General questions about upgrading car audio

[PurdueRy]

I am very familiar with home theater systems and the innerds of speakers. I have never messed with car audio however.

I am possibly looking to upgrade the speakers in my 2007 G6 GT coupe. I could either replace the 6 x 9's in the back with concentric tweeter or I could upgrade the seperate tweeter and 6.5" woofer in the door.

I see that there are "component systems" which include the woofer and tweeter with a crossover circuit. Is there already a crossover in my stock system? If so is it seperate like it is in these systems or is it handled by the receiver? Would I have to change my receiver to use one of these?

 

[SoulAssassin]

It's probably in the receiver.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: SoulAssassin
It's probably in the receiver.

So components would not be an option with the stock receiver. Upgrading the speakers could be hit or miss depending on where the crossover in the stock deck is(what freq). ::sigh::

So basically you have to change out the stock deck if you don't want to just guess and hope it will sound better. I don't really want to do that because that's where my car displays a lot of the information to me.

Maybe I'll just live with it.

 

[alkemyst]

find a make specific forum or use sounddomain.com

 

[BUTCH1]

There are some good brand 6X9 replacements that will fit your car. Boston
Acoustics, Infinity just to name a few. These come with crossovers built-in
so your good to go. (also have tweets you want too). Most of the after-market
decks will have a subwoofer out RCA jack to use with a sub amp but no other
crossover options, this is done at the speaker itself (full range coaxial) or a separate
electronic crossover. As for upgrading the head unit I'm in the same boat, mine
also functions as the DIC display as well. Most amps will accept speaker-level
input as well so you could still use one but not quite as clean sound as line level
(RCA). Metra makes an adapter that functions as a DIC so you can use an aftermarket
head unit but the adapter itself goes for $175 Hope this helps..

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: BUTCH1
There are some good brand 6X9 replacements that will fit your car. Boston
Acoustics, Infinity just to name a few. These come with crossovers built-in
so your good to go. (also have tweets you want too). Most of the after-market
decks will have a subwoofer out RCA jack to use with a sub amp but no other
crossover options, this is done at the speaker itself (full range coaxial) or a separate
electronic crossover. As for upgrading the head unit I'm in the same boat, mine
also functions as the DIC display as well. Most amps will accept speaker-level
input as well so you could still use one but not quite as clean sound as line level
(RCA). Metra makes an adapter that functions as a DIC so you can use an aftermarket
head unit but the adapter itself goes for $175 Hope this helps..

How are crossover duties usually handles with the stock system?

 

[TechBoyJK]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy

Originally posted by: BUTCH1
There are some good brand 6X9 replacements that will fit your car. Boston
Acoustics, Infinity just to name a few. These come with crossovers built-in
so your good to go. (also have tweets you want too). Most of the after-market
decks will have a subwoofer out RCA jack to use with a sub amp but no other
crossover options, this is done at the speaker itself (full range coaxial) or a separate
electronic crossover. As for upgrading the head unit I'm in the same boat, mine
also functions as the DIC display as well. Most amps will accept speaker-level
input as well so you could still use one but not quite as clean sound as line level
(RCA). Metra makes an adapter that functions as a DIC so you can use an aftermarket
head unit but the adapter itself goes for $175 Hope this helps..

How are crossover duties usually handles with the stock system?

it varies from make to make. There is two types of crossover scenarious, passive and active. Passive is when you take an already amplified signal and use resistors, etc. to split the power into multiple paths, such as for lows and highs. Active is when the signal is split for lows, highs, mids, etc. all before it is amped. You get better sound with active crossovers since the signal isn't amplified until after it is altered. This puts the speaker directly after the amp. Otherwise, with passive, there is a crossover between the amp and the speaker, and you loose substantial power in the process.

As I said though, it varies make by make. I just upgraded the stereo in my bmw, and in order to replace anything, I had to replace everything. So the factory Head unit came out, so did the factory amp, speakers etc. The only thing kept was the wiring since it was high quality and already ran to the locations I wanted.

Fortunately, many speaker manufactures are making model specific products, so while you might not get the best selection of replacement speakers, hopefully someone makes a decent replacement so you can get a worthwhile upgrade.

Also, just because the speaker might fit the factory cut out, you need to make sure the impedance is the same as well. Almost everything thing in my bmw was 2ohm, but most replacements are 4 ohm. Hooking up 4ohm speakers to a 2ohm amp will reduce the output from the amp by as much as 50%. OUCH!