HEY! Guess who stumbled across this thread? It always seems I am in Vince's shadows, lurking slowly behind his every move.
FYI, I used to be into car audio in high school, but that was 15 years ago. My true expertise is in room acoustics for Home Theater design and stereo loudspeaker design. So my car audio though process follows an home audio path.
From the wiring diagram I've seen, all speakers seem to be powered from that Sony amp. It has 8 output channels (driver door, passenger door, driver second row door, passenger second row door, driver pillar, passenger pillar, center channel, dual voice coil sub). It is my opinion that the factory system is fine, for what it is. But there is plenty of room for improvement. Many improvements can be done while keeping the existing wiring and amps.
First, the bass. Don’t assume you need to add an external sub enclosure to get more bass. I am swapping out the driver (Vince linked my thread above) but keeping the stock box. This will provide more low end since the Sony driver in their now begins to fall apart at/below 40Hz. By 30Hz, it’s almost worthless. Not to mention it is very muddy sounding. The Rockford driver I am planning on using will work fine with the factory amp, but will only see about 30 watts per channel. That amount of power is fine if you always drive with the windows rolled up, but in the summer when you are cruising down the strip and the windows are open, not enough power. So, a beefier 2-channel amp is ideal. A new driver in the stock location with more power will make a HUGE difference and allow you to keep all your cargo area.
Once you increase and clean up the bass, the system will be quite a bit better overall. Next you could increase the system more with speaker upgrades. The component speakers in the front doors would be my target. The stock tweeters are bad and the woofers are a paper cone with poly dust cap. And don’t even get me started on the crossover network (or lack thereof) Blah! If you want to keep the stock amp, find something with a high speaker sensitivity and lower end power consumption and the stock amp should be just fine and still yield a good improvement.
If you want more upgrades after that, go after the amp (Leave speakers in 2nd row alone for now). Find a 5-channel amp to power all doors and the subwoofer. But know that once you start replacing the amps, any speakers left on the factory amp (Center channel and rear pillars) may not be able to keep up once the volume goes up. You won’t hurt anything, but their performance may be just above not being there at all.
I don’t’ suggest much with the 2nd row or rear pillar speakers because of their location. Driver and passenger will almost never hear their performance. Even second row passengers won’t hear much detail from them because they are near their feet and several feet in the back of the cargo area. Sound coming from them is bouncing off legs, cloths, floor mats, windows… A lot of audio quality is lost before sound from those speakers reaches the listeners ears. Those speakers give you the least amount of return on your investment.
If you will be replacing the factory amp, you will most likely need a level convertor. They don’t cost much, maybe $50-$120. Then the cost of the amps. Which is why I suggest replacing speakers first. You may be able to get the sound you won’t without having to re-wire or spend extra money on amps, wires, signal processors. That’s my opinion and what I am going after first. I’ve seen it a million times in home audio. Take a $100 stereo receiver and play music through $100 speakers. Average sound. Spend $500 on a stereo receiver and use $100 speakers and get average sound. But spend $200 on a stereo $500 on speakers, and you get great sound.
WOW! Longest post ever. Congrats if you made it this far.
