Hi all, I'm Abbs I have joined this forum to gain some knowledge that will help me on my way to a satisfactory ICE upgrade. My current sound is good but lacks a little low end and also distorts when turned up so need more power. I will contribute what I can also along the way. I currently have a Sony head unit, factory amp, factory rear and front components. the car is a Lexus IS200. My plan is to upgrade the front components to Alpine SPS171A and install into the factory locations mounting the crossover under the woofer in the door panel and using a two way Alpine amp 50 watts RMS to match the speakers. Then finally Install a Infinity Basslink active sub in the back. Day one and running into problems due to the weather I only finished the drivers side. After installation was very surprised that the 15 watts OEM speaker was more louder, clearer and distorted less than the Alpine? Have I done something wrong? I checked the polarity of all wires apart from the tweeters as they had no indication what they were, both were black, one had a white stripe I used that as the negative. I set the crossover to -3db as the choices were 0db, -3db 0r -6 db. Also the Sony HU is 17watts rms (52w x 4 peak power) Very disappointed with the sound and I am sure something is not right? The amp and sub do not arrive for a few days. if anyone has any comments or advice I will be very grateful. Thanks in advance. Abbs
Welcome. don't worry, the stock will always sound better because they are only like 15 watts. so you are seriously under powering your speakers right now. When the amp gets in you'll see that the sound will be a lot better than what your stock speakers sounded like before..
^^^^ CC's dead on, any aftermarket speaker will sound alright on a head, but to really make them live you need to amp them, the OEM speaker is typically running close to its max potential on a Aftermarket head unit.
Thanks for your replies as soon as the amp arrives I will connect and hope for a big difference. I cant help but think setting the attenuation at -3db has something to do with the low sound? So are you guys saying that a 15 watts speaker running from a 17 watts Head unit will sound better and louder than a 50 watts speaker running on the same head unit (all watts are RMS)?
it will sound better because the rms wattage is matched. you will have distortion problems when you're under powering a speaker.
