Hi boys/girls, I'm new here so hi to all. I have a question regarding speakers in the pther halfs octavia vrs. The guy she got the car from obviously tried to upgrade the sound system and made a complete hash of it and it sounds awful. So for Christmas I intend to buy her this stereo"Alpine CDE-W233R" and was wondering what speakers I need to install and if they should need a amp to power them. Am a little confused on the wattage/power needed. Cheers for taking the time to read this post and any help would be great!

Which speakers do you want to upgrade?

Is it the component speakers in the front doors?

The fronts are awful sounds like they are too powerful for the head unit! Also she currently has one of those Chinese crappy all in one DVD touch screen things! What sort of power rating should the fronts be?

if you are running them off the headunit you want no more than 50wrms and also you want them to be very sensitive. Headunits only put out about 5-10watts per channel

These are rated quite well off headunit power (i know they are more than 50wrms)

http://www.caraudiodirect.co.uk/her-dsk165.3-hertz-dieci-dsk-165.3.html

As the car has a nasty headunit this wont help. Also I expect the previous owner has fitted co-axils in the oem mid range position meaning loads of high freequencies.

Another thing which will affect sound is how well its fitted. A decent, strong baffle makes the world of a difference along with sound deadening.

What is your budget?

If you go down the amp route thats fine, you WILL get a better sound from what ever you get but it involves much more work with wiring, finding an earth point and a route through the firewall

i recently fitted a "Chinese crappy all in one DVD touch screen things!" and the sound quality from the internal amp was absolutely horrendous compared to the standard skoda stream unit it replaced sounded like the speakers had blown!! (hence it didn't even last a week) and was swiftly replaced with a Kenwood all-in-one which sounds pretty good with OEM speakers, i personally would try fitting the Alpine HU and see how it sounds, unless you take the door card(s) off to see if the speakers have actually been changed?

its possible that the speakers have not been wired correctly, if they have been wired out of phase by the previous owner then they sound will be terrible and severely lacking in the bass department.

Thanks loads for the replys! I'm pretty sure we fitted the standard stereo back in a while back and that sounded bad too so I'm pretty sure the front speakers have been changed at some point! As for my budget well I was hoping this new stereo and some £30 halfords speakers will make it much better, it doesn't have to be super loud just a lot clearer but saying that if I add a amp how big and how many channels would I be looking at? Oh she already had a all in one sub/amp in the boot! Regards.

Phase issues arent as simple as mannyo said.

A car is an awful place to put audio and to get the best sound your phase could be all over the place.

It could be an issue that the phase needs swapping but more likely its a set of cheap and nasty, poorly fitted speakers

Ampwise you will need a 2 channel amp.

If you have bought some £30 components then id.be shocked if they are any better

So I will deff have to add a amp? Where on a skoda is the best place to hide the little bugger? And I guess I will have to run new speaker wire too?

You dont have to. It all depends on what is required.

Adding an amp is the ideal situation but if you didnt want to go that route you dont have to

In my old mk1 Octavia vrs I updated the head unit (alpine) and the component speakers but didnt fit an amp. I didnt spend mega money but imo you wont get good enough speakers for much under £100. Spend as much as you can is my advice. Once I had fitted a decent HU (minimum 50w output) and some decent front speakers (you dont really need the rears upgrading just unplug the tewweter in the door next to your ear ) and sound proofed the doors with dynomat it transformed the sound in the car and didnt need any further upgrades. It really was a massive improvment.

No headunit will have a 50watt out put chap.

Fitting sound deadening is good and helps but is also pricey

Sound deadening is definetly the key to optimise front component/ speaker set up ..

I first fitted my eton rs 161 components without the sound deadening and they sounded pants i then sound deadened the doors on the inner and outer skin with the help of a good friend of mine and the mid bass and sound quality is much improved

i am running an Alpine w502 double din headunit an alpine 4 channel amp 120wrms per channel for the etons

No headunit will have a 50watt out put chap.

Fitting sound deadening is good and helps but is also pricey

This is the HU I had and according to the specification the max output is 4 x 50w

http://www.alpine-eu...its19/cde-9880r

If you can be bothered to fit the sound insulation yourself its a cost effective mod that makes a huge difference.

It might say that but i can assure you 100% it wont put out 50watts x 4

I measured a 120watt fusion amp actually giving.out 9wrms (i was doing 157db with that in a "monster" build)

Doesn't state what measurement used, Alpine are usually quite good on the subject so I'd be surprised if it is 50W pmp. In my experience Alpine usually use the proper rms measurement.

Paul

alpines are advertised at either 50 or 60w x 4. This is MAX not rms, if you measured the rms using a multimeter and a clamp ammeter like the fluke 337 you'd see its much much less.