If I want to upgrade my stereo, and I need to do it a little bit at a time, should I start with speakers? My biggest gripe is that the rear deack speakers can't seem to handle the low end of heavy rock music. I noticed last night when some techno/house was playing in my car that the symphony system sounds pretty good playing that type of stuff. The bass sounds decent. no vibrating, muffled sound at all. It's pretty crisp. Throw in some Tool and the lows sound like crap.

So my question is can replacing the rear deck speakers alone make a big deffierence in the bass response? I'd rather not do a sub if I don't need to. I guess what I would like to do in steps is replace the speakers with nicer quality stuff. Eventually get an amp to power it and adjust the frequncies going to each speaker. I prefer to keep the stock headunit. Any suggestions? Will I need to go with larger rear deck speakers? Does that involve much modification. Keep in mind I know very little about stereo. I want to do a cost efficient upgrade. I don't want a rediculous system. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

unfortunately, you're going to have a problem with replacing the deck speakers to get more bass. Typically, the problem isn't with the speakers themselves, but with the amp used to power them. A headunit simply isn't enough. Instead of immediately getting new speakers, you're better off getting an amp first. See if that tightens up the bass (it truly should). If you really push things and blow a deck speaker, so what? You were planning to replace them anyways!

One additional note is that a lot of OEM speakers are not at full-resistance. In other words, they operate at low resistivity so they sound louder with less power going to them. This makes a lot of distortion, unfortunately. If you add new speakers at full-resistance (4 ohms), you'll actually have LESS bass, because they won't use the power as efficiently.

I'm telling ya, get the amp first, and the speakers second.

You would need to get the MB Quart adapters and build some type of small enclosure for each sub under the rear deck. I've heard this setup in a competition car and it sounded really good. Just don't expect to get huge bass out of it. It's not going to defy the law of physics and sound like a 12" sub but it does sound full. You can get an amp and hook it up to the stock head unit. I believe that JL and Kicker make 6.5" subwoofers. I know that Focal just released a 5" subwoofer that is pretty damn good too but really expensive.

That produce a decent bass, but it's absolutely nothing like an 8" sub. You really need to drop in a small box of some kind, even if it's a JL Microsub 8.1 or something even smaller (kicker solobaric will run in smaller enclosures) to get a good subbass reproduction.

As others recommend, you need an amp, any way you slice it. Perhaps buy an amp and try the factory stuff on that. I suspect youll start blowing speaker rather quickly however.

something decent...Thanks everyone.

i had my alpine deck running 6.5 boston's in rear and the lows were simply amazing(i listen to tool all the time) thats what i would try first. jay

amp driving it too?