[junkheadINC]

I have the stock sh**ty pioneer HU set to car style xB and have also tried all others and all other SSPs and crap. The stock speakers had reasonable bass for stocks and the treble wasn't too bad either but I bought fosgate primes for the front and xplods for the back and now I have no bass at all and turned on max I get a little bit of a static sound coming from them. I bypassed the tweeters thinking that they may have been the issue but they where not. Any suggestions that may help me out or get me by til I go with an aftermarket HU? I'm scared I'll have the same issue with Aftermarket and by then I will have blown wayyyyy too much money.

 

[chrish]

Factory speakers are designed to handle lows, mids, & highs although they may suck at it. Good aftermarket speakers arent really designed to handle all of that. You need to add a subwoofer for your low end and let the other speakers handle the mids & highs.

 

[evilcalvin]

The reason your bass is gone is the speakers that they use for oem are really designed to produce good results with little overall weight in lbs and power consumption. Now the speakers you added are not designed around efficiency. They are designed to ignore this and produce more volume and a fuller complete sound. Now I don't wanna get into an arguement with anyone here over "what they think" their indash radio's power delivers, but that fact is that indash units deliver AT CLEAN VOLUMES about 8 to 10 watts of real continous power. Peak is B.S. Just the facts here people.

Now your aftermarket speakers are doing actually very poorly as they have a power demand not being met. When you bought these you signed a agreement to deliver them power. If they sound bad its because you need to give them more power. Deck power isn't enough. To power these correctly you will need a 4 channel amp. Sure a sub is a good idea and no sound system is complete with out one, but it this point if you just wanted bass you wouldn't have replaced your front and rear speakers.

An ideal setup is the following:
aftermarket radio with 3 sets rca cables
front speakers
rear speakers
4 channel amp or 5 channel for entire system.
sub amp
sub

Lets talk cables, The president and CEO of Harman Internation admitted at CES 2010 to using Radio Shack RCA cables and speaker wire in his home audio system. In other words don't believe the hype. you can buy speaker wire at Walmart or at a high end shop and you will not hear the difference in sound quality in a car. RCA cable? Get twisted!! Always as this is gonna help reduce noise from getting into your music. It is a good idea to have the speaker wire twisted as well.

Power wire? I know some high end car audio fanatics that have one multiple IASCA shows that use welding cable power wire. Its alot cheaper than Supposedly "car audio" power wire is. It typically is better as its rated for heavier amperage and has a better jacket.

 

[BrickPig]

stock front speakers are not bad

For my 2011 xB, my priority was to get good sound yet not spend too much money. So I kept the stock base Pioneer unit and the front OEM speakers. The front OEM door speakers, while not the clearest at producing treble sounds, have pretty decent bass. At least the tweaters are mounted up high in the front doors, which is good.

The rear door speakers are mounted too low and the sound they put out is muddy. Thus they were the prime target for improvement.

I replaced the rear door speakers with Kicker DS65.2 component speakers. These are 2-way speakers with a separate tweater and crossover. These speakers are rated at 90 dB efficiency which is better than many others. Also for component speakers they are not too expensive.

I mounted the 6.5" woofers on homemade 3/4" thick MDF spacers to move the speaker inwards towards the stock speaker grills. I also put foam weatherstrip all around the speaker rim to seal it to the door panel as much as possible.

I mounted the tweaters up high and forward in the rear doors to improve the soundstage, and used the included angle mounts to point the tweaters slightly rearwards.

I mounted the crossovers on the doors and under the door panel, and cut a small hole in the forward part of each door panel to access the 3-position switch (0bB, +3dB, +6dB) after installation. Currently I am running at 0dB.

I am happy with the results. The bass is getting better as the speakers wear in, so I feel I don't need a subwoofer. The soundstage is now in the middle of the car (where my ears are) and the highs are much improved.

While I won't rattle my doors off or impress the neighboring cars at stoplights, my tunes now sound much better than the stock setup. The Kickers were only $78 (shipped) so I feel I have good value for what I spent.

Best of all I impressed the most important person: me! But that's just my opinion, your needs and tastes will vary.

 

[Hellen4Wheels]

I have the stock Pioneer hu, too. It's only purpose for me is to connect my flash drive with my sound system...no muss, no fuss. I have 6.5" Polk db speakers in all four doors and the Bazooka stealth sub/amp in the cargo area. I get good bass, bump when I want it, and decent all around sound. I tried several system components, spent that money, and ended up with what I have now. I guess I did trial and error.