Anyone else got an aftermarket car audio system?

I got JL Audio fronts and amps and need some low's, nothing too big but figured I might as well get the sub from JL as well. Does anyone have any experience with this one? If so, what's your opinion of it?

http://wwv.crutchfield.com/p_13693315/JL-Audio-HO112-W6v3.html?tp=112

If not then what system equipment do you have and how well do you like it?

Hey man, if you want deep bass, stick to a bass tube, and no more then "8 inches. I used to do car audio, 8 inches are deep rich bass. 10 is hard knock bass, 12's are pounding slam with a little richness, and '15 inch air free speakers pound so hard, you can hear them a block away. I luved the '8 inch tubes, they had that deep long bass that moved your hair in your car. But to each their own.

bought this a few years ago along w/ an xm receiver. wanted to get the xm integrated into the head unit in my car as well as having a usb conncetion / bluetooth for my phone. it works well with the rest of car audio system which is stock

only complaint is the shitty dial is ungraspable in the winter with gloves on.

I can't think of a bigger waste of money than a "system" and custom wheels for a car.

Its just not your time @bforrester420 dude. I have not installed one in any of my 4 cars yet either. I used to luv it when i was young, but now that i'm older other things are more important. I can see your point of view, but maybe one day after all is done, possibly you will want one ? Gotta rock n roll at some point.

I'm nearing my 40s...if I didn't want some JL 12W6s (the hot subs when I was a kid) when I was 18, I certainly don't want them now. I had enough buddies with stereo systems. Hell, I think I have tinnitus from a friend's S-10 (six tweeters in a small truck cab + Tupac will destroy your ear drums).

LMAO ! Thats too dam funny. Too much bass destroyed you man. I hear ya though, i'm nearing that age too. And i've had my 68 Camaro, SUV, and import tuner for quite some time. I have no bass on any of them. I don't even have tint on two of them, lol ..

Not that one in particular. My JL sub has been in my car for a decade. It still is awesome. It's one JL 12" powered by a Clarion 200 watt Amp. It's not going to rattle the entire block, but it sounds amazing.

But I got the money to waste and ability to allocate my free time to whatever interests me. Tin sounding audio does not interest me and I'm not deaf. No one said anything about pounding bass for blocks. I'm talking about a sound quality system which includes low end frequencies obviously. If you have a decent home theater system, then you should understand what I'm talking about.

Stock car audio is akin to using TV's built in speakers. I always upgrade my audio when I buy a new car, that's why I like JL Audio cause they lean more towards sound quality but pricey...the Apple brand of the audio world while a brand like Audison would be the Northwest Falcon and Kicker brand would be a Nintendo 3DS.

The real question would be why come to a thread for a topic that you have no interest in?

@pimphand_gamer: I recommend a JL W6 10" sub. Its on the pricy side, but you will only need one to fulfill you bass needs. If you want to go less, a W3 would be good as well. If you want to go all out, get a W7.

When I was a teenager I had kenwood's installed along with a kenwood cd player unit like the pioneer one above. Loved it made my car so much better sounding. No subs but in the end $800 for parts and labor is what it cost me.

I don't think it was the bass, I think it was the treble.

Don't order from crutchfield they overcharge an arm for them usually. Order from another cheaper yet authorized site. I have a type r alpine which sounded pretty decent on a aftermarket hu with eq adjustment, but if its stock hu than forget it.

Not to hijack the thread, but I am considering throwing in some polk audio components front. Just wondering how did you hook up the crossover or would it be easier to use the factory ones in the car. Did your jl speakers needed aftermarket amp to shine or does stock power does a decent enough job without?

Sonicelectronics is the place I usually go to. I just linked the crutch field site for convenience. I always shop compare but W6 subs are often cheapest on either Amazon or Ebay. I think I'll just go with the HO112. It's really not very big at all, especially for a ported, 12" box and plus JL designed the box for this sub so I think I would do better going this route than either building my own or testing the waters with something completely different.

My front's are the JL C3-600. It came with a crossover and is powered by a JL Xd-500/3 amp. How well speakers sound with stock power is dependent on a couple of things but If they are rated for very much more than 20 watts RMS, that means your deck won't provide enough sufficient power to do them justice...often resulting in less output an more distortion. Normally, if you use your deck's output, you want speakers that are high sensitivity (at least 93db @ 1 watt) and rated around 10-20 watts rms. Alpine makes a very small amp that's meant to hide behind your deck or under your dash to replace the head unit's built in amp.

To get the most efficient use out of amp and speaker is to get an amp that puts out a bit more power than the speaker's rated rms. Decent quality speakers can handle more power easily and are often under rated and Polk is a fine brand, ( it's the exceeding of thermal or mechanical limits that kills speakers.) So if you're Polks are rated at 75 watts rms, you would likely want 100-125 rms but at the very least use a 75 watt amp..and not no Boss audio over rated amp either ( some brands rate their power as peak power or with high distortion). Set the gains on the amp properly using test tones and digital meter of course so you don't clip your amp. ( note on test tones, technically your suppose to plot what frequencies your music peaks at but as a general rule, just use the normally recommended ones but instead of 0db, you want -3 up to a -10db because music is dynamic so you'll get more power from your amp once you adjust the gain to the correct voltage using the test tones, one for each type of speaker. so a sub with rock music, you might want 50 hz tone at -10db's, Rap would be 40 hz at -3 perhaps)

Of course typically with decent components, even deck power would sound just fine, probably better than the stocks but it's likely you will lose on the mid bass region which is important frequency range to have for blending in with the subs....a good setup will sound like all your bass is coming out of your front speakers and your front speakers will sound like they are higher up and farther ahead of you (which get's into time delay's..etc)

Good car audio get's complicated but really it's not that hard once you learn and using generalization's it can still sound great. If you have more questions, feel free to ask. I'm no pro but I've hanged around the car audio forums for enough years to get the gist of things :)

I've been wanting to get an aftermarket radio since the backlight for the display on mine is partially burnt out and I don't have an aux jack, but they're all so damn ugly.

I like the 6 inch touchscreens myself. Makes it easier to find my music while driving. Crutch field gives you the dash kit for free which is one good thing about buying head units from them. I use a portable hard drive to store them on. But I do miss having a large volume knob, dunno why but even with steering wheel controls, I still want to adjust a knob.

I had a Pioneer once installed on a Toyota Corolla I owned. It was really good.

My current car is a 2008 Mercedes C200 Elegance edition, it has a decent system, so I'm ok. But even if I wanted to install a different one I won't be able to as it'll ruin the curvature aesthetics of the interior.