Stereo/speaker advice

I'm after a louder set of speakers as mine, which appear to be standard always start to crackle if I have my stereo up. Cannot have it any louder than 4 on the display. Stereo is a Sony Minidisc head unit 4x 50W output & is fine. Is it worth me changing my speakers all round & if so which ones & how much? Or should I look into one of those sub or amp things to go in the boot? My car has the 8 speaker SE stereo setup.

Dean.

Having had many different set ups in cars (inlculding up to 12 channels of amplication running off an active crossover), I can say without doubt that unless you listen to music reaaaaally loud, then the head unit will be more than enough - I have an Alpine in mine with the same rating, and it's fine.

The best upgrade you can make is to the speakers - the OE ones are, well rubish to say the least.  You would need to do them all - i take it you have the 3-way setup in the front, which you can ditch for a component 2 way system (5 1/4" in the footwell, tweeters mounted on the dash).  For the rear, you can buy adapters that allow fitment of 6x9's which will give you a bit more depth to the sound.

I can recommend Magnet as a good make (that doesn't have rip off prices like the usual fair from Sony, Alpine, Kenwood etc).

I also added a JBL Active Sub to the boot of my car, to firm up the bass alot (although it doesn't make a massive amount of difference TBH!)

Whatever you do, don't drive some speakers off an external amp, and some off the head unit - this will confuse the soundstage, and you will get into all sorts of time delay / phase related hell!

My alpine head unit has a function so that you can correct for the different distance each speaker is from you. Never bothered using it though.

As a starting point I would replace the speakers for better ones. I went for JBL and have been pleased with the sound quality.

The biggest problem I had was the tweeters in the doors. I didn't want to leave redundant speakers in the car, which would have happened if I had mounted my JBL ones in the dash, so I had to make adaptors so that they could be mounted in the original door positions. This was a real b****r and the finsihed item is not half as good as I would have hoped, in terms of appearance anyway. Why does no one make something 'off the shelf' for this purpose?

With respect to amps, make sure you want the extra volume before goimg down this road. I installed an Alpine 4 chanel amp which looks the biz in the boot but gets interference from some where. It took so long to get the damn thing in I really couldn't be bothered spending ages messing around trying to source the cause of the problem, so I just turned the gain down. Great except it is now no louder than the head unit was.

IMO more trouble than it was worth, especially since wiring the damn thing up was a nightmare.

Mmm...

I've read this thread and there's lots of good advice. I'm not as experienced as Fushion Julz but I know a bit.

However, what I can state categorically from practical experience is that a pair of 6x9s in proprietory adapters in the back shelf is the single most cost effective change you can make. I had a pair of Sony 3 ways in my cupboard so they cost me nothing but would have cost about £40 and the adapters cost £20 mail order. These hooked up to my 35 watt per channel Blaupunkt a treat.

I know Peter spent some time fitting new tweeters in his doors. I had a pair of Pioneer component tweeters and tried them before fitting (big lump of blutak!). I couldn't hear any difference from the standard Nokia tweeters so I din't bother installing them.

Fushion Julz wrote: ...A Nissan 200SX S13 was the hardest (Jap cars always are)

The last car I installed an amp in was a Nissan Primera.

Fushion Julz wrote: 2) does the noise increase with engine speed? If so it might be poorly RF protected alternator or magnetic pick-ups...These can be individually suppressed with capacitors.

It does increase with engine speed which is why I tried an individual suppressor on the alternator. This didn't cause any improvement. I got it from halfords. It was a capacitor that I connected between the smaller wire from the alternator and an earth.

It doesn't get worse when any other equipment is turned on and it is well isolated since it is fixed to a board which is attatched to the bodywork using a wooden frame.

Fushion Julz wrote: I have always manged to eliminate all the noise...Sometimes it has been a hassle, but a methodical approach always succeeds...

This is the problem, I just don't have the time to go through every possible cause. On top of this I have to work on my drive way. 

neileg wrote:   You need the larger wire. The small one is the lead to the warning lamp. The larger one is the main supply which is where the interference is carried.

Ahh....

The reason attached it to the smaller one was because it came with a clip to fix to a wire and there was no way it would have gone on the larger one.

I might get a chance to have a look this weekend.