Are The Stock Door Speakers Good?

[Eric Cheung]

I am planning to upgrade my car stereo by putting in an Alpine amp. The speakers are currently being powered by a Sony Head Unit.

I am thinking about whether I should change the door speakers as well. The front doors speakers are 5.5" Toyota 15W speakers. Has anyone changed these speakers and notice a big difference in sound quality?

Any information shared is highly appreciated. Thanks.

[Shayan]

mmm. my front ones are 6.5"

the door speakers are like good quality cardboards, their good quality garbage. Get some alpines or focals or some good kenwoods. as far as running an amp for door speakers, dont your gonna most likely pick up engine noise, unless you get it done and thats a lot of dough. Sony headunits dont push much but 13 rms compared to panasonic, pironeer at 17. you could go with eclipse and get 19-20 rms for each speaker. dont try to do it your self. been there done that. lexus makes it impossbile to work on their cars. best buy or circuit city or soem shop like that. its 40$ for two speakers. watch them cuz their known for breaking sh%5 and blaming it on you.

[Eric Cheung]

Thanks a lot for your reply. Are your front door speakers the origional ones, or have you changed them?

My Sony headunit is model CDX-GT300 and is capable of 17W RMS each channel. I am now using it to power the 4 door speakers and the subwoofer. I put the front and rear door speakers in series and power them through the front channels of the headunit. The rear left channel powers the subwoofer.

With the configuration it sound quite ok to my ears. I am wondering whehter sound quality can be greatly improved by changing the speakers? Or the weakest link in the system is the headunit and putting in an Alpine amp can improve sound quality noticeably?

[Toysrme]

alpine speakers in general fairly well suck, all of the coax speakers are trash, all of their mid-level components are junk aswell. focals are overpriced.

get some JBL's, or kickers. You can find them around $50 new if you know where to look.

Eric the head unit is not enough to power "good" 6 1/2" speakers without distortion at higher levels as they start to play bass & midbass. Underpowered speakers is the quickest way to blow a set up (minus just flat out supplying several times more power than they can actually handle.)

JBL ftw.

There is no point in changing the factory speakers to the low end & low end of mid-tier speakers aslong as the factory speakers are not blown out. If you're going to go, then atleast do it half way right! :)

[blk_on_blk]

First off, I hope you wired your front door speakers in parallel, not in series. You can drop the dash speakers, too. those are little screamers and not really needed/wanted. That leaves you the sill tweets and the door panel speakers... these should be wired in parallel (per channel) to keep the resistance the same and spread the load (tweets don't draw much power).

The sill tweeters are okay, so you can just leave those. I put in some Polk 2-ways in the doors with a JVC head unit. It cleaned up the sound dramatically. The old speakers are decent for a stock system, but too weak and sloppy to handle power of an aftermarket head unit.

For the most part, there are three levels of speakers: the cheap junk, midlevel, and high-end. What you want are midlevel speakers. Those are driven nicely off an aftermarket head unit's internal amp. Infinity makes some, Polk makes some, Kicker, etc. The higher end ones like Focal start requiring external amp power to drive. Plus, those are for audiophile systems, and you'll be looking at ripping out the whole system to run something like that. A little upgrade like what you are doing should take speakers like the Polk db650's... they will fit nicely in your door panels and rock. They did in mine.

[Eric Cheung]

Toys and Blk, thanks a lot for the information.

My cars dont have dash speakers. There are only the tweets and the door panel speakers in the front. I wired the front and rear panel speakers in series and connected them to the front channel of the 17W RMS/channel headunit to leave the rear channel for the subwoofer. The is not the final setup I did this to test the sound quality of this setup before deciding whether to buy an amp.

I'm thinking about buying a 4-channel amp to improve the sound quality. I'm struggling between Alpine MRP-F250 and MRP-F450 amps. F250 is 40Wx4 RMS and F450 is 70Wx4 RMS. Other specs are the same for the 2 amps but F450 costs 50% more than F250.

I dont need very loud music. Will F450 give better sound quality (cleaner sound) than F250 at low to moderate volume at which there is no distortion?

And for low to moderate volume will the stock panel speakers give good sound quality with an Alpine amp?

Thanks again.

[Toysrme]

40w RMS is just bearly getting into the rms range of quality 6 1/2" speakers. You're still underpowering most descent quality ones.

If alpine is all you have to choose from, then get the F450. Remember, you can always trim the power down.

No, the stock panel speakers will not like more amperage. That 17w rms head unit is probably almost perfect for the stock speakers. You're better off 25% over, than 25% under in the long run.

blk - db650 are great mid-ranage speakers. I put 4 in my little cousin's boat off a 450w rms amp. They sound great. I put my spair pair of db6500's + my spare amp in my beater civic... They're worth more than the civic lmao! (Not kidding)

In all honesty, I no longer support Infinity. I swear to god I'd rather have a pair of KS65 co-axial speakers than the 6 1/2" Kappa Component set I use to have. They just seemed like such a waste of money after I used them longer & longer. Especially in a 92-96 ES, where you have the dash speakers to provide a GOOD soundstage & you can't get a good component placement neways.

I pretty much stick solely to kickers L7 sub's & depending on the price of a system, kicker, or Polk for everything else. If there's alittle more money to work with, Polk's are just that much better than nearly verything else I've ever heard that is even semi-affordable for car/marine audio.

The thing is, is that you can displace so much blah with that. KS kicker's are just flat out better than anything else you find floating around in that price segment. Pioneer, blaupunkt, alpine, kenwood, sony, RF, JBL. Ew. & if you need more from there. Entry level Polk's can be had for little if you know what you're doing.

And component sets are another thing I don't do anymore. Unless you can put the entire set in the dash facing you. It's simply not worth the cost. They don't sound enough better. (Price/Performance trumps all...) The main purpose of a component set is improved sound staging & unless you can get the sound stage infront of you, paying a 50% markup VS the same coax set, or a BETTER coax set of the same price is pointless IMHO.

[Eric Cheung]

Thanks Toys for the detailed explanation. The reason I'm considering Alphine is because I read many good review comments on the web about Alpine F450 and F250, they these models are readily available in my area.

What amp would you suggest based on my case? Thanks

[Toysrme]

What do you want the end result to be? or what speakers will you be using?

[92Lex]

You should look into buying DLS or CDT components. Those companies make decent, good for the money, SQ component speakers.

BTW, I have a pair of Zapco amplifiers that I'm selling. Let me know if you are interested.

[Eric Cheung]

What do you want the end result to be? or what speakers will you be using?

I'm looking for improved sound clarity over the headunit. I'll be listening in the car with doors closed and loudness is not a priority.

I'm planning to first add an amp and change the speakers later if necessary, or the other way around depending on whether the amp or the new speakers will improve the sound clarity better.

[Shayan]

92 lex how much for amp?

how many watts?

[92Lex]

http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index...showtopic=34840

[Ler]

From what I've read, alpine 6.5s are too deep to fit in a es300. I'm putting in infiniti kappas.

www.crutchfield.com

[Toysrme]

I wouldn't I had kappas / Kappa components all around & fairly entry level Polks kick the living crap out of them.

[TnLex13]

I wouldn't I had kappas / Kappa components all around & fairly entry level Polks kick the living crap out of them.

I'm with Toys. Polks Freaking ROCK!, when compared with Infinity anything. I personaly like Boston stuff but you gotta pay for 'em.

Bottom Line. Polks ROCK!