Anyone who has ever listened to the original sound system in a Fiat Ducato will have immediately noticed that this system is only good for traffic announcements at best. And you don't have to be a professional or a high-end music lover to realize this! No wonder so many owners are looking for a solution that is quick to install, sounds fantastic and is also inexpensive. There are various solutions on the market; in this article we go into more detail and show you what the problem with the original speaker system is and why our ATS-FT160C is your solution.
The woofer comparison
The magnet
When you hold both speakers in your hand, the weight is the first thing you notice. The reason for this is the really tiny 50 x 9 mm magnet of the original speaker, compared to the 85 x 17 mm magnet of the ATS-FT160C woofer. This is not only visually and haptically impressive, but also fundamentally important for high performance. This is because a high driving force is crucial for the cone to be able to convert the electrical energy into sound energy without distortion.
The weakness of the magnet of our measured Fiat loudspeaker is also reflected in a really poor overall quality (Qts) of 1.999. Experience shows that loudspeakers with a Qts value of >1.0 tend to have significantly excessive and strongly discolored mids and a very thin bass. The AXTON woofer, on the other hand, has been developed so that it plays optimally in the large door of the Fiat Ducato with a Qts of 0.76.
The voice coil
Let us now focus on the voice coils of the two systems. The voice coil is a wire wound on a round carrier, which generates an alternating magnetic field due to the energy supplied. Since the voice coil is located in the constant magnetic field of the permanent magnet, the changing magnetic field of the coil leads to a force, called Lorentz force, which moves the voice coil (and the diaphragm firmly connected to it) back and forth.
Not only is the magnet in the Fiat speaker very small, but the voice coil is also very small with a diameter of only 19 mm and a winding height of only 5.5 mm. The woofer of the ATS-FT160C is quite different: we use a 25 mm voice coil with a winding height of 8.6 mm. This makes the entire speaker significantly more resilient, as the longer voice coil wire can also absorb significantly more thermal energy before it burns out. The generous pole plate and the large magnet of the Axton drive unit also dissipate the resulting heat better than the Fiat speaker. This is an important point for the rather loud driver's cab of the Fiat Ducato!
The membrane
The cones of the woofers couldn't be more different. The Fiat woofer uses a 0.42 mm thick paper cone with barely noticeable NAWI curvature. This not only impairs the stability of the cone in the bass range, but also causes the cone to break up into partial vibrations, particularly in the upper frequency range. The consequences are an imprecise and barely perceptible bass and a completely unnatural and discolored sound in the mid-range.
Although the Axton Crystax cone is not noticeably thicker at 0.48 mm, its hyperbolic NAWI design makes it much more stable and significantly reduces the partial vibrations - enabling reproduction up to 8 kHz. The hard quartz crystals on the top of the Axton cone also "nudge" the air molecules much harder than the soft paper fibers on the surface of the Fiat cone, resulting in much more precise music reproduction.
The tweeter comparison
The calotte
The size of a dome tweeter is defined by the diameter of the voice coil attached to the edge of the dome. The voice coil, and therefore also the dome, of the Fiat tweeter has a diameter of 11 mm and is made of plastic. If you remember that we are in a rather loud Ducato vehicle cabin, it quickly becomes clear that you cannot achieve high sound pressures with such a small membrane. Especially not in the frequency range below 10 kHz. The geometry and the low position of the dome tweeter focus the sound strongly on axis, resulting in a considerable drop in level at an angle. This dome should actually be aimed directly at the listener - but it is not in the vehicle.
The dome of the ATS-FT160C has a diameter of 19 mm and is made of a special fabric. The spherical shape of the dome favors omnidirectional behavior and thus ensures a gently falling level at an angle. This point is crucial for a homogeneous sound image in the vehicle.
Due to the dome size of 19 mm, the Axton tweeter can play significantly louder and assert itself against the driving noise. The frequency range is also wider and the coupling to the woofer already takes place at around 6 kHz, which greatly improves the spatiality and precision of the music reproduction.
Conclusion
So with the Fiat system, we have a woofer that doesn't play cleanly in the upper frequency range and a tweeter that doesn't go down low enough due to its design. What this means for the acoustic result is easy to understand: In addition to the generally imprecise reproduction, there is a gaping hole in the frequency range of approx. 6 - 10 kHz. Coincidentally, this frequency range is also important for a good spatial representation of the music.
The ATS-FT160C, on the other hand, scores in the decisive factors: Power handling and reproduction quality. The large magnet drive, the selected cone material and the specific design of the tweeter result in a compo system for the Fiat Ducato that delivers a first-class performance across the entire frequency range.