I've owned my '02 accord for about 10 days. I am already less than pleased with the sound of the stock stereo system.

If I replaced the door & rear deck speakers with medium quality aftermarket 2 or 3 way speakers, will the sound quality increase enough for me to be happy? Or is the sound quality problem casued by the deck itself? At this time I would like to keep the in-dash 6 CD changer. Has anyone been pleased with the sound of their system after a simple aftermarket speaker upgrade?

 

OK, 27+ reads and no replies. Oh well, how about this question... a little more specific.

I'm thinking about the MTX TX6001 (6.5" separates) for the doors, and either the MTX TDX 6902 or 6903 axials for the rear. I've run coaxial speakers off of a stock deck before and it sounded alright, but can I run the separates off the stock deck and have it sound good too?

The separates are only rated for 90W RMS and have a 4 Ohm load. I think it would work. I guess if it doesn't sound good I could always add a 4 channel amp later.

 

I always advocate replacing or imrpoving the signal before replacing the speakers... (unless the speakers are very sub-par or blown). Some advocate the other way around. I guess it's a matter of preference. I think nice speakers played at 12w RMS will sound nice, but not great. I also think ok stock speakers will sound nice played at 50w RMS of clean power (amped), but not great. Six of one, half dozen of another... But like I said, I prefer the amplification first.

I know honda doesn't make it easy to switch HUs with their integrated functions and all (in some models) but I still think the best bang for buck is adding amplification. 4 decent speakers cost $400 easily. One decent amp can cost $300 to install (even keeping your factory HU). Its your call.

 

'03 + Stock HU has 120 W....EX had 180W

 

I went ahead and replaced the rear 6x9s with a pair of MTX 6902. I wanted to do the front doors first, but I found a great deal on ebay so I went ahead with it. It's already a huge improvement over the stock speakers. Now I just need to figure out what I want to do for my doors. I'm keeping it simple and just replacing the speakers. I would love to get carried away and put a full-out system in this car, but my budget doesn't allow it this time. I'm leaning towards a 2-way component set for the doors, but without an amp, I'm a bit cautious.

 

It's the EX with Nav that has the higher output, not just the EX.

 

120w MAX, not RMS. And divide that between 6 speakers and you get 20w MAX per speaker. About 10-12w RMS. Normally, the tweeters wouldn't count with a decent amp and assuming the other 2 front speakers weren't sharing the same band of frequency. But I think the speakers are probably crossed over in-line.



Anyway, good luck with the system dude.

 

in the end, you cant measure sound quality in the number of watts, cause you can have a 1000 watts, and it will still sound like crap, look at bose, they best high quality and balanced sound off a 16 to 50 watt 1 inch speaker that puts out as much bass as an 8 inch because of how the air pathways are made.
Your ultimately better off looking at the individual stats of the deck and the speakers to decide, but you can only get so much out of that without actually hearing it

 

Thanks Marbro,

You speak wisely. However, A factory deck and factory speakers typically don't provide good performance together.

I totally agree about wattage. I won best of show in a major car audio competition with an 80 watt amplifier running my entire system. I actually had the judges request I remove all the accessable body panels to see if I was "hiding" amps. It's not the power, its what you do with that counts. However, I still hold that a complete factory system (in an Accord, which is what we're talking about) is not adequate IMHO.

 

To the OP, I'd look into these Infinity speakers. If you're going to run speakers off of the stock HU you want something that has a high sensitivity rating. These have a rating of 92db which should do you just fine. If you go to HondaPilot.org you'll see that a lot of people there have been using these on the stocker HU. Hope this helps.

TriHonda: Do you know what the stock speakers are rated and what their impedence is? I'd hate to run the stock speakers off of an aux. amp without knowing what they can actually handle or under power them due to misjudging the load.



http://www.crutchfield.com/S-hzr02MT...00&I=1086012SI