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Some advice on amping a stock head unit

442 Views 6 Replies 2 Participants Last post by  Stevod
Hi Guys, I am a bit new to this forum and have lots of questions.
I am going to add a very small 4ch amp to my standard Suzuki head unit, I will also be replacing the front door speakers with higher spec ones. I am told (and it sounds fair enough) that the standard head unit has has the output of the frequencies to specifically to the stock speakers to make that particular set of speakers better than they actully are. I have heard anecdotally that potentially I could make my system sound worse than it is now (actually not that bad a sound) due to the fact that the output of the stock head will send the frequency presets to the speakers (Via the Amp) with with diferent characteristics.
Could somebody who knows how much the output is "tweaked" usually. What is the likeylhood of the system sounding worse?
Could Someboby with a practical experience on this please respond, with your take on this paricular stock head/upgraded speaker dilema?:confused:

Cheers
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I'm not an expert, but I can give you my experience with a 2015 Chevrolet Malibu. I'm using a Blaupunkt EP1700X (copy of Audiocontrol LC2i) to amplify the rear speaker (soon to be front/rear) output of my Chevrolet Malibu. Your factory head unit definitely has its faults, but like mine, it probably has some sort of time alignment as well which is beneficial to a quick and easy upgrade. I recommend tapping into the front speakers with the Recoil LOCD (unless you amp has a decent high level input, then just use that) and deadening the doors. If you're unhappy with it and want to take the time to tune it yourself, I recommend the Dayton DSP-408.

For reference, the biggest issue to my ears is reduced low frequency response at high volumes (I think that's pretty common for manufacturers across the board). Not a big issue if you plan on using a high pass filter from the amplifier.
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Thanks for getting back, what does the "Recoil LOCD" do?
Ah got it, a line converter, thank you, good call
It also has signal sensing remote turn on, so that's one less wire you have to pull from the head unit.
"An interesting thing happened on the way to buy a line converter" just about an hour before we were about to start on the project I piked up an old CD I knew very well (Daft punk Random Access Memories) and put in in and played it. I was wowed:cool: I had a SAAB with the top of the line Harmon Kardon 11 speaker system and it was very very good. My Suzuki sound was about 80% as good as that but I only picked up on how good it was when I played a CD.I dicovered it had tweaters in the door handles and I am sure a Sub somewhere ( I can hear it). So I returned all the stuff in exchange for cash including fitting so I saved about ($1200) all up.....but the big thing was always feeling that the system upgrade would be sub-par due to the output of the stock head unit not being flat not to mention it would have been a hightmare to wire;)
So all I need to do is fit the underseat sub and am thinking of teeing of the rear door speakers to drive the sub and pulling power from there to a 2 ch line converter to feed the 2 channel with frequency tuning capeability then feeding that output to some upgraded speakers in the rear doors. I can then tune the rear amp in my boot along with the line converters. This way I can boost/lower the freqeuncies of output of the more powerfull rear door system to conpliment the other existing system. AND I DO NOT HAVE TO CUT INTO THE EXISTING STOCK WIRING, REMOVE THE HEAD UNIT AND FIT LINE CONVERTERS AND A 4CH AMP "SOMEWHERE"
That solution mkes great sense to me:):)
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