Speakers and Crossovers

[jvandyke]

Speaking of speakers, I put some cheap front speakers in last year but they sound really bad. I'm stereo stupid (among other things). Is it better to put a crossover in the mix, or get good speakers to start with or what? I've got a crossover in back with little 6" and tweaters and it sounds pretty good, plenty good for me, but the fronts sound crappy, barely good enough to provide some balance.

[opelwasp]

Being not so stereo stupid( I used to work at a stereo shop), getting a crossover does no good if you are sending the sound to crappy equipment. getting a $800 head unit and using the stock speakers is like feeding a stock motor with 300k miles on it racing gas. A good set of speakers with a stock head unit will make a whole new system. Most people go the other way. New head units are just flashy new money grabbers. Most have many more features than the average buyer will ever use. With a crossover you must use dedicated amps for each set of channels. One for your lows, one for high/mids, or one for highs one for mids. I would actually recommend a component speaker set. A mid and a tweeter set that comes with its own crossover. put the mid in the door or foot well and the tweeter on the dash right in the corner near the pillar. But like I said you must have 2 amps and don't use any bass/treble controls on the head unit, it will cause distortion and burn out the speaker coils.

[markandson]

Do you know about speaker phasing? You must make sure that the all the speakers have the positive (signal) wires from the radio running to the same terminal on the speakers. Sometimes the speakers are labeled with plus and minus, other times there is just a red dot or some other way to tell which one is plus and minus. It does not matter which wire runs to plus and which wire runs to minus, but you must make sure they are all the same. If you don't the bass will almost disappear from your system. When speakers are out of phase one is moving forward while the other is moving backward and the two waves cancel each other out, giving you crappy sound, mostly in the bass.

[jtb]

Get Good Speakers!

Whether for home or car, a good chunk of your dollar should go to the speakers in a system. As mentioned, you can have an super high end source unit, but what you hear of that signal comes out the speakers. Using crappy speakers would be like using the cheapest tires you could find on a Porsche (or your Opel!)

jmtcw,

jtb