I want to upgrade the stock sound system on my Ralliart- and am on a budget. Would like to know what is the most effective way to spend money - and what is relatively easy to do myself.
Basically I want someone to tell me what to do, who knows better than me

The kind of music I listen to is dance music, w/ lots of bass (if that makes a difference - cars never going to be playing classical or rock music )

1. I would like to add a sub-woofer (but not want to lose a lot of trunk space). Is it pre-wired in the back? For a sub would I have to upgrade the amp too?

2. Is it worthwhile upgrading the head unit? I really like the buttons on the steering wheel and would be a bit reluctant to do this. I don't really want something that lights up and stuff as I don't want the car to be a magnet for thieves

3. I would also like to upgrade the speakers - I would guess this is the biggest area for improvement - does anybody have a good recommendation of replacement speakers (think bang for buck here). Is it a pain in the *** ripping the doors apart?

4. Does the Ralliart come with soundproofing from the factory , like in the doors etc? There is a lot of road noise when driving on POS concrete highways.

 

Doors come off easy. I did not see any soundproofing in mine. I put a pair of JL VR 6.5 components in my front doors. I had to make a custom spacer though. IMO change the head unit first before anything. I built a ported box for a single jl 10. It fits well and is only about a foot deep so still lots of room. This is not huge bass, but very decent. No speakers will be direct swap since the spacer for the factory one is part of the speaker and without it the magnet will hit the window.

 

How difficult is it to install a new headunit? Just take the dash apart, remove old stuff, attach cable harness to new headunit and install with dash kit?

Do the steering wheel buttons stop working or did u get an adapter? and theres the aux too but I guess i never use that. Oh and the bluetooth.

I was wondering how much of a different a new headunit could make with exactly the same speakers in the set up. It must really suck

 

you are right. Replacing the headunit alone may even make it sound worse. I should have said to replace it, and the speakers at the same time. Changing the speakers only, will have a similar negative effect on the sound quality. The headunit is the main building block for the system you plan to have.

 

I don not have a adapter so the buttons no longer work. I have plans for that. The install of the deck depends a bit on if you have a factory amp.

 

As Piper747 said the head deck is the main building block of your system. When i upgraded mine I wanted Navigation and a harddrive with DVD capibilites but better then what Mitsubishi had on offer so I built a carputer. Which was cheaper than buying a navigation headunit like the pioneer ones. Soundproofing you'll have to do your own. Sometimes you'll find a cheap OEM subbox on Ebay or in the Forsale section without the sub if your worried about space in the boot.

 

if your looking for a space saving box for a trunk:
wickedcas.com has one. a little pricey but it's a custom fitted box.

 

Can anybody recommend a good CD player to go in the car? I have a separate GPS and won't need to play DVDs. Just want good quality for the price. Double DIN might be good so theres no gap below it.

 

Soniceletronix.com had a box for my Pioneer 10inch for 25 dollars. Cheap but it did the job and fits snug against the seats in the trunk. I changed my speakers to kicker components, doors and the tweeters in the front. Have two amps, one for the sub and one 4-way for the speakers. I changed my head unit to a JVC one that just had a CD and had blue tooth when an external mic. I was able to retain the buttons for everything but the bluetooth control.