Need advice for new speakers!!
 

Hey guys,

let me start off by saying that his forum has been a huge help to me since purchasing this car a little over a year ago, so thanks for that everyone who contributes!

I'm going to change the head-unit in my 2013 FR-S and i'm pretty sure i've decided on:

AVIC-8100NEX

That being said, I'd like to change out some speakers but i have no idea where to start, and i would REALLY LOVE some advice on the following;

1. Which speakers should i change? I'm thinking just the tweeters and door speakers
2. I would like to do this without installing an amp. I'm reading that the head-unit i want to buy has a built in 50W amp, so...I need some suggestions as to which speakers i should buy that would be able to be powered by the HU and will improve my sound quality the most!

If there's anything else that I'm missing, please feel free to school me on it.:bow:


:thanks:

I'm also going to be getting an AVH line Pioneer deck for this car. You should change the dash speakers and the door speakers.

With the AVH line you can have a High (dash), Mid (doors) and Bass (trunk sub) setup which is perfect for this car. Called the 3-Way Network Setup. I personally replaced the dash speakers and door speakers and am using the rear speaker signal for the door speakers. I also have a 10" sub in the trunk.

I used the Fosgate Punch P165's for the doors and MTX thunder 35 in the dash and a Kicker Solobaric 10" for the trunk.

Edit - Edited the Pioneer line because I had it wrong.

Thank you for the reply! A few questions;

Are you happy with the speakers [door / dash]?
Is it a big difference over stock?
Can I just swap these out with the current cabling into the new HU? I'm skipping the amp part for now, so therefor the sub as well.

Thanks!

I am happy with the speakers. Even with the stock deck I was able to adjust the equalizer to get some decent range out of them. But with the AVH deck it would be WAY better.

From the factory the door speakers are powered through the small amp in the trunk and go through a lo-filter so they don't see all sound frequencies.. You would have to do some re-wiring to get it to work right with the new Pioneer deck.

If you didn't want to re-wire things, than you will need to just replace the dash and rear speakers.. but the rear speakers are only 3.5" or 4" so you won't get any decent mid-low out of them. The way these cars are setup is very odd.. I hate having the subwoofers in the doors.. hence why I eliminated them altogether.

So,

The dash/rear speakers are connected straight to the HU, but the door speakers are going through an amp in the trunk. Correct?

I could replace the dash and rear speakers by just changing hte actual speaker and leaving all existing wiring, but if i want to change the door speakers, i would have to do re-wiring to get them to be powered directly through the head unit?

Just trying to make sure i understand this :)

If that's the case i'd like to take it 1 step at a time, ie: Install the new head-unit, replace just the dash speakers for now i guess [maybe rear as well], see how that sounds and then if i'm not happy figure out how to change the door speakers by either getting a new amp or rewiring.

MTX thunder 35 - for the dash, any particular reason you picked these? i'm not really worried about money too much as far as the speakers go if i can install them myself. If you have any other suggestions I'd take a look :)

EDIT: are [ame="http://www.amazon.com/MTX-THUNDER35-Thunder-Coaxial-Speakers/dp/B00IYKCB1E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430164441&sr=8-1&keywords=MTX+thunder+35"]THESE[/ame] the speakers you're talking about?
Thanks so much for all the help!

You are correct in your understanding and the speakers.

I just went with the MTX because they were recommended to me by a friend in the car audio world and they sounds good honestly. I'm not sure what else I would have gotten, I would have to listen to a bunch of speakers and compare. The P165 was also recommended to me for being good in the mid range. The stock dash speakers are a component setup, just so you know that too. You will be replacing the component setup with a coaxial setup.

once again thanks for all the help man!

Do i need any wiring to go from component to coaxial?

the OEM amp location makes installing an amp a breeze, I would definitely recommend considering an alpine ktp-445u, and just about any set of components for the front.
pioneer recently released a small 15A 4ch class D block too, like the alpine unit.

edit:
check out this thread
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42239

I did Dayton Reference series 3" in dash (highs, $20 each) and Dayton Reference series 7" in doors (mids, $50 each) and a 12" sub (Sundown audio SA12) in trunk. Couldn't be happier with them. You can probably find a replacement amp that fits in the factory amp location and use factory wiring. I am running them at 75 watts each @ 4 ohm and it's plenty loud. I have the gains dialed back because it hurts my ears.

