another thing to note with the aftermarket speakers is that they usually tend to have a 2 ohm impedance, than the 4 ohms on the factory setup., so they naturally tend to drive more power/volume out.

My suggestion, all things you've said considered, would be to look in to a component set for the front speakers that match the OEM ohm rating, but would be more efficient. Even if you spent $400 doing that, you'd still be in a better situation from the Soumatrix speakers IMO.

Since the Helix is still sending out "full range" signals to the speakers, I doubt you'd have any issues because of that. It's not an active setup.

The most important for me would be to match the ohm rating like o_a_ravi said, so that you don't over drive the Helix amp anymore than it already is. More efficient speakers will have a better output than stock at the same wattage, so win-win.

Edit: Was doing some research for myself on component speakers and on the Crutchfield site, they have pictures of a GTI they measured for speakers/head units, etc. On the backs of the drivers (well, at least the tweeter) its spec'd at 4 ohms. That would mean that the components combined (woofer and tweeter) would be 2 ohms since you aren't individually amping these drivers. That means 2 ohm component sets should work perfectly.

Edit 2: Unless I'm wrong on the ohm ratings, I like the specs on this Infinity set: https://www.crutchfield.com/p_1086011CS/Infinity-Kappa-60-11cs.html?tp=105&avf=Y
93 dB sensitivity, good frequency response, just need to custom mount the tweeters in the pillars and hide the crossovers, should be a solid improvement.

Edit 3: If you like that Infinity component set, shop around a bit. Amazon has them for half the price, soooo...

So, you are right. I thought and shopped around. Although I didn't go with 2 ohm speakers, I found that the Alpine SPR-60c are closing out everywhere. I bought 2 sets from Best Buy for 1/2 price, and they're an authorized dealer. I leaned towards these due to the size of the crossover, and the fact that they have tweeter level adjustments, and the woofer crossovers are built directly on them. I'm sure this isn't as effective as some, but it is nice for cable management and mounting.

I've got the back panels off and the speakers out. I just put the tweeters and the tiny little crossovers for the tweeters on the door panel. I hot glued them into place, as I want to be able to completely remove everything and don't want any screw holes, etc. FYI, there's a ton of space inside or under the arm rest. It is just hollow underneath.

I must say, Crutchfield says these don't fit as they're too big, but I've got a set of adapters coming that should work perfectly. For s&g's I held the bare speaker up to the door, and it appears to be an exact fit for out door, without an adapter. I mean, even the bolt holes on the speaker line up with the door rivet holes. Knowing this, I would have just made or bought a 1/2"-1" spacer and bolted it right to the door.

The tweeters are also a near perfect fit and sit snuggly into the back of the speaker grill in the door. I just added a ring of glue around the tweeter, and that thing is not going anywhere.

I'm still waiting on some parts and will take my time, but I can post some pictures if there's any interest.

gamille said:

So, you are right. I thought and shopped around. Although I didn't go with 2 ohm speakers, I found that the Alpine SPR-60c are closing out everywhere. I bought 2 sets from Best Buy for 1/2 price, and they're an authorized dealer. I leaned towards these due to the size of the crossover, and the fact that they have tweeter level adjustments, and the woofer crossovers are built directly on them. I'm sure this isn't as effective as some, but it is nice for cable management and mounting.

I've got the back panels off and the speakers out. I just put the tweeters and the tiny little crossovers for the tweeters on the door panel. I hot glued them into place, as I want to be able to completely remove everything and don't want any screw holes, etc. FYI, there's a ton of space inside or under the arm rest. It is just hollow underneath.

I must say, Crutchfield says these don't fit as they're too big, but I've got a set of adapters coming that should work perfectly. For s&g's I held the bare speaker up to the door, and it appears to be an exact fit for out door, without an adapter. I mean, even the bolt holes on the speaker line up with the door rivet holes. Knowing this, I would have just made or bought a 1/2"-1" spacer and bolted it right to the door.

The tweeters are also a near perfect fit and sit snuggly into the back of the speaker grill in the door. I just added a ring of glue around the tweeter, and that thing is not going anywhere.

I'm still waiting on some parts and will take my time, but I can post some pictures if there's any interest.

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That's great! I know I'd be interested in some pictures because I'll probably be taking on this challenge at the same time as my folding mirrors once they come in from China.

I thought a bit about the ohm ratings of the speakers, and I think I'm going to stick with 2ohm for a few reasons:
1. I'm only going to swap the front speakers
2. I'd be concerned if the speakers output drops because of reduced wattage, that the sub would then be crazy over powering, and even with the sub level there for adjustment you could still end up in a situation where you'd have too much bass.

Going to ramble a bit on point 2, but since you're diving right in you could probably prove my hypothesis true or false.

Others have said they'd like to be able to use the volume knob a bit more, that 40-50% volume being the most they can get before there is distortion seems a bit odd. I don't disagree, but there really isn't a solution UNLESS swapping to 4ohm speakers and bringing the sub output down to an appropriate level works out. If you can make that work, I'd bet you'd not only get use of more of the volume knob, but you'd also be putting less stress on the amp which might reduce distortion overall.

Could be an ideal setup all around, so I'm excited to hear your results!

