scotty6336

Yes and yes. The factory head unit puts out realistically around 7-15 watts RMS per channel. A decent aftermarket will triple that, look in the 30-40 watt RMS, with around 50 max. This will be a good starter point and will make even your factory speakers sound better. External amps are not necessary, but more power always makes for clearer sound at high volume.

I'd do it in this order to stay on budget and find what you want.

1.) replace head unit, if you want something simple yet effective Rockford and Alpine make very nice products at a decent price. I can also control my ipod from my head unit, the ipod stays hidden in the glove box. I also have sattilite, which is nice.

2.) Replace front speakers only. As I mentioned above, this is what I did, then I got rear ones. The rear speakers made very little difference, the soundbar is just a bad acoustic design. You could put 50 speakers in it and it would still sound like crap.

3.) But a small amp and 1 10" sub, I got my sub boxes from wallmart and they work great believe it or not, this will give you that bottom end PLUS let you reduce the amount of bass going to the front and rear speakers, thus letting you run them at a higher volume.

Now I ran the Alpine head unit and polk fronts with no amp, and 1 10" sub in the rear for a long time and honestly it sounds awesome...10 times better than the oem infinity system IMO. What I have is overkill for sure, but I got an itch to do it so what the hell right?

scotty6336

One more thing, make sure when/if you replace the head unit to buy the wiring harness adapter for the infinity system. They will ask you this anyway, but just make sure. If you want some good sound advice give crutchfield a call, they are very helpfull

soludsnake

I would probably go with a head unit with a screen if I do decide to go this route. My girlfriend works at a electronics store and gets most things at cost so getting a good Pioneer or alternative HU probably isnt all the expensive in comparison. I hear good things about the Pioneer AVIC line stuff.

Does this include the tweeters?

joshclark0331

If you are staying stock speakers then an aftermarket head unit will be fine and you will not need amps. Aftermarket radio will output alot more power than the stock radio. If you are upgrading speakers as well then you should probably add an amp as well. You do not have to but it will greatly improve your sound.

Rednroll

I went with the Infinity Kappa 10.7t 1" mmd tweeters. I also got the Infinity Kappa Perfect 6.1 component set, which come with a 6" woofer and 3/4" tweeter and cross-over.....but I wasn't going to use the cross over and I wanted to try to get more mid-range from the tweeters to help raise the sound stage, so that's why I decided to purchase separate 1" tweeters rather than use the 3/4" tweets that came with the 6.1 Kappa Perfect set.

I'm very happy with these. I didn't have to make any mods to put the 1" tweeter into the existing tombstones, and I was able to get decent mid range response from these tweeters, which was what I was hoping to get.

I don't know if this will mean anything to you, but I also took some frequency response measurements of each tweeter, by playing back 20-20Khz Pink Noise and measuring the spectral response with a microphone setup.



To me, that looks like a pretty good spectral response, all the way down to about 700Hz, which is why I'm able to get decent mid-range along with the high frequencies out of these tweeters.

soludsnake

Im debating between starting with tweeters for clarity and then moving to a HU. Hmm...

Did you leave the stock HU in?

I cant seem to find those 10.7t tweeters as they appear to be discontinued? Any newer suggestions?

scotty6336

Now that is cool. I'd love to know what program you used for that. I'm running the xover that came with the component set, which cuts the tweeter pretty high imo. I have a few other xovers, 1 is adjustable. You got me thinking about doing some tinkering..nice job

Rednroll

Yeah, I bought those 10.7t's a few years back for another system I was working on, then that car got totaled in an accident...so I had them still hanging around.

I have to imagine Infinity probably came out with a newer model by now. It looks like the 10.9t might be the newer replacement model...since it's also a 1" tweeter in their Kappa line up. It also looks like information is currently not available on the Infinity website, but I just did a quick search on Ebay and located the 10.9t's there.....no 10.7t's though.

Kind of....check out my signature. I'm currently using the MyGig RER radio.

Rednroll

I use a program called SpectraLab made by a company called Sound Technology.
soundtechnology.com/

It's a stand alone real-time Spectral, Phase monitoring program. Basically I just plug in a USB Sound Card interface into my laptop, then plug in a good microphone into that and monitor away. I used to be a recording studio engineer and have been using this program for many years for taking spectral measurements.

There's also a similar program called "Smaartlive" which you might want to check out.
Here's a demo video of someone using that program.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ21s-NbKtg

I think this is where you can get it:
rationalacoustics.com/pages/Smaart_Landing_Page

soludsnake

Im guessing amazon.com/Infinity-109T-1--Inch-Edge-Driven-Tweeter/dp/B00190Z7WQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1307054213&sr =1-1" these are them. Different grill, hopefully they are protects like the 10.7's



Hoes does the MyGig work w/ after market speakers? I guess your using amps though?