Ok....I'm done with the stock Infinity amp. I'm no audiophile, but I need a suggestion....
I've upgraded my head unit to a Pioneer Premiere model. I've got a Kenwood KFC-XW1200F sub for the back that I'll be pushing with my JL500/1 amp. For me, that will be more than enough bass for the truck. But I'm having a hard time finding a decent amp for the door and dash speakers. I'm not vastly knowledgeable in stereo stuff these days. But I would think that I need a 5 channel amp to cover all the speakers in the truck. But all I find with 5 channels are 4 channel +1 for the sub. And those seem to only push about 40-60W per channel!

I don't need to have 200db's of ear piercing, window shaking jams...But the stock infinity amp sucks ***!

So what amps are you guys running to push the mids and highs?
I'm looking for something affordable. I'm not looking to break ear drums...OR my wallet.

Thanks.

 

Do you still have the stock door speakers? Since You've already upgraded your head unit, why don't you try some new speakers for the doors. You may be surprised how well an aftermarket head unit will push some mids and highs. Then if you still want more, you can look at adding an aftermarket amp. I wouldn't waste the time or money to add an aftermarket amp to the stock speakers.

 

Why change out the speakers? Do they run high resistance?
Again, I'm no audiophile, so they sound good to me. Just don't get loud enough.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not wanting to argue...just want to understand the method to the madness.

 

You're going to have to go through a lot more conversions. The truck sound system with the infinity system is setup like your high end audio speaker. When you take a grill off a tall speakers for example you'll see many little speakers inside. Each of those speakers are designed to reproduce different frequency's. The truck is the same way. You may notice that only bass note come out of the front door speakers. All of the mids and treble come from the dash. That is called a component system. When you bypass the Infinity amp, you will start sending all the frequency's to all of the speakers. It will no longer be split. Now at this point you have 2 choices. You can either get an amp that has a crossover in it and wire it that way, or just replace the speakers. If you take a look at your front door stock speakers you'll notice that they are only 1 way (so to speak) there are no other little speakers to reproduce the sound. If you go and look at new car speakers they will be classified as 2, 3 or 4 way speakers. That comes back to that tall bookshelf speaker. There are 2,3 or 4 little speakers inside of that one 6x9 speaker. That new speaker will then split all the frequency's at the appropriate place on the audio spectrum.

Your choices are to get a 4 channel amp and set the cross overs for the front door speakers. The tweeters in the dash will cancel out what they can't handle so you can feed them anything. Your other choice is to get at least new front door speakers. If you're going that route, you shouldn't mix n' match. It won't hurt anything, it may sound weird, however.

 

I fully understand what you are getting at.
Here's where I am though. I don't care if the truck sounds like a hi-fi system. Again, I'm no audiophile. I can't be. My hearing sucks and there are plenty of tones that I simply can't hear. So I need to have it a little louder.
But I should be able to take my head unit that breaks down the front and rear channels separately with adjustable cross overs for each, and direct all the bass to the rear channel (excluding mids of course), push that with an aftermarket amp and get decent sound out of the system.
I know that this system is designed as a surround sound system. But truth be told, I've never had that before and my ears can't tell a difference. It's just quiet to me.

"Needs more power!!" - Long live the tool man!

 

All of my doors are 6.5 coax and 4 ohm rated. I run a 2 channel amp so I set both driver side doors wired in parallel and my passengers side the same so it gives me a 2 ohm load. With my 2 channel amp at 2 ohm I get 400 watt rms so thats 100 per speaker which is what they are rated for.

 

I wouldn't recommend running any speakers off of the head unit. If you had to, I would only run the tweeters. Do not run the front door speakers off the head unit. When you're using the head unit, the louder it gets the more it cuts the bass. I have a 4 channel amp in my truck. Each 6x9 front door speaker gets a channel. The rear door and the tweeters get the other 2 channels. The rear door are full range speakers and the tweeters will only take what they can reproduce. If I was you I'd be looking for a decent 4 channel amp. I have the JBL GTO 1004. That's about 100 watts per channel. The 6x9's that each have their own channel have about 3/4 gain on them. The rest is about an 1/8. Basically you should be looking for a 4 channel amp with around 100 watts per channel. The truck is just setup as Left and right, a stereo setup. There is no surround sound going on.

 

All good points, however, you may be missing a few pieces of the puzzle. Surround sound is the recording not the system directly. If the recording did not have a front to rear bias then it is really stereo (think Queen), so the "surround" is unneccessary.

Secondly, 40-60 watts is ALOT of higher frequency amplification (think Guitar amps). The reason that subwoofers get the most wattage is because of the frequencies that the "mass" of the coil/cone has to push to make that frequency.

I personally agree that your head unit is not enough to really give you what you want and a 4 channel amp (even at 60 watts/ch) WITH a decent EQ is probably what your looking/listening for.

The stock speakers are generally paper so that the speaker is sensitive to a broader range of frequencies. The poly/ rubber/ blah blah blah speakers are really for a better defined use of the sound and require a bit of knowledge to understand the crossovers/ amp/ eq modeling.

Since your not an audiophile (subjectively), you should really go and listen at an audioshop or Best Buy (r) ect. to see what the BASIC sound of the speakers are like.

In closing, the unamped speakers will only distort when you start to push them with the head unit (plus the head unit is not really a good spkr power source), so an amp will send a cleaner signal to them and give you a better experience.