| Zoobra |
I know a lot of you have have installed aftermarket speakers throughout your MDX vehicles. The question I have is this:
I was at tweeter yesterday and the intstaller told me I could not change out my speakers without changing out my entire head unit, amps and navigation because I have a Bose system and it is all intergrated.
This did not make sense to me, I have installed numerous systems in different vehicles and the head unit was not the priority. He went on to say that the only thing I could put in aftermarket was the sub. Now I feel this installer is full of Sh!t, however I would just like to verify. My plan is to install aftermarket amps, speakers and sub in my X while keeping the factory head unit.
Thank you in advance. |
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| HARDROCK |
| The "installer" was FOS. I've swapped out everything in my system except for the head unit and my system sounds so much better. Folks here say it could sound even better with a new head unit too but I'm very happy with what I got by changing all the speakers and adding new amps! |
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| Blackura |
The salesperson is not FOS. The Bose system is a 2 ohm system. As far as I know, they're the ONLY system that is 2 ohm, so speaker replacement is pretty limited. You can use 4 ohm speakers, but the sound level output (the loudness) will be less.
I have an awesome subwoofer box that I've taken from car to car in my last 5 vehicles but it won't work in my X because of the Bose. (I've actually had it installed and then UNinstalled.)
That said, there are people on this board who have used Infinity (4 ohm) speakers in their doors and are quite happy with them. (Do a search for "Infinity" and you'll come up with lots of posts.) I guess they crank it up just a little bit louder to compensate for volume loss, but the frequency response is much better than the cheap paper cones that Bose uses in the doors.
I've been reading about all the upgrades that Acura has made to the X over the years, like horsepower increases, Nav system upgrades, and other smaller things... but it amazes me that they still insist on using Bose. It's the absolute worst "premium" (meaning extra cost over base) audio system on the market and the only thing I really hate about the vehicle. A friend of mine just got a non-touring MDX with the base audio system and it sounds as good as the extra cost Bose... albeit without the six-disc in-dash feature that I really like.
Try the Infiinity speakers and do a search here for "subwoofer" for various recommendations for adding the necessary bass. |
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| Zoobra |
| Thank you for your quick responses. Are there quite a few aftermarket 2 ohm speakers out there? I guess I will look into that next. If not a good clean amp, I should not have a problem running the infinity 4 ohm speakers. |
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| phins2rt |
Zoobra,
There are very few 2 ohm car speakers. I believe Coustic makes some. Here's an outlet link:
http://www.mitekfactoryoutlet.com/p...t.cfm?PN=HP65.2
I am not sure how these would sound but would have to be better than stock I would think.
I know there are a couple of others (rather expensive). You would probably be better off bypassing the Bose amps (probably the weakest link in the weak Bose chain) and replace with aftermarket amps instead of spending $500 on 2 ohm speakers. YMMV. |
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| 04mdx4sq |
Replacing the Bose speakers even with a 4ohm speaker will make an improvement. The difference in output between the factory speakers at 2ohm and the 4ohm aftermarket speakers (if efficiency is the same) will be somewhere in the area of 3db. Not a huge difference as you may not need to listen as loud to get the sound you are looking for. However, there are still a few issues which effect sound quality. The biggest problem with the factory amp is that it is also an equalizer. It is used more in this application to electronically overcome the inadequacy of the paper speakers that come from the factory, not to compensate for cabin acoustics. So you can just replace speakers, but then the amp is the limiting factor. The amp can also be replaced. This leaves the factory deck as the weak link, and your sound system will only sound as good as your source unit.
So I guess it just depends on how far you want to go to achieve a sound that meets your expectations. |
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