Good stereo upgrades?

 

It's pretty easy to upgrade the audio without making any permanent changes:

• while there are virtually no speakers which "drop in," almost all will fit but simply substituting
  a spacer ring for the factory plastic speaker basket
• wires can be run between the battery, trunk, cabin, and doors without drilling a single hole
• you can buy a dash control interface (DCI) so your dash switches will function with an aftermarket headunit

While no doubt not everyone would agree, I think the best upgrade path would be

1. headunit & DCI
2. external smplifier, either full size (many of which will fit above the gas tank for no loss of trunk space)
   or mini-amp like the Alpine KTP-445 (which should fit under the dashboard)
3. speakers
4. subwoofer, either trunk-mounted or in the passenger footwell

 

Does an external amp give much benefit to the stock speakers? I thought the stock speakers were widely regarded as the weak link (after the factory stereo, of course).

 

Define "good". What are you looking to do? What have you listened to and what are your preferences?

 

He got banned in 5 posts... I'm not sure he'll see this.

 

The early (pre separate tweeter) speakers were awful, but the conventional wisdom is that the later ones
were better, though as an early car owner I wouldn't know. A common complaint is that either the stereo
is not loud enough, or distorts at high volume, either of which requires more power to fix, hence my
opinion that if you want to do things in stages, I'd do speakers last, at least if you already have
tweeters.

 

Gotcha, I have a 2002 so I have the tweeters. The speakers will distort with my Kenwood HU set at 1/2 maximum volume, which is barely listenable at freeway speeds with the top down. I'm wondering if an amp delivering more power would just distort the speakers more, rather than provide clarity. I'm new to this.

 

There are a few possible sources of distortion. Distortion is always present to some degree
in music reproduction. One possibility is that at low volumes you're not so focused on the
distortion as it's masked by background noise, but at higher volumes you start to notice it.
Obviously the solution here is to improve the weak link, probably the speakers.
If the sound really only starts distorting at higher volumes, the cause is either:
- driving the amplifier beyond its ability to reproduce the whole wave, called "clipping." While
one would hope that the headunit would not start clipping at 50% on it's volume control,
it may well (and this can be affected by how you've set up any eq settings or other sound controls).
- driving the speakers past their mechanical limits - headunit power alone is very unlikely to
do this to a properly operating speaker, but if you have a failing 12-year-old speaker, its limits
could be pretty low.
A top down s2000 is pretty noisy - IMO no headunit's internal amp produces enough power for good
sound at highway speeds. Best is of course to add an amp and upgrade the speakers, but if you
are starting with only one, I think the amp is the quicker hit.

 

I agree with oth

I can guarantee that the OEM HU is NOT the weakest link in the stock setup. I have personally scope tested the output of the stock HU (I even have the "crappy" AP1 unit) and with a 0dB test tone sine sweep (music will NEVER reach this level) I was able to turn up the HU to half of the radio's volume level with no signs of clipping output (NOTE: This was done with all bass and treble levels flat). To me, that's pretty darn good!!

My opinion is to skip an aftermarket HU and add a LOC, amplifier, and aftermarket speakers. Set the gains properly, and you're good to go!! 100-150RMS is good enough for pretty much any decent set of speakers, and I assure you, you will get LOTS of distortion from trying to run an aftermarket HU without an amplifier so you might as well save your money.

 

I totally agree, i don't think the stock headunit is that bad. I can blast it and enjoy it quite fine with volume turned up halfway. And this mine is the 01 AP1 without the separate tweeters that's ear level like 02-09 models. No complaints here.