Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Car Amps, For Johnk

Not really. The plan is like this:

1. pull the door trim panels and do some treatments to dampen the door and to seal the inner (metal) panel to minimize the back-wave interference (create a proper infinite baffle).

This should clean up the sound a lot from what I have read so far. I may go so far as to install sound damping/barrier in other parts of the car to quiet it down on the highway as well. What the heck, I'm gonna be driving this thing for the next 15 years...

2. Replace the front door speakers with something a little better if I still feel I need it. The leading candidate here is Hybrid Audio, a small company that seems to deliver big sound (sound familiar?). I'm looking at speakers that can be run coax or as separates so I have sound quality upgrade possibilities in the future without changing speakers again.

3. Replace the head unit and pick up an amp fro the front speakers. I would do this only if the stock head unit does not have the power to drive the upgraded speakers. A mid-line head unit $100-$150 will give me the features I want. I won't ever need more than a pair of pre-outs.

As I posted above, I suspect that I won't need much more than 10wpc to get to a reasonable volume (with headroom) in the car.

Its pretty much the same as in home audio. Speakers first, then the room, and if that doesn't get you significantly better sound, look at other stuff. In this case I'm going to treat the 'room' first, then look at speakers...

I've never heard of, or come across Hybrid Audio, but I'm very new to this. I've been looking at Kicker and Kenwood speakers to replace the stock ones in my van.

I was going to suggest the same head unit that I just bought last week, but it is twice your budget on sale.

A website that I have found to have pretty decent deals is sonicelectronix.com .

Hybrid is a new kid on the block, but has been cleaning up in the car audio sound quality competition circuit.

I figure if I actually upgrade the speakers, I want it to be significant. The entry level convertable components from Hybrid are $200.

I wonder how warranties work for stuff bought out of the US? That looks like a good online site.

I would seriously check out the alpine pdx-4.100. Here in Canada theyre really expensive. I think visions sells them for $769. Sonicelectronix sells them for $349. The footprint is about 8x10 or the size of a sheet of paper. They really are that nice.