... depending on the factory speakers, you don't gain much by replacing those

Oh, boy, Sven, you hit one of my hot buttons! But I'll read this post about five times before actually posting it so as to be sure not to offend anybody.

When you said "...the new speakers by themselfs didn't add much." I have to wonder about two things: what kind of speakers were in the car to begin with, and what kind of speakers your installer put in to replace them.

A pair of top quality speakers can sell for over $700 (see here), and frankly my ear isn't good enough to tell the difference between a $700 speaker set and a $300 speaker set -- but it is definitely good enough to tell the difference between a $300 speaker set and the $6 speaker set that you will find as factory speakers in most cars. Let me tell you an anecdotal tale of my speaker experience that made me a believer. I'll try not to be too longwinded and bore you to death...

I had a pretty good-sounding IASCA competition car -- it would place in the top three in competitions -- with 3.5" speakers in the dash at the base of the windshield, 6" speakers in the roof in the back (station wagon), and a 10" subwoofer tucked into the spare wheel. Very simple system, it sounded good because of blind luck with the acoustics of the car. But the judges were telling me I was lacking in mid-range so we added a pair of very good speakers high up in the doors -- MB-Quart 6.5" midrange.

At the next competition, the judge (who had heard my car previously) told me what I already knew -- suddenly my imaging was gone, the sound stage had dropped down about a foot, the mids and highs were muddy and lacking definition and clarity... after listening for about 30 seconds, the judge said, "You changed something, didn't you?" I said, yes. He said, "Made it worse, didn't you." I said yes.

After the competition, trying to tweak the system to get my sound back, I proved the old adage that electronic equipment is powered by smoke, because after I let the smoke out of my 3.5" Blaupunkts, they didn't work at all any more. Back to the stereo shop.

Dave (the stereo shop guy) said "...try these. You won't like them -- they're 4" MB-Quart coaxials, and most people think they're too bright." But I needed brightness to counter those 6.5" midrange speakers we'd added. These 4" coaxials were Q-series, about $350 for the pair of them. Just as an experiment, we set one of them on top of the dash where one of my melted 3.5 Blaupunkts had been and turned on the stereo. The difference was unbelievable. Dave and I just looked at each other in stunned surprise. My sound stage was up in the middle of the windshield. The sound was cleaner and brighter than it had ever been -- with the 6.5" midrange speakers adding a warmth and richness that had not been there before. That single 4" coaxial completely overwhelmed the muddiness in the midrange. And when we put the other one in, my staging and imaging was back, better than ever.

The difference that pair of speakers made, replacing a pair of supposedly pretty good Blaupunkts, was beyond anything I can describe in words.

Perhaps the lesson here is that replacing your stock speakers with some pretty good replacement speakers (which is what I had done when I added the Blaupunkts) helps a little bit... but replacing them with top quality speakers helps a lot.

Or, perhaps I just got lucky through a freak accident of acoustics.

YMMV.

tanstaafl.