Im going to keep this as SIMPLE as I can.

I see alot of posts here about speaker upgrades, moreso HIGH DOLLAR speaker upgrades. Why is this an issue? Speakers will make the car louder and sound cleaner right?

Well, not so much . An aftermarket speaker will play a larger range of frequencies, and will sound a little more crisp, but 90% of the time you sacrifice midbass in the proccess. In fact, alot of you non audiophiles may not even NOTICE the speaker upgrade at all. Why? I paid $xxx for speakers, and its not even louder?.

Well, the fact is other than signal to noise ratio, speakers themselves have little to do with how loud your stereo can be. The power source is key, power source meaning stereo and amplifier. Lets see if i can use an example here.

Your speakers are like your wheels in sense. Wheels dont roll themselves, they need the engine to make them spin ( gradeschool example, i know, but its easy to grasp). Speakers dont control themselves, they dont drive themselves. Much like adding HP to your engine will make your wheels accelerate faster, adding power (watts) will make your speakers play louder volumes, and add clearity.

When i first purchased my evo, I installed a zapco 1000.4 ref amplifier, this amp does 175x4 (rms /actual power). I ran my FACTORY front speakers, and some 8"s in the trunk. I like my music loud, theres not much better than ripping your eardrums out after a hard days work right?. Well, day in and day out, the stock, paper speakers performed flawlessly...

How can this be? How can my 15w speakers take that kind of power? That cant sound good?..

Well, as said before, speakers dont control themselves. An increase in good, clean power will ALWAYS sound better. Remember, the engine controls the wheels, and control is power, and power is EVERYTHING in audio. This also leads into headroom and its benfits, but that's another thread in itself.

The idea of this post was just to remind everyone that while aftermarket speakers can be a nice upgrade AT THE END OF A STEREO SYSTEM SEQUENCE, You should never ever START there. Get more power, and i promise you. PROMISE you.. You wont be dissappointed in your factory speakers with a nice quality amplifier. I always liked demo'ing my car at the shop and telling customers i had stock mids. The looks on their face was priceless.

PS, this is based on experience, week in, week out. You might just save some money on those mbquarts and spend it on some performance


I hope this made sense, im on a cafiene high right now and who knows what i just said.

-alan-

 

For those who don't wanna read this:

Amp first, speakers later.

 

what a waste of a click

 

makes sense. my friend got an alpine deck in his civic without upgrading speakers and we noticed a huge difference in sound quality just due to the internal amplifier in the deck.

 

This can makes sense...to a point. But I have to present the counterargument.

Like eehjay said above, when they replaced the head unit (which has more clean power than the stock CD player) they had better sound. That will most definitely happen since the stock CD player put out low wattage and power that isn't very clean...at least compared to an aftermarket head unit.

I had the SSL in my car and it did play loud (well, loud mid/treble but not much bass)...but it sounded like crap because the the stock speakers are crap. They don't faithfully reproduce any part of the musical spectrum. Sure, they get loud...but they sound like a high school rock band playing in a garage...they sound like crap and are fatiguing to listen to for long periods of time.

Another issue people will come up against if they decide to power their stock speakers with an amplifier...the stock speakers will blow out quickly. The stockers are designed to handle somewhere around 12-15W RMS power...maybe 20W max. If you put anything over that (especially 175W like the OP says) you will EASILY outdrive the amount of heat the tiny, tiny voicecoil on the stock speakers can handle. Overheated voicecoil = blown speaker. And the tweeters that come in the SSL package will blow out even faster than the midrange speakers.

So, can you power your stock speakers with an aftermarket amp? Yes. Will it reproduce music faithfully like aftermarket speakers can? No. Will the stock speakers last for a very long time? No.

It's all preference. Everyone goes at things different ways. In the end, all that matters is that you like the way it sounds.

 

the factory stereo/ssl systems are designed to play a smaller range a of frequencies, this is why a stereo swap makes an audible difference.

As i said in the other thread, speakers generaly never blow from having a surplus of clean power, they blow from distortion. Lets be honest, any speaker can blow at any power level, you can blow a set of seas lotus off of deck power. If the system is tuned properly, your factory cheapo speakers will last just as long as any aftermarket speaker will. The problem i see is, most people cant hear distortion as well as i'd hope they would.

At our shop we always advise adding power before drivers, we do it with every make and model out there, every day... Very successfull.

 

I like the short version, but the long version is insightful as well.

 

Just buy an eclipse radio and you will hear your stock speakers come alive...I am a firm believer in Eclipse Headunits...6610 ftw!

 

I concur on upgrading the HU first. After I installed my JVC KVAX-2 deck the sound and bass that came out of the speakers was much crisper and clearer. However, after installing my speakers I was able to hear some sounds that are not faithfully reproduced by the stock speakers. I haven't been able to play with the bass since my car is not with me, but I'm willing to bet the bass will be louder and the treble clearer with new speakers (not to mention the amp).

 

I agree speakers will not sound any better with a stock head unit and you do lose the midbass, while gaining the back street ghetto high's (with tweeters).

But, if you are going to replace everything eventually anyway, I see no harm in buying speakers first. It will make you appreciate the sound after you buy the HU/Amp/X etc.

Personally for any car I plan to put a system into, I just buy everything at once or pretty close together and install it all at once. It just feels half assed to me if I don't go that route.

 

Wow, truer words have never been spoken. When I bought my Evo used it didn't come with any of the factory speakers or anything. Now I'm sifting through the aftermarket to get the mid-bass of a stock Evo without putting a sub in the trunk....I will not fail.

 

I agree. The only thing Im going to do to my car sound wise, is upgrade the head unit.

 

as a former faithful of alpine and now got an eclipse hu...this is very true

 

Good to know.

 

Where can you get the Eclipse online?