i know taking the face off would be the best thing to do but im not sure i will remember to do it everytime

 

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.

 

I have an 07 charger r/t which came with the upgraded Boston acoustics stero system with 10 inch subs. Curious what is powering them and if it's possible to isolate the power supply from an amp. Remember. I'm new to this please be gentle

 

... this reply is probably not geared to the original poster anymore as this is a year old, but might be of some use to new people trying this now.

Here's what I did and I would suggest trying this before listening to others that tell you the only way to get good sound is to replace the stock HU.

2006 Rams do have a PAC interface that fits ( and plugs in behind the deck with RCAs ). If you have a 2002-2005 ( I have a 2003 with the 11 speaker Infinity Premium ) there are NO options for a interface. Very simply pull both drivers & passenger's kick panels and tap into the 2 speaker leads on each side. You can use t-taps or solder them together. I ran good gauge speaker wire from the taps into the area behind the thin panel under the cup holder. I then wired those leads to a Scosche LOC80 ( 2 channel ) Line Output Converter, plugged in the RCA cable into the converter, closed the panel and ran to a Infinity 310A amp under the driver's seat. It's a 300W, mono, 2 ohm amp. I bought a 4 gauge amp install kit. I bought a pair of Infinity Reference 1060W 10" subs and set them in a nice sub box from a company on eBay - it was $69 and built VERY nicely and the volume for each sub hole perfectly matched the suggested volume needed for the subs. The box fits as it should and has 2 speaker terminals... solder each connection before screwing the subs in - vibration kills. If you buy this amp, just run pos to pos on the amp and neg to neg and that will be your 2 ohm load on the amp as the amp has 4 speaker inputs. I also did tap into the remote wire off the back of the deck to turn the amp on as this LOC doesn't have a remote trigger. I have RBQ 6 disc changer - the wire was brown... and BAM !

Once the amp is tuned you will find it sounds awesome. Very balanced sound, good quality, nice tight bass and pounds. Also, very cost effective - all was bought new and total was less than $500. I would be more than willing to personally help anyone who wants to go this route, no problem. I will even pass on tuning settings if you have this amp and why. I have installed many systems in my time and this competes with any. This is not an opinion, it is a FACT.

*** One thing to keep in mind is you do need to match the LOC with whatever HU you have... for example, my RBQ outputs 66 watts per channel and the Scosche LOC80 can do up to 80 watts. This is very important. I did ALOT of research before this install and I can honestly say I am not just content with it, I love it. Buy good quality pieces and you can't go wrong. Do exactly as I have done and you will see how awesome your stock HU and speakers can sound. I dare anyone to listen to it and tell me it doesn't sound great.

 

i dont get why everyone suggest line output converters when amps themselves have something called a hi level input where its a pigtail that taps into the two rear speakers, better than the line ouput converter. no need to be all this extra stuff when the amp comes with it already.

 

A line out converter turns ( lowers ) the speaker-level audio signal in the system into a line-level signal that one can connect to an amplifier. This is necessary when one is adding an amplifier to a factory head unit, since factory head units do not have RCA outputs to get signals from. High level inputs DO work, but typically have worse sound in the end because the signal already has more noise in it than RCA level, which has a lower signal and almost NO NOISE before it is amplified. Stock HUs, amps and speakers are not usually as good of quality as aftermarket stuff, so why use that inferior signal in your system, only to amplify it?

Also, this amp has no speaker-level inputs.