Gamille, can you do me a favor and see what the actual ohm ratings are on the factory speakers? I was sure that I saw the tweeter was 4 ohms, which would logically mean the woofer is 4 ohms as well, for a component set combined ohm rating of 2 ohms, but I keep seeing "factory drop in" speaker upgrades that are 4 ohm. I'd hate to think a company went to the trouble of making a "factory upgrade" and got the ohm rating wrong.

Unless there's something I'm missing about running a 4 ohm setup in this circumstance, I just want to be sure before I order speakers for myself.

Thanks in advance!

flipflp said:

Gamille, can you do me a favor and see what the actual ohm ratings are on the factory speakers? I was sure that I saw the tweeter was 4 ohms, which would logically mean the woofer is 4 ohms as well, for a component set combined ohm rating of 2 ohms, but I keep seeing "factory drop in" speaker upgrades that are 4 ohm. I'd hate to think a company went to the trouble of making a "factory upgrade" and got the ohm rating wrong.

Unless there's something I'm missing about running a 4 ohm setup in this circumstance, I just want to be sure before I order speakers for myself.

Thanks in advance!

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All of the speakers, tweeters and woofers both, indicate 20W at 4 ohms on the back labels.

So here goes on the installation of the new speakers. As mentioned before, I went with Alpine SPR-60c component speakers. Crutchfield shows that these DO NOT fit. Boy, were they wrong. I would say that these are a near perfect fit. Including all hardware, speakers, sound deadening material, the cost war right at $435. But, I have enough of everything left over to do my wife's GTI, except speakers of course.

Every part of the install was performed in a manner that can be restored back to factory. I do not cut/splice wires, or drill holes. I get if someone wants to do that, but I generally go with the route of hot glue and connecting to factory harnesses, etc... nothing that a heat gun and unplugging won't fix.

I ordered 2 types of speaker adapters (both are hyperlinks). The first type that I ended up NOT using. The second type that I ended up using. I bought both of these through Amazon, but I opted to use the latter pair, due to the height of the speaker when it was mounted into the door. By the time I had the seals installed, adapter, speaker, etc... The taller mounts would have placed the speaker into the door baffle.

The taller mounts... fine quality, but about 1.5" tall without seals or speakers mounted. The factory speakers are 1.5" total height.



The smaller mounts I used. They are solid and about 0.7". With the speaker and seals installed, about 1.2-1.3" tall:



Here's the smaller mount compared to the stock speaker, before installing the new woofer.



For the seals, I used Mortite from Home Depot for the adapters and back of the speaker.



On the face of the speaker, I used self stick rubber weatherstrip. The total for both of these products was about $9 with tax.

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I bought some 8/32 x 1" screws, flat washers, split washers, and nuts from Ace for about $8 including tax. This is what I used to mount the adapters to the car. I prefer this over self tapping type in the car. I then used the supplied self tapping screws that came with the Alpines to mount the speaker to the adapter.

The woofer wiring was pretty easy. I bought 4 of the VW speaker connectors from Amazon and they are a direct plugin for the woofers.




The rear tweeter wires run straight from the woofer posts to the crossover. I mounted the crossovers for the rear, under the armrests:







The front tweeters, I opted to plug into the factory tweeter harnesses, then to the crossover, then back to the Alpine tweeter. This saved me from running the wire from the door into the vehicle, as this can be a huge PITA. I used some thin spade type connector from Radio Shack at under $3. I mounted the crossovers under the side covers for the dash using the supplied zip ties:





You can also see in the pictures that I added some sound dampening material. I am under the school of thought of placing on flat areas with about 30% area coverage is sufficient.

I also wrapped all of the wiring in Tesa tape to make it look professional and to prevent future rattles:





Overall, my wife and I both agree that the upgrade made a substantial difference. You can tell that the DSP does still play some part in the sound profile, but I was able to reduce the front tweeter output, and the woofers have a built in crossover, unlike the factory ones. I'm guessing the lack of a crossover is what's causing the issue with the distortion. I thought it was from the tweeters, but I listened to these with factory tweeters, and they weren't too bad. As soon as I changed the woofers, most of the high volume problems were corrected.

Now, in my opinion, above 1/2 volume is unbearable, but I can say now, that these can go well above 1/2 without distorting... just saying.

Here's a few more pics of the install and final product:

So you're running your door woofers without any crossover? I bought a set of Helix speakers that were supposed to be plug and play, but they have the crossover being mounted inside the door, which is a pita to get wires back out for the tweeter.

The SPR-60 components have built in low pass crossovers on the woofers. The tweeters have the separate high pass crossovers that need to be mounted somewhere. I think a lot of the mid price range speakers are similar to this.

If you mount the crossover inside the door, I personally would run the tweeter wires back out of the woofer mounting hole to the tweeters. The door hole has a raised spot at the top and if you have a generic mount, it should be enough to not pinch the wire with a seal in place; or you could just drill a hole in your woofer mount, run the wire, and seal it up.

You could also run the wire back through the plastic door access panel, but you may have to notch a piece out of the plastic.

I just ran my wires through the sealing caulk and torqued down on the screws. With the thickness of the seal, the wires still could be slid in/out, so no where near enough pinch to damage the wires.