I just installed a new headunit and noticed that my rear speakers are blown. Don't know how, or for how long, but that shows you how much difference they really made to me for me to notice

 

I was having the same problem. what i ended up doing is hooking up a component set of front speakers to an amp and also added a subwoofer. I had the rears as stock and had the fader at 0. it sounded good. i then upgraded the rear speakers and just have it powered thru the head unit and it sounds MUCH better. Very clear and fills the car up with sound. You would have to fade it up to the front b/c if you leave it in the middle then the sound is very high and gets distorted. I have the fader set at 7 out of 15 on my alpine deck and it kicks ***. good luck with yours.

 

I am against using rear speakers for any purpose other than 5.1 surround in the car. They take away from the soundstage effect that can be obtained with just the front comps and a good subwoofer setup.

If you absolutely insist on utilizing rear speakers, then upgrade the stock ones at the very least...

 

I'm more of a front imaging guy.. I removed my rear speakers for a weight savings

--mike

 

Everyone seems to have a different opinion on this! I guess while I have the car apart I will replace them - might as well. If I like it better with them faded to off, that is how I will leave it. It isn't a huge investment to make, and I've lost more money on dumber decisions!

 

I tried mesola's experiment, after 3 years with the fader at 0. Sounded weird and empty at first, but I got used to it, and I eventually decided that it worked better that way cranked, at say FR2-3. Pretty tired of the Bose, though.

Weather permitting, I'll be installing the new system in a couple of weeks, using a Pioneer Premier DEH-P860MP head, JL 300/4 and 500/1 amps behind the drivers seat, Infinity Kappa 60.7 fronts, 62.7 rears and parallel Perfect 10.1 subs in a Zenclosure. Plan is to set the front crossover to 80 Hz HP @ 24dB, sub to 80 Hz LP @24dB (infra to 20 Hz), and the rear to 5kHz LP @ 12dB, at least to start, which ought to help restrict the rears to midrange fill. I'm just guessing that 80 Hz is about right for the subs.

The 8-speaker, 350W system in my wife's new TSX makes my Bose sound incredibly lame. I'm hoping the new gear will fix that. Somewhat.

 

I upgraded my rear speakers and the overall sound didn't improve all that much. It seemed a hair better but the rears just don't sound as "clear" as they should.

I then added a cheap Eclipse HU and 10" sub and am able to fine-tune things to where it sounds good throughout the car. It sounds the best when I fade towards the front a bit.

 

While tweaking the setup, you will notice that 80 hz HP for the mids and 80 HZ LP for the subs might not sound as ideal as you think it will. Somtimes, you might need to have "gaps" or overlaps in your settings to compensate for speaker placement and frequency cancellation. You seem pretty well informed about this though, so you probably already knew this.

 

I'll definitely bear that in mind; what I know and what I think I know are most often entirely different things. I suspect that you're right, and I'll end up having to set the front HP a bit lower, or the sub LP a little higher, but at this early stage it's all a SWAG anyway. Especially when that HU gets to play. It's got an auto-EQ and time compensation program (13-band EQ and BBE) that likely will either compensate for my crossover mistakes or screw things up completely. That stuff works pretty well in my home system (Pioneer Elite and Polk), but the inside of a Z is another ballgame.

What I have decided is that I'm not going to drill the door plugs for new speaker cables. All the drivers are 2 ohm (including the paralleled 4 ohm 10.1s), and I'm using twisted 12 AWG for all the connections. For the doors, I'll just use a few inches of the existing light-guage wires on each side of the connector as pigtails to solder the new wires onto. Those few inches won't add any appreciable voltage drop at my power levels, assuming the connector itself doesn't, and I'll avoid a potential real PITA. I'll measure from side to side before I use the pigtails, but so long as I see 0.1 ohms or less, I'm a happy guy.

 

You are not going to get better sound from adding rear speakers. What you are going to get is what you are used to. Sound coming from behind you. Putting rear speakers in my be what you like. If you like that it is ok. Just keep in mind you are not listening to the music the way it should be listened to.

If you are passonite about music and recorded pieces then you would understand the sound is only supposted to come from the front. The only time it comes from the rear is when you are at a concert looking at hot chicks and you have your back turned to the artist.

Knowing how to listen to music is much more enjoyable once you learn the little things. The main thing being placement. Getting the soundstage setup. I am sorry there is nothing more enjoyable when listening to my system and having my singer being smackdab in the center of the winshield.

 

You are not going to get better sound from adding rear speakers. What you are going to get is what you are used to. Sound coming from behind you. Putting rear speakers in my be what you like. If you like that it is ok. Just keep in mind you are not listening to the music the way it should be listened to.

If you are passonite about music and recorded pieces then you would understand the sound is only supposted to come from the front. The only time it comes from the rear is when you are at a concert looking at hot chicks and you have your back turned to the artist.

Knowing how to listen to music is much more enjoyable once you learn the little things. The main thing being placement. Getting the soundstage setup. I am sorry there is nothing more enjoyable when listening to my system and having my singer being smackdab in the center of the winshield.

Besides. think of the quailty difference you will get if you spend that extra 2 to 300 dollar's on the front's. I am sure there is something else you can upgrade audio wise.

 

Argument for rear speakers: Why simulate a concert when you could be standing in the middle of the band? I definately agree that stereo separation is important, but I don't agree that everything MUST happen in front of you. Who came up with that idea anyway?

To each his own, but realize that using 2 speakers instead of 4 does not make you more "passionate" about music.

 

If the rear speakers just gave you the same info as the front channels, I'm not sure I'd see much point, either. But with some modern gear you have better control over rear channel EQ and phasing, such that you can actually get closer to the recorded performance by recreating some of the original ambience that was lost with directional miking and such.

A real performance surrounds you with reflections from everything around you, and without at least some of that even a good recording can seem flat. The sonic environment inside a car is tiny, and not many of the live reflections are very useful, so having the rears, along with some control over rear EQ and delay, can actually make a decent recording sound even better.

But I'd agree that having identical material coming from both directions would probably just bugger up your sound stage, and not much else.

 

I bought my '06 Z after doing a lot of reading here. I knew the stock system would not live up to my personal preferences in a sound system. I love the Z - odn't get me wrong. But, I definately need a stereo system upgrade. I like the virgin untouched look of my stock Z..but I have to say an all around system upgrade will be my first mod.

Back on topic - I dislike the quality of the rear speakers. After 1600 miles it sounds like one or both of them is blown already. I'm not going to bother getting them replaced with stock speakers because they never sounded good. I think/hope a speaker upgrade to the rears will satisfy my needs of bass-filler. I think that is where I will start and upgrade the head unit and fronts as needed...on a budget.

 

It all depends on the type of speakers you have up front. If you have a good set of components up front then there is no need for the rear speakers. I have the Focal 165K2Ps and have no need for the rears. Before I had the focals i had Infiniti Perfects 6.1s and Infiniti Coaxles in the rear. Never heard the rear then. Their placement is directly at the head rest of the seats and one wouldn't get a true surround sound feel anyway. Once I installed the focals and ran them 3-way through my alpine 9835 powered by a MTX1004, rear speakers were no longer an option i wanted to explore. The placement is as bad is the placement of the factory sub.