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Originally Posted by 4 KRUSIN
Thanks for the responses. I am not satisfied with the sound from the Bose system. Sounds hollow to me and the louder you go the worse it gets.
Is this a product of a poor H/U or poor speakers? Should I expect a sound improvement if I keep the Bose speakers? I just replaced the H/U in my wife's Grand Cherokee and the sound improved considerably. It has standard Infinity speakers and a small amp.
I think I'm leaning to replacing the speakers as suggested by Dueysan, but without the Sub.
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My guess is it is a product of incredibly cheap speakers and poor system design. Woofers in the door makes for lousy bass response and the louder the go the muddier they sound. I believe the setup is very similiar to the C6....door mounted woofers, smaller twiddlers in door and rear mounted speakers in the hatchback area. Someone more knowledgeable can tell you for sure but lemme tell you the C6 Bose is pure garbage...the 3.5" twiddlers in the door are nothing more than paper cones, so they can't even reproduce real highs, and there are frequency gaps all over the place. Not only can't they reproduce highs of a tweeter but a 3.5" paper cone can't really produce mid-range lows to the point where the door mounted woofer should pick up the sound reproduction so it leaves a frequency gap there which with the right music is very noticeable. Then in the C6 there are 5.25" paper cones mounted in the rear, WIRED MONO....and to add insult to injury there is another cheapo 3.5" paper cone twiddler mounted in the center of the dash to mess up any semblence of seperate left and right sound from the doors. It literally is a joke to anyone experienced in good audio, most econoboxes have better designed sound systems just based on simplicity alone. Ironically my 2006 CTS has a Bose labeled system in it and it is a very well designed stock stereo, i have no desire to replace it at all..it's all a matter of marketing, budgets for stereo in the car design and the components they choose.
I don't think the C5 Bose is as quite bad but the basic design flaws are there....cheap thumpers in the door that provide muddy bass, and cheap 3.5" twiddlers with 5.25" to 6.5" cheap speakers in the rear depending on the model that will pull the sound stage to the back instead of in front of you. Now think of it this way...ok for a home theater and video games, a 5.1 surround system is great because the five speakers provides directional sound ideally with a strong center channel for most of the sound and it pulls the soundstage forward...making most of the sound feel like it is coming from the TV where all the visual action is. This may be relevant to the movie or video game, and the woofer provides bass, it's location is not as important as low frequencies are not perceived directionally by your ear. Now for music...honestly the best setup is really two really good full range multipeaker towers running off a quality receiver towards your front with the speakers offset to the side...providing a forward sound stage with some directional sound differentiation...left and right. This would most accurately reproduce a stage production by a band, musician orchestra etc, with the acoustics of the room playing in as well.
Ok so what can you do with you car? Pull out all those cheap crummy speakers running off that cheap crummy amp and then figure out what you want for sound. In a two seater, you don't really need rear speakers....and if you do put in rear speakers you want them to be much less loud then the front ones what people will call rear "fill". If they overpower the front speakers you will have no sound stage, it will feel like there is a concert going on BEHIND you, not a good sound. Speakers are put in the back of 4-5 passenger cars for one reason, so that the rear passengers can have decent sound too...there is no need to put rear speakers in a two seater. Also the trend in high end factory sound systems seems to be the more speakers the better...."Oh yeah my Mark Levinson Lexus has a 15 speaker sound system that is a 7.1 hometheater as well". More does not mean better. A good clean simple setup for your car would be...mounting plates for a 6.5" component set (either a 2 way or 3 way system) in your door replacing the woofer and twiddlers, a JL audio stealthbox or similiar custom made box with a single high quality ten inch woofer, and either a specialized 3 channel amp (like the Audison SRX3 I put in my C6 convertible) that has two channels for higher range speakers and a dedicated sub channel with a built in crossover.
Link here:
http://www.audison.eu/index_main.php?Section=SRX3
OR a 4 channel amp with two channels running the doors and the other two channels bridged mono to run the subwoofer. Most of these have built in crossovers.
If you decide for some reason that you need rear fill you can get a couple two way speakers (a midrange speaker with a tweeter mounted in the center as opposed to seperate component speaker sets), mount them in the rear stock speaker locations and run it off the deck power of DNX7120 or purchase a smaller amp to provide power to those. OR find a five channel amp that will power everything, the doors, the rear and the sub. I don't like the five channel amp route because there are not a ton of choices and the 4 channels designed for the higher range speakers are usually all the same power rating so you will have wasted power (you will need to turn down the gains to those channels and/or adjust the fade on your deck to balance the soundstage being pulled back) as you don't want the rears to overpower the front speakers in sound.
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