You don't need anything special. You just use 2 of the 3 wires that are existing in the dash. You will know which ones when you hook them up. :)

This is a good way to go for sure. The amp gets it's signal from the front speakers and sends them to the doors so everything is right where you need it!

Did you do anything with the rear speakers? Did you replace the amp?

So i all i have to do is change the wire pinning and i can swap out the amp, get better door speakers, head-unit will power the better tweeters, and i'm pretty good.

I'm just not sure if i want to do this all myself for my first run. I'm not a stranger to circuits by any means, but i'm not sure that i want to take the risk.

What do you guys think?

depends on your objectives and time.

Got lots of time, like to DIY, want to save money? try it yourself.

Want someone experienced handling your car and equipment, don't care as much about the money, want ready support? prob should find an installer to help you.

time is probably the biggest factor, how much do you have?

I am running 100% off of aftermarket amps, not using the factory amp or headunit built-in amps at all. Rear speakers I disconnected and zip-tied to plug right next to the speaker.

Dash and doors are powered by a Soundstream Rubicon RUB4.500 75x4 @ 4 ohms. Sub is powered by a Soundstream Rubicon RUB1.1000D 1000x1 @ 1 ohm.

I ran 12 gauge OFC speaker wire for everything (doors/dash/sub). The only part where I cheated is for going from the cabin out to the doors. There is a plug right by each door that I pulled the +/- pins out of and connected the speaker wire to those. I then did the same with the speaker wire that attached to the factory speakers in the doors. It was a major PITA to get 12 awg wire through the rubber grommet so this was an easy work around.

OP: You could re-purpose the factory wiring as long as you are not running a lot of power. Use the factory amp signal leads for dash speakers, and then R/L factory amp output lines for doors (as it is already connected). You would then just need to run an RCA from HU to your amp in the trunk. You should also run a power line from battery if adding an amp, but if your amp is low-power you technically could re-use the factory amp power wires..I would not recommend it though. They make nice little amps that can fit into the factory location. You will need some DIY and re-pin/pin-pulling skills.

Good stuff! I plan to run the dash and door speakers off the HU even when I get the Pioneer AVH deck. Later down the road I might put a different amp in the stock location and power the dash and doors.. is there a huge benefit to running the speakers off a separate amp instead of the HU? I know you get a little more power to them, but is the sound quality that much better?


Currently I'm running my sub (10" solo baric) off an amp (1000.1 DX) that I wired. Currently the amp is getting its signal from the output of the oem amp signal to the doors using a speaker to RCA converter since the stock HU doesn't have RCA out. :( But I DID run RCA wires from the HU back when I installed the amp! Woohoo to thinking ahead!

Short answer is yes, there's a quality difference. In specific as you raise the volume an amp will actually not have to work as hard to produce the power/volume ultimately that the HU will and will not go into whats known as clipping. Clipping is what happens when the amp (on board the HU, or external) is no longer able to reproduce signal at the requested level perfectly, and so the signal wave is truncated or clipped. there are very good articles on this that go very deep if you want to dive into electrical engineering world.

anyways, basically an amp can produce signal and volume more easily than the HU. Mind you just about any after market head unit will produce more than a stock.. although the FRSs stock is pretty darn good, so in the FRSs case I'm not certain that's true.

so compare apples to apples most after market HUs produce about 15-22w RMS (the RMS is a better measure than peak power output, for reasons Ill let you lookup if you care to) where as the 15A alpine and pioneers produce 90w RMS to 2 ch, or 45w RMS to 4ch. and what @B-R-Z is running produces 75w RMS to 4ch, meaning he's capable of pushing an average of 3.5x the power that the HU alone could.

edit: as an addon to this story I have had 2 different friends tell me they thought the speakers in their cars were blown out, when for one he needed an aftermarket HU, he was running a stock jeep HU, and sony speakers which clipped pretty much constantly and for the other he would hear clipping in his tweeters at high volume and thought they were broken until I recommended he try out the alpine ktp-445u, and now he's happy as a clam.

Thanks for the explanation! I never knew about clipping! Reading the RMS for wattage I was aware of. I'm also pretty sure that the stock FRS Pioneer HU is way better than the stock BRZ HU..

The BRZ headunit was great actually, the only things that were bad IMO was the navigation and the fact that there are no RCA outs. The unit played loud and was super clear. Its made by Fujitsu Ten who is the same company that made/make Eclipse units which are great.

I replaced it with an Android double DIN similar to the CaFi but cheaper.