Ray Khan

I have the MY2000 symphony system. I want to do a small, relatively inexpensive upgrade. The idea someone gave me was to put the rear deck speakers in my rear doors and replace the rear deck speakers with 8" woofers. Obviously this will involve some cutting and new brakets, but it saves me trunk space over going with a big sub. Replace the amp in the rear with a an Audi Bose amp or aftermarket. So all I need to do is buy a pair of 8" woofers, some brackets and an amp (I might be able to ge a Bose amp for free) Does this sound like a cost effective improvement? Will there be a wrthwhile and noticable sound improvement? I listen to a lot of rock/metal music where the bass in the symphony system sounds so muddy. Specifically stuff like Tool. Any suggestions/ideas are welcome. Thanks.

HDClown

1) Using a bose amp - The bose amp is designed for low ohm load bose speakers. Bose speakers run 2ohm or 3ohms. The 2ohm level can be useable, but it's not worth messing with. So you solve this buy using an aftermarket amp. No biggie

2) Using the stock bose amp location - NO ventilation in this location. Hidden entirely behind the trunk liner panel. You could add a fan, but with no area to exhale hot air or intake fresh air, it's not a good fix. You'd have to cut some ventilation holes in the liner, cover it with grill cloth, or not use that location

3) Cutting the rear deck for larger speakers - You risk messing with structural integrity. but, we're talking going from a 5.25/6.5" size holed ip to an 8" sub woofer. Not a huge deal here. And a good shop shoul dknow how to rebrace the rear deck, which will probably be required since a pair of 8" subs aren't the lightest in the world

4) Putting the stock rear deck speakers in the rear doors - I've HEARD this can be a major pain in the ***. May simply not be worth doing it. IMHO, it's not, unless you have a lot of rear seat passengers and care about what they have to listen too :/

Now.. my suggesitons.. obviously use an aftermarket amp, leave the stock speakers in the stock location in the rear dec. Have a sub built into the side of your trunk. This can be done with an 8" or a pair of 8" subs very easily using the stock tool box location. You can even fit a 12" sub in there with enough space. You wouldn't have to loose any stock panels at all, just the stock tool box mounting location.

Other alternate to that is to ditch a panel, and have a box built into the side and a customt rim panel. This isn't as expensive as one would think.

The amp can be mounted in the same areas as the boxes, or in the every os popular position suspended from the deck.

Use any of the above ideas and you really loose no trunk space.

Ray Khan

so for the sub, you can just cut a hole in a side of the trunk and mount it there? How big a sub could I go with? I would go bigger than 8" if it would work. I just figured 8" was as big as I could go in the rear deck. The wiring sounds pretty easy this way too. Much easier than moving the rear deck speaker to the doors. Your is much easier. So all I need is an amp and a sub to mount in my trunk somewhere right? So I just need a 2 channel amp then right? one channel for the sub and one for the rear deck? Any suggestions for amp and sub? I'm not looking for anything too crazy, just want an improvement in sounds quality and some volume.

Snail (1.9Tdi 90)

There is another solution (to the sub part anyway) check the link below..<ul><li><a href="http://www.jlaudio.com/stealthbox/a4.html">http://www.jlaudio.com/stealthbox/a4.html</a</li></ul>

HDClown

Unfortunately it won't fit in his 2000 w/o cutting something.

HDClown

Someone put at least a 10" driver smack into the area where the changer was. Left the entire left trunk panel stock IIRC. I know a 10" would be no problem, and I'd say a 12", as long as it had enough clearance from the manget to the cone would work.

If your keeping the stock headunit and all your other speakers, you really only need a 1 channel amp, maybe 2 channel bridged. Run the stock speakers off the HU.

Ideally you want to leave the rear deck speakers stock, let them run off the HU. Then upgrade your front speakers, and add a sub. Buy a 2 channel amp for the front speakers and another 1 or 2 channel amp for the sub. Or just buy a 3 channel amp which is less equipment and can be cheaper.

You can't use a 2 channel amp to power subs AND speakers because the speakers need 2 channels themselves, unless you ran them mono, which you don't want to do.

A mono (1 chan) amp for the subs can cost more than a 2 channel amp bridged to 1 channel. Depends on what brand you want, etc.

If your just adding a sub now, with no plans of upgrading front speakers, I'd go with a 2 channel amp. Something that puts out around 50x2 which will bridge down to 200x1 into 4 ohms. Plenty for a 10 or 12" subwoofer. 200w would even drive 2 of them (I drove 2 JL 10w4's on 100w each. Got PLENTY lound).

As for brands. MTX makes a good quality, inexpensive amp. They are underrated as well, so their 35x2 amp probabbly does around 45x2 I'd say. Good budget amps, look nice too.
You can price them on crutchfield for a rough estimate.

Sub wise I'd go for JL Audio as an always excellent sub. PPI makes awesome subs, but they are costly. Xtant subs are supposed to be nice as well.

A JL W0 series sub would be cost effective, and only need 75-100w power to reach potential. they also operate in minimal air space which you need to consider.

Ray Khan

thanks...but I'd liketo keep it cheaper than that

Ray Khan

the changer would go? Would it make sense to run the rear deck speakers with an aftermaket amp or should I just leave them alone and adjust the eq to turn down the low end that they can't seem to handle?

HDClown

No way of using a sub w/o an enclosure unless of course you use free air subs, which JL makes, but I can't tell you how well they would work in that space. I think they rely on A LOT of airspace.

Building a sub box would not be hard. Measure the area and basically build a BOX (literally) for the sub. Make it as big as possible to fit into that area. Then drop the sub in. The trickiest part is securing the box

No reason to run the rear speakers off an amp unless you happen to get something like a 6 channel amp and have spare channels. I'd just leave them running off the stock HU. Maybe even just disconnect them entirely.

Ray Khan

cool...thanks for all your help