poor boy sound system

[alpinaclone]

My car, thanks to the po, has been equipped with a radio delete. As lightweight, and rare and utterly fur raze as it is, I likes my tunes. I unfortunatly have only a small portion of my budget to devote to this. What I am looking for from you wise and wonderful audiophiles is a suggestion or two for a low budget sterio setup, just a headunit and 4 speakers. I would like something with an usb input and decent sound quality. Also would you guys reccomend one of the cheap component speaker sets for the front, i.e. Blaupunkt, to move the soundstage forward a little, or just some coaxials.

Thanks, Matt

[StereoInstaller1]

Matt, everyone has their own idea of adequate sound.

If you have no intention of ever having a subwoofer, but the panasonic deck at WalMart that is $90. Find a set of premuim sound speakers front and rear, including the tweeters up front...which your car should have come with.

Run new wire to all 4 corners. Use aftermarket crossovers if you can. hit up local installers to find some. Most any installer over the age of 30 will have a set or three sitting around, so go into the shop, not the front and ask the oldest guy you see.

If you plan on a sub, get a deck with high pass filters, so you can eliminate the bass from the inside speakers so they play clearer and louder.

Luke

[alpinaclone]

My car should have had the premium speakers but they ripped all of that out along with the tweeters. I am basically at ground zero with the stereo because it is all gone. Should I try to hunt down some premium factory speakers or go with some budget aftermarket units? As far as a headunit is concerned I was digging through my stash and found my old blaupunkt MP3000 circa 2002, how would you rate this against some of the cheapie contemporary headunits available. I wired it up with some crap roadmaster front speakers I had and it sounds like.....well...crap. I think that is more of a product of the speakers and not the hu though.

Thanks, Matt

edit; I do not intend to run a sub btw.

[StereoInstaller1]

Find your premuim sound speakers, install your blowchunks. Run all new wire everywhere.

Prepare for disappointment, though. E30s sound like shit for the most part.

[alpinaclone]

Thanks for the advice man. I take it that you do not think too highly of the old blaupunkt. It's prolly gonna be replaced soon anyway. Every time I resart the car and was listening to a cd I get an error message and have to scroll through the tracks to get it to play the cd again. It's an ass pain.

[StereoInstaller1]

Those old Blowchunks do suck ass, but they did when they were new too. I so wish those fags would get their heads out of their asses. I sure would like a real option to the AlpineClarionPanasonicPioneerSonyKenwood pile of flashy crap that is out there now. Even those stupid Toyota (oh, sorry, Eclipse) are going the way of goofy flashy displays and all kinds of silver crap on the dash of your car. Nak is crap too, stuff holds up for lke 3 whole years if you are lucky, plus no damn features.

yeah, I hate pretty much all head units. Old, new, stock, aftermarket, whatever, they all suck balls. How many $20 portable CD players have a skip buffer? All of them. How many car decks have that? None. Fucking retards!

/rant

[Skoobeesnak]

Running an active setup

Hey Luke,

I have thought about adding some component speakers but I have seen you mention using some leftover crossovers and had an idea.

If my head unit can set the crossover and slope for each channel couldn't I run the stock tweeters with any other midbass driver in the kick panel and be able to custom tailor the sound with more control than passive crossovers?

If I went this route, is there a good quality 5 1/4" speaker you could recommend? I will be using a 75 X 4 RMS amp to power my front stage or may bridge them to 150 X 2 and run the tweets off of the headunit power.

Thoughts?

Matt, everyone has their own idea of adequate sound.

If you have no intention of ever having a subwoofer, but the panasonic deck at WalMart that is $90. Find a set of premuim sound speakers front and rear, including the tweeters up front...which your car should have come with.

Run new wire to all 4 corners. Use aftermarket crossovers if you can. hit up local installers to find some. Most any installer over the age of 30 will have a set or three sitting around, so go into the shop, not the front and ask the oldest guy you see.

If you plan on a sub, get a deck with high pass filters, so you can eliminate the bass from the inside speakers so they play clearer and louder.

Luke

[StereoInstaller1]

Hey Luke,

I have thought about adding some component speakers but I have seen you mention using some leftover crossovers and had an idea.

If my head unit can set the crossover and slope for each channel couldn't I run the stock tweeters with any other midbass driver in the kick panel and be able to custom tailor the sound with more control than passive crossovers?

If I went this route, is there a good quality 5 1/4" speaker you could recommend? I will be using a 75 X 4 RMS amp to power my front stage or may bridge them to 150 X 2 and run the tweets off of the headunit power.

Thoughts?

That all depends on your deck. Does it have crossovers in the 4.5Khz range? In other words, true 3 way operation?

Luke

[scabzzzz]

Man my premium sound system sounds awesome compared to my E36 (Ti). The Ti has hte WORST sound system EVER. The placement of speakers, the size of the speaker from the factory. I replaced everything with eclipse stuff and it still sucked.

Anywho, my premium stock ITT speakers sound great still. Baller on a budget says get the lowest end Alpine head unit from Best Buy or ikesound.com, and go buy some bottom of the line Pioneer speakers. It wouldnt sound bad. You may have 200 wrapped up in it max.

[Skoobeesnak]

Active control from HU

It doesn't look like I do after RTFM. I have the Kenwood Excelon KDC-X889. At this point I may just replace the deck since some of the other limitations I have come across are irritating (no USB or front faceplate input). Or I guess I could add an external system like an audio control unit. I am open to suggestions.

Thanks again

That all depends on your deck. Does it have crossovers in the 4.5Khz range? In other words, true 3 way operation?

Luke

[StereoInstaller1]

So sounds like you need to find a decent 3 way crossover.

Pawn shops FTW!

[SamE30e]

Premium speakers ftw!

I'm running them and they sound ballin.

[alpinaclone]

Man Luke, all gloom and doom, makes me want to take to the bridge. I think I am gonna pick up the cheapie $129 Kenwood from best buy with the usb input and try to scounge some factory speakers. Failing that I may pick up the cheap 5 1/4" components from blowchunks and some Infinity 6x9s for the rear.

[jflip2002]

My shit doesnt sound too great, but it does sound pretty solid. But I just use a nice Pioneer deck, and run 5.75" (I think) Kicker 2 ways in the rear, and stock sized kicker components in front. Its at about $500 if you buy on ebay (which I didnt sadly).

[SC ic]

Luke - I'm a retard. Can you give me a blow-by-blow as to how I'd install aftermarket crossovers for the front premium components? TIA.

Oh, and maybe you can sell me a couple.