Hey fellas. I've been doing some research for a few weeks now on the ins-and-outs of automotive audio. Of course, I'm mechanically-savvy and have a strong IT knowledgebase, but admittedly I never "read the book", so to speak, on car audio. I've never been an audiophile by any means, unless you count using a pair of entry-level Sennheisers on my desktop PC. That said, a couple friends of mine are heavy into the audiophile scene and one of them actually budget-fitted my old Saturn with a decent component setup that sounded pretty good considering there was just a headunit powering the interior speakers with the sub/amp being taken from my leftover high school days' '94 Sentra, which was ghetto as hell. Since then, and now that I've sold said Saturn, I'm hooked.
Now that I've had good audio in a car, and given that I spend more time driving it than I care to admit, I decided that one of the things I'd invest in on my recently-acquired pseudo-luxury daily driver would be the audio department. Since I'm always on a budget, I need to get the best bang for my buck, and keep the whole build under around $500, start to finish.
The car in question is, of course, my 1987 Ford LTD Crown Victoria. It's an almost-base model, with the standard AM/FM stereo 4-speaker system. These cars had an available option for a 6-speaker "premium sound" directly from Ford. Of course, my car did not have this option. The 6-speaker configuration consisted of a pair of 4" speakers in the dashboard, a pair of 5.25" speakers in the door panel, and a pair of 5x8 speakers in the rear deck. The 4-speaker system had a simpler set of 4" speakers in the dashboard, and a simpler pair of 5x8 speakers in the rear deck. This is the setup that was originally in my car.
The first thing I did (audio-wise, that is) was tear out the old, crackly, aged OEM headunit and replace it with one that I had laying around the garage, that was actually pulled out of my SBC-swapped Volvo. It's a JVC KDS88BT, which is pretty mid-range as far as headunits go, with a low RMS output wattage and mid-range frequency responses. That said, I love the fact that the display is more refined than other makes and models, and that the background color(s!) are changeable. I like things looking simple, so I installed the unit with a simple plastic holding bracket, and set the color to pure white. Looks great and minimalistic. The Saturn had an Alpine headunit, which was great as it had quite a bit more EQ functionality, but it was a horrible blue color and the display was downright awful.
Moving on...
After having a properly-functioning headunit, it quickly became apparent that the stock speakers were just not going to cut it. So, I went on Amazon and went though hundreds of different brands and models of speakers, taking days to decide on them. Of course, a component setup would've been ideal, however, I do not want to be drilling/cutting into this pristine interior, so I decided that I'd take the sound-quality hit in order to keep everything looking stock and not having to make visible modifications to the interior. After literally days of indecisiveness and research, I decided on a pair of JVC CSV428 4" 2-way speakers for the dashboard, and a pair of Alpine Type-E 6090s for the rear deck.
The dashboard speakers have an RMS rating of 20w each, have a decent frequency response (70-26k Hz), and overall got good reviews. Relatively cheap, $28.99 for the pair. Of course, I'm not expecting the world from these speakers, but they do sound very good as far as treble and high-mids are concerned.
The rear deck speakers have an RMS rating of 75w each, have a wonderful range from decent bass output (impressive for the size!) to clear mids and highs. They were $47.98 for the pair on Amazon, and compliment the higher-frequency-oriented front speakers well.
With this current setup, the sound is okay, but obviously lacking in the bass department and volume department, for obvious reasons (lack of subs, lack of dedicated 2-channel amp, etc). I have the headunit set to favor the rear speakers 65/35. Great balance, for the output that I'm getting at the moment, of course. The headunit only has 20W RMS per channel, so it can only go to medium volume before distortion comes into play. As with all electronics, it's better to overpower than to underpower...
