AUDIO
Civic Unrest
By Brett Solomon
Posted on Sep 1, 2004

Someone that you know owns a Honda Civic — the Kevin Bacon of rides. It’s just a byproduct of being involved in the vehicle personalization or sport compact performance hobbies.

Eventually, we can all say, ‘I own a Civic or one of my best friends has one.’ We’ve all worked on a Civic, at one time or another, too, and this can be a very good thing. After all, because of the Civic’s popularity, there are a multitude of bolt-on performance parts you know are going to fit and work well. Every audio manufacturer, whether designing an amplifier, speaker, or subwoofer pretty much takes into consideration ‘Will this product work well with a typical dude or chick sporting a Civic?’ All enthusiasts agree on one thing — it’s easy, and a lot of fun, to get awesome sound out of a Civic. You’re not going to get good sound out of the bland factory Honda audio system. Let’s take a look at some Civic body styles and trim levels from stripper, to DX, to EX, and see what works well in the aftermarket for awesome sound.

Every installer has probably done a head unit swap on a Civic, as the DIN opening is a breeze to work with. Later Civics sometimes flex double-DIN openings or even single CD or single tape slots below the radio that can make some owners think twice before swapping out the head unit. Although these Civic decks don’t look quite as trick as aftermarket units, if you brag to your friends about how much these cassette and CD units sell for at the dealership they’ll be amazed. The last thing you’ll want to do if you have a DX is invest in one of the Honda units — go aftermarket for better looks and performance. As far as speakers go, earlier iterations of the Civic have 5 1/4-inch to 6 1/2-inch speakers in the front doors and 6- x 9-inch speakers in the rear deck. Newer Civics sport 6 1/2-inch speakers all around, so upgrading the speakers in the factory locations should be a slam dunk. Lets say you want ultimate sound, and not just good sound from the factory locations...

When it comes to hooking up a Civic righteously, the guys to talk to are Bo Ford and Steven Head at Audionutz in Ocala, FL. Head’s Civic is known to be one of the best sounding vehicles in the sound-off arena.

“In my Civic, we ripped out the stock dashboard, re-worked the dash frame structure, A/C, electronics/gauges, air vents, and molded a new dash based on where the speakers SHOULD be for the best possible sound stage,” states Head. “This is a very tedious and time consuming process — not for a beginner or amateur, and definitely not for someone who isn’t trained in sound quality to identify sonic attributes of the music and listening environments. The layout is basically modeled after a near-field monitor system in home theater, where we built a 4-way tower array on either side of the dash. Starting in the kicks are a pair of 10-inch free-air subs inside fiberglass kickpanel enclosures that are vented through the floor using 16-square-inch vents. This allows the subs to breathe OUTSIDE of the car. Above the kicks, in the bottom sections of the dash, are 8-inch dedicated midbass drivers playing a limited bandwidth of 60 Hz to 300 Hz. Just above the midbasses are 3-inch dome midrange drivers and 1-inch silk dome tweeters strategically angled for proper sound dispersion. The dash was built to be exactly symmetrical on either side, and sonic obstructions were kept to a bare minimum.”

Working within a more reasonable budget for sound quality, Head recommends using “a single multichannel amp (I like DLS, Arc Audio, and Xtant) set up running a high-performance coaxial set (such as Morel, Image Dynamics, Oz Audio, DLS, or your favorite) mounted in kickpanels and a ported subwoofer system in the spare tire well. I would base it off of a head unit with 4-volt pre-outs and a subwoofer output, and use the rear powered head unit speaker outs to run a pair of entry-level coaxes in the rear deck for rear fill. The amp would be flush-mounted in the false trunk floor in front of the woofers, and, for a typical Civic, we would likely use two 10-inch or a single 12-inch sub in roughly 3 cubic feet in the tirewell. This would cost about $2000 and would sound phenomenal.”

“If you happen to have a sedan or coupe Civic, another option for a subwoofer system that allows you to keep the spare tire would be a true infinite baffle [also known as free-air] set-up using the trunk as an enclosure with the subs mounted behind the seats,” continues Head. “We would use a high ‘Q’ ‘free-air’ sub, such as the DLS Open Air series, and acoustically seal the trunk from the cabin. This type of set-up will NOT work in a hatchback unless the subs vent out of the car.”
Since Head is so familiar with all Civic body styles, we asked him about the sonic differences among the coupe versus the hatchback versus the sedan.

“The only differences between them sonically would be the path lengths are longer in the coupe and hatch versus the sedan (because the seats travel back more), and the hatch would exhibit more cabin gain than the coupe or sedan on sub bass and bass frequencies,” he explains. “Therefore, we could get away with smaller diameter woofers in the hatchback and get the same output level as a larger subwoofer system in the other cars. Hatchback cars tend to sound better, sound quality-wise, using sealed enclosures for subs, and Civics with trunks ALWAYS have the best bass response using tune-ported enclosures or infinite baffle designs.”