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Originally Posted by BigHorn Inferno
Mine wast to bad, not the best i have ever heard but the clarity and quality of the bass obviously depends on the amp, sub, and box the sub is in. I tested the signal strength from the line output converter and also from the eclipse head unit in my other car and they were pretty close. Also the signal isn't really going to affect a bass sound if it has the power and the amplifier filters it well. Obviously if you are using a stock stereo your speakers are probably going to struggle to keep up with the sub, at least mine did in the Durango.
The hardest part about getting a great sound is that you have next to no control over tone and levels like you would using an aftermarket head unit. But the bright side is if you are using a good amp you can control most of that on the amp...
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One signal strength while it is important isn't the only thing or the most important thing when it comes to sound quality. You need to consider the quality of that signal. Factory radios can output a strong signal but many times it comes with distortion and doesn't sound good. The THD (total harmonic distortion) is fairly high on cheap amplifiers, cheap line out converters, and cheap factory head units. Best way to describe this is music is nothing more than AC current. it's in the form of a sine wave. When a signal is not distorted in any way it looks like a perfect sine wave. When there is distortion caused by cheap equipment, a noob tuning the system and over doing it, or cheap RCA's will cause this to look a lot less like a sine wave and have jagged edges. These can be seen using a Oscilloscope. Which basically makes a visual representation of the sine wave within the hot and ground wires for the speakers. The most notorious form of distortion is known as "Clipping" where the sine wave is capped on the top and flat. This causes straight current with no cone movement at the sub causing audible distortion and overheating of motor components. which means dead sub. hard clipping can kill a sub in days where mild distortion can be a more long term affect and just makes sq sound bad.
Now the amplifier you own doesn't do anything to the signal other than guess what... amplify it. It merely takes the signal it gets and ups the voltage to a level usable by a speaker. Good monoblock amps will have merely filters to cap the frequency range that the amplifier will amplify. Some have a bass boost which is something you rarely use.. unless you're a nooby because all it usually results in is distortion because people just crank it up. The bass boosts are usually centered at about 40hz and operate on a 12db/octave scale moving away from 40 hz. Some will also have a sub sonic filter to eliminate frequencies below the human hearing range because lower frequencies especially in a ported box can cause overexcursion of the subwoofer resulting in damage.
Now if the signal you provide this amplifier no matter how good it is, is not so good you will still get not so good sound. NO MATTER WHAT. And to be honest most people that use a factory deck don't have good equipment anyway so the amp is Sub par on a good day. While having good sub and box are part of the deal everything stems from the initial signal and out. If that's bad it's all bad. Nothing is going to make up for it.
Now someone did suggest a JL clean sweep.. very good option does everthing an aftermarket deck does but retains the factory unit. basically u just run your speaker wires into the box and that's where it gets the signal from a CD or whatever from. the main difference with the cleansweep is it is able to take that signal and process it the same way an aftermarket deck does and it provides you with speaker level outputs as well as low level (RCA) output. Truly a trick gadget. Pricey but cool. another option is the rockford fosgate 360.2 which is really nice as well.
