I've had my Kenwood Z919 deck for quite sometime hooked up to the 99' Stock Bose system. It sounds fine, but still distorts when I turn it up pretty loud. I am looking at some new speakers to handle more power. I was looking around and picked a couple.

Infinity Kappa 62.1i, Infinity Perfect 6.1, Infinity 60.2cs, Rockford Fosgate FNQ2614, Polk Audio Momo MM465, and MB Quart Q QM218.61Q. I'm looking from spending up to $500 for a very good set of speakers. What would be the best quality? I'm very new to car audio.

 

Do you mean the a pair or all? For a round $500 you can get much better than the ones you listed. You can (if you hunt) find Dynaudio's for around $600 a pair, as well as Focal. If you are looking for all 4, CD Technologies are a great buy. They are considered "budget audiophile." and you can pick up all 4 for around $500. Go to http://www.theautophile.com and talk to a guy named Peter Lufrano. He's the owner and will help you build a killer system for your budget. He'll even recomend products that he doesn't sell if he feels it will give you the sound your looking for. He carries "the best" in car audio.

 

There's not a whole lot of point in spending a lot of money on speakers to power with a head unit, you'll still have the same problem. The amps in head units, no matter how nice the unit is, don't have enough power and aren't clean enough to drive a really nice set of speakers to their potential. If you really want to spend $500 to improve your sound, I would get a good set of speakers in the $250-300 range and then a nice used amp in the $200 range to power them. You'll be a lot better off than you would just buying $500 speakers.

 

$500 for the front speakers. $500 for the rear. Each set. Quality is my main concern. Thanks for all the help.

 

Dynaudio or Focal, no question. Also, you might want to think about only investing in a front pair, and a good, high quality amp to run them with. And anything you buy should be driven off an amp, just as Deathwish mentioned. I have a dual cone kenwood 6 1\2" in the rear deck running off the HU for rear fill and it works out great. If you do go that route, try to stay with a dual cone, and nothing with tweeters, as they can then compete with your speakers in ther front, bringing the Sound Quality down. By using a dual cone, you tend to bring a more neutral sound into the car from the rear. I can drive my Dyna's at pretty close to full volume and there is no distortion, but they like power. They need power. I feed 75 watts to mine, and they can take 130 watts RMS. Like I said Give Peter a call, and tell him what you have now, what you want out of your system, and what budget you have, and he'll help you build a killer system.

 

What's a good amp to power two awesome front speakers? Thanks for all the help.

 

lol
actually, it depends on how you like your sound. Tube Drivers have a very warm open sound, while still having the clarity and control of the best solid state amps. Zapco's are high quality,as are Genesis, Xtant, PPI, and Alpine's V12's. I'm sure there are other's out there , but these are the brands I have heard.
BTW Deathwish, I don't know if i've told you this before, but that is a incredible system install. I hope when I rebuild my trunk, it looks half that good...

[Edited by Whitemax on 11-27-2000 at 09:32 PM]

 

Phoenix Gold amps will blow those away everytime. They're not very expensive either.

 

Bose speakers suck, that is why they distort. Best thing to do is replace all 4 speaker w/ something good. Get components to replace the bose tweeter/mid. Get a 4 channel amp. If you want a sub, either run another amp of run a 5 channel. Remember, do it right the first time. I personally think the Alpine V12 are durable adn powerful amps. Wnat good amps? Go with Xtant, PPI, Zapco, A/D/S, PG, MMATS, Older SoundStream (A5.0 or A10.0) This is just my experience from working at a car audio shop for several years.

 

Thanks for all your recommendations, just have to price hunt now...