So that's where I am now. I've spent the better part of the last 3 hours doing more research and picking out more hardware to finish the build. Here's what I have picked out:
Door Speakers: Alpine Type E, SPE-6000. These are a pair of 6.5" speakers that fit perfect in the pre-cut slots behind the door panels of my car. After removing a small ring where the 5.25" speakers would mount, the 6.5" pair will screw right in with new holes drilled. No problem! They're 60w RMS each, are $43.98 at Amazon, have a frequency response of 68-20k Hz, and have excellent reviews. They are Alpine, after all! I figure these would add around the same character of sound to the setup that the 6x9s in the rear deck did, bringing some solid full-range sound to the front of the vehicle, with the highs being favored into the smaller 4" speakers in the dash. Once these go in, I figure it'd be wise to install a set of 0-600Hz bass-blockers to the front dashboard speakers, to keep them more high-frequency oriented.
Subwoofer(s): MTX TNE212D. This is a surprisingly cheap set of dual-12" subwoofers that are already encased in a sealed sub box. They are 400W RMS together (logically, 200W RMS each) and have outstanding reviews on Amazon. Apparently they go for $400, but Amazon has them for a staggering $149.95 -- on Prime too! I plan on picking these up first just to stash them before Amazon fixes the price or something. Anyway, they're 400W RMS together, at 2ohm load. Seems perfect for the application that I'm after!
Amplifier(s): The two amplifiers I have picked out (one for the subwoofers, one for the interior speakers), are the Kenwood KAC-5001PS (subs), and the PlanetAudio AC2000.2 (speakers). The Kenwood is $122 on Amazon, the PlanetAudio is $90.32. Again, stellar reviews were key in choosing these. They also provided the best RMS specifications while being the best bang-for-buck. Broken down;
-- AC2002.2: 2 channels, 750W RMS @ 2ohm, per channel. If it wasn't obvious, I will be wiring 3 left speakers to the left channel, and the 3 right speakers to the right channel. If I'm not mistaken, there's a clever formula to figure out average RMS/impedance across the range of the speakers that will be used per channel, but I admit I haven't overcome that algorithm quite yet. I figured that the RMS specifications would be enough to handle my speaker setup at a respectable volume (no ghetto blaster, here!), without encountering overheating or overload.
-- KAC-5001PS: Single channel, 500W RMS @ 2ohm. Since the subs are bringing in 400W RMS @ 2ohm, this was the best amplifier with good reviews and a reputable brand to match (or in this case, slightly overcome) the specifications of the speakers that it will be powering.
So, that'll do it as far as additional equipment goes. I'll be mounting the amplifiers on the platform under the rear deck of the trunk, with the wiring being run down below the floor of the car, up the firewall, and into the doors and dashboard. Obviously, the rear deck speakers will be right above the amplifiers. Now, I know that lengthy cable runs aren't optimal for quality or efficiency, but like I said earlier, I'd like to keep the tear-down of the car's interior down to a minimum. To compensate, I plan on using a thicker gauge wire, with good insulation. I'm thinking 14 or 12 gauge, compared to the usual 16-18(?) gauge cable used for audio setups.
Without the cost of cable, and purely electronic audio equipment, total cost throughout the whole audio system (when installed myself) comes out to $483.22. Not bad!
So, why did I make this thread? Well, with me being "entry-level" into the realm of car audio, I wanted to make this thread for the following reasons:
a) there's always people out there who know large amounts of specific topics. I figured one of you might have valuable insight to share with me and the others who'd read this thread!
b) as a build-log/timeline of my progress/processes of getting this installation completed
c) to write everything out to get my head together!!
I strongly place emphasis on (a). I'm anxiously awaiting the knowledgeable responses of the sure-to-be dozen or two audio-gurus who frequent this forum. While I can sit here and do all the research I want (I've been on this for weeks!!), there's always going to be people out there with real life experience who know these things like the back of their hands.
So! Thanks for reading this large wall of text! And if you skipped to the bottom looking for a tl;dr, sorry! There really isn't much of a way to condense it all into a sentence, but in short; I'm doing a budget audio system for my daily driver; a system that won't break the bank (or my car!) but will still sound nice at respectable levels!