Hi there. I'm new to car audio (but have some high dollar home equipment (Rotel, NHT, etc). Now that I have my 05 6MT coupe, I'm interested in stepping up the sound quality inside the car.

I intend to keep the factory Bose head unit, and add a subwoofer and an amplifier (or two as required). I intend to buy one of 4080's enclosures for the trunk. I'm not looking for the hottest, ground-pounding system, but want a nice system that plays at fairly high volumes and sounds good. I also find "bright" speakers distasteful, for what that's worth.

As I try to come up to speed, I've been doing some due diligence with CarToys (I live in Seattle) and they recommend the Focal 165V2 6-1/2"'s ($450 a pair) for my front speakers. While I recognize that sound is a matter of personal taste, this seems like a lot of dough for a pair of component speakers (but maybe not - I just don't know).

I'm pretty sold on the JL Audio slash series of amplifers (300/4 or 500/5).

Here are my questions:

1.) Can anyone recommend alternatives to the Focals, and give me their thoughts on how these might sound with my factor head unit? Anything less expensive that I should consider? The Focals seem to have great frequency response.

2.) I can save some money (less speakers and smaller amp) by dropping the rear soundstage in the back seat. With a 10" woofer in the trunk, and high quality separates in the door, it doesn't seem like I'd be losing much by doing so (I never carry passengers). What are your thoughts on this approach?

3.) Any other thoughts I should consider? Would I be crazy to keep the Bose 4" inchers in the back and run them off the factory headunit? I definitely would disable the muddy 6x9s.

4.) I'm guessing I'll need to spend $150-200 on a driver for the 4080 box, and run at least 150W RMS of clean power for adequate sound. Does this sound right?

Thanks in advance. Sorry for the long post.

Jason
Snohomish, WA
05 Diamond Graphite 6MT Coupe

 

1. Kinda odd that the audio shop recommended Focal to you since you don't like bright speakers. I would recommend Focal they are very bright, since you're into home audio I'm sure you've heard of JM Labs, well they are the makers of Focal. Basically the same drivers. I would look into Diamond Audio S600s (the small "s" stands for silk tweeter, you can also get them in the "a" alum. tweeter). I would also recommend Dynaudio System 240 MkII.
2. Car audio is no different from home audio. In a 2-ch setup do people have rear surround speakers? No. So I don't think they are necessary. The only time they may be necessary is when the front stage is too low and you want to bring the sound stage up. I can explain later if you want me to elaborate.
3. I think I pretty much summed it up in #2.
4. Unlike home audio I think you will need more power than 150 watts. If you want to keep your sub price below $200 then look at JL Audio 10W3.

Here is my suggestion for a killer system. I would suggest using JL Audio Clean sweep off the head unit(go to the site and check out what this unit does), this unit will clean up some of the stock equalizer settings. Then for fronts I would suggest Dynaudio if you don't really care about price or the Diamond Audios if you're on a somewhat budget. Then I would run JL 10W3 for sub and run a JL 300/2 for fronts and JL 500/1 for sub(you could also do a 250/1).

 

definately go with the diamond audio s600 component set......it sounds awesome with the right amount of power....i'm throwing about 150 rms watts to each side and they sound just perfect for my taste.... i also don't like bright and i think that these are the best bang for your buck...... the jl amps also are a good companion with the jl 10w3 which you can pick up for fairly cheap... good luck