I'm planning to upgrade the STOCK, non-Bose HU in my car. (2003 Max SE).
I already ordered a brand new Pioneer Premier DEH-P780MP. I also ordered the Pioneer XM tunner, PAC adapter, all the wiring and etc.

Few months ago, i got rid of the stock speakers and right now i have installed 6.5 Infinity Kappa Components (front) and 6.5 Infinity Reference (rear doors) + 700W 2-ch Amp and a 12" Kenwood "Excelon dB+" subwoofer in trunk. (using speaker level feeds )

My question is, considering the speakers that i already have in the car, would it make a big/significant difference in sound quality if i power all four of them using a separate 4-ch $100 amplifier (feeding from the Hi-Volt (5V) outputs of my new Pioneer) OR should i just save my $100 and power these speakers with the internal/built-in Pioneer amp? (4 x 22W RMS)

The reason i am asking this is because i really do NOT want to spend a lot of $$$ to buy high end speaker amplifiers + high end speakers. I do know very well that if i spend the necessary $$$ and buy nice high end amp + some nice speakers, i can have a great system. We are talking about low budget here....and the best i can get with it.
If i use my "cheap" stuff + cheap 4-ch speaker amp ($100) am i really going to gain anything noticeable in sound quality? Is it worth the hastle and the extra $$ or should i just use the built in amp?

Thanks!

 

yeah, you'll see a fairly big improvement over the stock HU amp. my old setup, i was running some bostons off my head unit and sounded they ok. after i feed them 100 watts from an external amp, they sounded so much clearer, and definately louder.

 

Hmm....did you use a higher end amp?
How well were those speakers rated?? Bostons are considered to be pretty good quality speaker. I am not sure if Infinity Kappa and Infinity Reference have the same reputation. Some people like to label them as "harsh" on the high freqs. Others, love them.

 

well...how a speaker sound is subjective to person hearing them. some like tweets that are harsh to me, but sounds awesome to them. the amp i was using at the time was a RF Power 451S amp. not a high end up, but not a crap line either. in any case, they were much happier seeing the increase in power.

 

how do you know if the distortion you are hearing is because of not enough power, or system being turned up too loud. Before I got an amp, my system wouldn't get very loud, but it would get all distorted, I decided that it wasn't loud enough, so I bought the amp, and after words it got a lot louder and still clear, but if I get a more powerful amp, will the speakers get louder and till stay clear...Im running alpine type Rs all around, with a alpine 50w x 4 max amp feeding them..

 

Deff get another amp, but remember you get what you pay for. I bought some cheaper amps about a year ago and now have replaced them with higher end. I can tell a diff even going from amp to amp, but having them amp is a must if you like audio.

 

Don't waste $100 on a crappy amp that will probably sound worse than the internal amp in the pioneer. Wait till you can spend a bit more on an amp, or just use the HU first then go frrom there.

 

If you are installing a sub, you will want to amp your speakers so that you can hear them over the bass.