Replacing the rear speakers only in Premium sound

hyedipin · **Joined:** Thu May 11, 2006 10:20 am **Posts:** 1667

I tried to replace my rear speakers with Kenwoods but they sounded worse than the stock speakers.
They had much lower volume and no bass.

Has anyone else replaced their rear speakers, if so with what type and did you get louder/cleaner sound from them? I know rears are powered by the amps in front doors. So I believe the amps just cannot handle both front and rears so the rears get only a bit of power left for them.

hyedipin · **Joined:** Thu May 11, 2006 10:20 am **Posts:** 1667

anyone?

SavageUrge · **Posted:** Mon Oct 22, 2007 5:53 pm

You will need separate power amps to the rear speakers. How many watts are the Kenwoods you attempted to install? The factory speakers are probably low wattage so when you apply a small amount of amplification they sound a lot more powerful than they really are. If you are trying to install a 100-150 watt speaker, you could actually damage the speaker due to "clipping" because it wouldn't be driven properly. There is no way the factory amps cold handle the additional wattage to the new speakers.

hyedipin · **Joined:** Thu May 11, 2006 10:20 am **Posts:** 1667

Thanks. That's what it looks like. Mismatch of wattage and possibly ohm. The speakers I tried to install were 4ohm, Frequency Response: 35 Hz - 22,000 Hz. 130 Watt. I guess they are either not sensitive enough to work with the stock amps, so they are underpowered. Possibly, to get higher volume from those rear speakers, I would need to get something less powerful so the little power left in the front amps can power the rears and produce some acceptable sound.

Which brings it to my other question, what is the spec of the in-door amps? I am thinking about ripping them all and just using built-in amp on my kenwood streo.

Jeepjeepster · **Posted:** Wed Oct 24, 2007 11:03 am

hyedipin wrote:

Which brings it to my other question, what is the spec of the in-door amps? I am thinking about ripping them all and just using built-in amp on my kenwood streo.

Bump, I want to know this too.

KJScott · **Posted:** Sat Feb 09, 2008 9:35 am

bump, want to know too!

RIPGTP1997 · **Posted:** Mon Feb 11, 2008 9:58 pm

Bump I want to know too!

tjkoen01 · **Posted:** Tue Feb 12, 2008 8:25 am

If you are going to rip it out, what does it matter what the specs are? JUST DO IT!

I don't have the premium sound, but using your Kenwood (or whatever brand you prefer) to power your new speakers wouldn't be that hard. You will need to run the speaker wires from the back of the head unit to the speaker locations.

Running the wires thru the door jam may be difficult. Never tried it on the Liberty. If it proves to be difficult, you should be able to track down the wires coming from the amp in the front door going to the rear speaker, cut and splice into them to avoid fishing wires thru the door jam. You then should be able to use the wires that you cut coming from the door amp to power new speakers in the front door without running wire thru the door jam there.

It would probably be a good weekend project.

KJScott · **Posted:** Tue Feb 12, 2008 9:10 am

It matters because infinity system is a 2 ohm system, most or all aftermarket is 4 ohm. Curious if anyone has used existing system but enhanced with some speaker that sounds as good or better and what wattage should be used

hyedipin · **Joined:** Thu May 11, 2006 10:20 am **Posts:** 1667

The first question doesn't matter anymore, as it was answered already. But the second one does. It also matters because I don't want to rip it out, then put new speakers, powered by Kenwood solely, but only to find out that it sounds weak and wimpy, then I have to buy a new crossovers and amps, which will jack up my cost, which I do not want to do. Besides after a while, I decided to keep my setup as it is, factory premium sound setup is pretty good, actually. If your HU has customization options EQ, etc.

Yes it is easy, just get new speakers, new amps, run wires from HU to Amps, get them powered, run them to new speakers, I am sure it will sound sweet.

KJScott · **Posted:** Tue Feb 12, 2008 11:36 am

my front door speakers with built in amps started sounding bad. The cones separated from the metal or plastic ring. The material was fine, just the glue failed. Well these are expensive to replace and expensive to change the whole system. I carefully hot glued them back. Sound is just like new, or as good as the factory bass can provide.

tjkoen01 · **Posted:** Tue Feb 12, 2008 12:22 pm

KJScott wrote:

It matters because infinity system is a 2 ohm system, most or all aftermarket is 4 ohm. Curious if anyone has used existing system but enhanced with some speaker that sounds as good or better and what wattage should be used

I guess i misunderstood what you were asking....not sure if this will help either....

the wattage really doesn't matter in this instance. i'd be willing to bet ANY aftermarket speaker will handle what the factory amp can dish out. if you want to use the existing amp, you need to be worried about the impedance (ohms) and the sensitivity.

say the factory amp is setup to drive a 2 ohm speaker at 35 watts rms. when you replace that 2 ohm speaker with a 4 ohm speaker, the output wattage of the amplifier gets reduced to roughly 17.5 watts (half of whatever the original output). that's why your 4 ohm aftermarket speaker sound like dog doo doo. and of course the lower the sensitvity, the worse it will sound.

there are a couple options to regain the lost power. first option is to buy 2, 8 ohm non-inductive resisters for each speaker (available at Radioshack) and wire them in parallel with the speaker. That will drop the impedance to 2 ohms and you will get full power out of the amp, however you will be wasting some of that on the resisters, but I would imagine it would sound somewhat better. second option would be to add a second 4 ohm speaker. that would drop the impedance down and you would be utilizing all the juice from the amp.

I just found this while looking for some 2 ohm aftermarket speakers...which look like they do exist:

http://www.carstereo.com/rayfes/ohms.cfm

KJScott · **Posted:** Tue Feb 12, 2008 2:57 pm

that is great info, exactly what I wanted to know. Thank you!!!

struggle07 · **Posted:** Tue Feb 12, 2008 3:33 pm

tjkoen01 wrote:

however you will be wasting some of that on the resisters

You will waste all of the additional power on the 8 ohm resistors. You can not increase the power going into the 4 ohm load. You might be able to find some dual voice coil speakers though.

Replacing the rear speakers only in Premium sound

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