Hi all,

After giving up hope of ever getting a decent sound out of the standard set-up I have set about replacing parts of the system but after even more money spent I still seem to be getting no-where!!

So far I have removed the standard stereo and replaced it with a decent quatlity Alpine 4x50W HU (which I thought would have made a significant difference to sound quality but it didn't). I have today spent a fair bit of time making an acoustic parcel shelf with new pionner ts-A6904i's fitted (400w 4 way 6x9 co-ax).

I have disonnected the original rear speakers and connected the new speakers into the original wiring (disconnecting rear tweeters at the same time). Unfortunately even the new Pioneers still seem to sound 'tinny'. I had selected these Pioneers after listening to the 350W versions in Halfrauds which were very good on the Halfrauds setup and certainly weren't 'tinny'.

In my frustration I have even tried swapping the Alpine headunit into our VW Bora highline to check it in a car which I know has a decent speaker setup and it was perfectly fine.

I have also bought a set of Alpine SPR-17C's 2 way co-ax's for the front doors but I didn't get around to fitting them as I have sort of lost heart with the stereo in the car today.

Can anyone advise how to get rid of this tinnyness of the Octy's sounds. I love the car but hate the sound system!!! Will I need to shove an amp up the **** of the 6x9's to get them to come to life - do Halfrauds do this on there setup??

Chris...

AMP up the speakers with a good quality class A amplifier... but be prepared for lots of $ spent

another option is to add class d amp/ sub, then only put mids and high freq through speakers and leave the sub to give you the solid bass you are after

Get a decent amp its all about the amp :thumbup:

Im running the standard symphony cd hu, and changed the fron speakers to a pair of alpine splits, made a world of difference, next step is to find a nice amp and add a 8 or 10" sub into the boot floor just for a wee bit more punch when i would like it

I would have started with the front speakers only.

The first mistake is the 6x9s on the rear shelf, they are big speakers yes, but 6x9s sound naff. I have yet to listen to a decent set of them. When I did the ICE in my old mk1 I just used the oem rear speakers with the tweaters in the rear doors disconnected.

You want the sound stage up front, so a decent set of component speakers in the doors, along with dynamat to stop unwanted vibration coupled to a decent amp is all thats needed.

If you are a bass junky, then instead of crappy 6x9s add a sub woofer and decent amp to the rear. You will be suprised how good it sounds, even using the oem rear speakers.

You will of course need a decent headunit to drive all of this, so look for something from Alpine or Pioneer. Make sure it has its own sub woofer out, so you dont need to worry about external filters and it gives you more control of the sound at the headunit instead of fafffing about with the external filters.

Bin the ****-by-nines now! Get some decent components up front instead

have you boxed the 6x9s if not the sound will be tinny as they produce more base boxed as i did with mine not the tidyest underneath but does the job

As stated above, decent comps up front and ditch the 6*9s. A nice amp runing the fronts and a sub in the boot should sort you out.

6x9's are crap and even worse when you stick them in the rear parcel shelf:mad: why bother they look naff and sound crap go for front components and a good amp:thumbup:

In my Mk1 I had some kenwood components in the front (£100 ish), 2-way kenwood coaxials in the rear (£30 ish) all in factory fit locations and an 800w kenwood amp (£80 second hand) plus JBL sub (£100 new) in a proper enclosure , all fed from a Sony CDX-MP80 (£300ish at the time) and it sounded bloody nice.

It was set up to only send bass to the sub and the other frequencies to the smaller speakers (about 100hz crossover IIRC) and could be driven very hard when needed with no distortion.

Basically the whole factory fit setup in the Mk1 was utter junk and the whole lot needed removing.