Yesterday, I purchased speakers for front and rear doors.

Now the bass sounds terrible..
The shop that installed the speakers told me that this would
be a big upgrade over the Bose Speakers and were kind of
condescending about Bose speakers.

I found out the new speakers were 4ohm and apparently the
Bose factory were 2ohm.

Is it possible that the subwoofer can not function optimally with
the new 4ohm speakers. The Bass sounds extremely distorted.
I actually have to turn down the bass (-3) to remove the distortion
but then I can't hear the clean thumping sound of the bass, basically
the bass is nearly eliminated.

The shop told me I would need a new amplifier quoting my $1,000
for the work.

Is this a bunch of crap? I actually argued with them for over
3 hours, because they are claiming their speakers are fine and it
is problems with my factory equipment. By the way, I have the
Bose premium package.

The shop just wants me to buy all sorts of new equipment.
I would almost be better off installing the old speakers again..
which they want to me charge for labor again + restocking
fee.

Not really an audio expert, can anyone help.
Will a new amplifier help.

 

I can't answer your question really b/c I don't know, but IMO you can't beat the Bose system. If you just wanted a little more bass I would have just added a single sub, and and inexpensive amp.

 

The distortion you're hearing is probably clipping from the stock amp. Now that you've replaced with 4 ohm speakers, they're getting half the power--add to that, any aftermarket speaker will require more power than the stock bose. Easy to see why you're hearing distortion.

You can either:

1) Keep stock headunit, install Line-output-converter and run new amps

or the more expensive route..

2) Get aftermarket headunit + DDin kit and run new amps.

It depends how picky you are. Option 1 is usually adequate for most people. But if u want best sound, go option 2.

Oh and find a new shop. $1000 for amp + install is fkn ridiculous. I had headunit, speakers, and 2 amps installed for $300 (labor only). Just to give u an idea...

 

+1

doc

 

jtsimikas, my thoughts are that you are now hearing the same disortion that was there all along, you just didn't notice it because the Bose front speakers were doing the same. Your new speakers are 4 ohm now (the shop should have used 2 ohm speakers to match the Bose amp ) you have to turn the volume louder to hear them, which makes the distortion in the Bose amp more noticable.

The Bose amp is rated for 225 watts (likely peak watts and at a high % distortion level) and has built in equalizing that affects bass output.

IMO, the Bose amp is the weak link of the Bose system, followed by the Bose speakers.

I agree with clayton_bigsby and docron1, but you don't need a line output converter (LOC) with the Bose system since the HU already outputs a low 2 volt signal. If anything, it could benefit from a little line level amplification.

I run the audio signal from my Bose HU in my sedan straight into the input of my amp by splicing an RCA cable into the Bose audio output. It works pretty darn good.

 

If you're going to keep the stock stereo, you would need to replace the speakers with 2-ohm ones. I did my sedan with some JBL GT coaxials as I did not want to have to deal with mounting crossovers and another set if tweeters. overall the highs are much cleaner and the bass is tighter, nothing like adding a sub. I think INFINITY has 2-ohms also. I think I spent about $120 for 2 pairs of the JBL's. I do have to turn the volume up slightly higher than i did before, but its only like 14 or so. how high is it turned up now to get the distortion. I think i'd have to go past 20 on the volume to get any, but i probably would go deaf after awhile.

 

Wow thanks for all the input.

I've already had the shop install the new 4ohm speakers so I really don't want to replace them with 2ohm speakers if I don't need to.

I am finding that I need to turn up the volume to 20 or so, whereas before it seems like I may have been running around 14.

Can anyone suggest an amplifier? How many watts do I need.

Would an ampifier in the $300 range work ok, would this be an improvement
over the bose stock amplifier?

 

Any decent amp is an improvement over the Bose amp.

 

Take it back. The guys at the shop that told you it would work don't know what they're talking about.
If they hook aftermarket speakers up to your stock amp, they should know better. Don't buy extra stuff to cover up their mistake.

 

The guys at the shop were not lying to you when they said to put it nicely, that Bose is not the best equipment. They use 2 ohm speakers because it allows you to get more power (read volume) out of your amplifier with less money. The lower your speakers nominal impedance, the more power it will force your amp to put out. However as a rule of thumb, speakers with lower impedances reach distortion potential faster, not to mention the extra heat your amp is going to put out due to the extra power. So in short, the guys at the shop were not wrong, they just didn't/couldn't explain it to you. The Bose amp probably outputs less than 40W RMS per channel into 2 ohms, but by presenting it with 4 ohm speakers, it will be outputting half of that, not to mention that your aftermarkets are less efficient than the paper coned Bose. That is of course not to say that just because the Bose are more efficient, they are better. My suggestion is to get a new amp, you should be able to pick up for $300 to $500 that will meet your needs. Take a look at alpine for JL audio. Alternately, you could get a new HU, and DD conversion and just use the HU amp, forgetting about getting seperate amps. That would be more expensive, but leave you with more options to upgrade in the future if you wanted to. Also, I trust you are at a reputable shop (Please not Best Buy or Circuit City.)
Sorry for the long post, and good luck. Let us know what you end up doing.

 

Heh, thats a good one!

 

" Take a look at alpine for JL audio. Alternately, you could get a new HU, and DD conversion and just use the HU amp, forgetting about getting seperate amps."

wouldn't this leave you with the same problem that he already has. Now you have a 4-ohm HU amp going into a 2-ohm BOSE amp, then into 4-ohm speakers. If you were to go this route, you would acutally want to use the RCA outputs on the new HU, not the built in amp. If you wanted to use the new HU amp, you would have to bypass the BOSE amp, and run new speaker wires from the HU to each speaker. IMO the shop should have known that 4-ohm speakers will not work with the BOSE 2-ohm amp. At some point having to turn the volume up to 20 is going to cause the amp to burnout. It seems they are trying to get you to spend more money than you need to. Selling you some 2-ohm speakers would have been the best thing!

 

He means use the HU's built in power.

 

I have 4 ohm MB Quarts components with Bose amp and they sound just fine. I bet shop didn't hook up + and - right, you have no bass because they are out of phase and you're trying to crank it up, hence the distortion.
I also have 2 layers of sound deadening on door skins and metal panels.
They are loud enough at 14-17, really depends on source, with nice bass punch and extension. I do not get any distortion until 24 with high energy music, but it doesn't matter, since it's too loud for comfort.
Do not waste loads of money to tear your car apart, try the easy thing first.

 

Yeah, bypassing the Bose amp.