Or does the 8's Bose system sound like complete crap? My friends '85 Buick makes more bass from it's 6x9s off a el-cheapo Delco system. Deck mounted 6x9s with their infinite baffle should hit low enough to to give the illusion of a subwoofer. I'm guessing the Bose system has high-pass on all the speakers in the car. Say 40~50hz or so? Anything lower is completely missing. The bass control on the head unit just makes it sound muddy like it's only boosting a hump around 100hz and nothing lower. The trebble seems to have low-pass as well at maybe 18k? There's no twinkle in the tweets at all. Maybe some 2.2uf or even 1.1uf caps would hush some of the harshness and bring out the shine. Something is telling me Bose EQ'd this setup to sound loud and with the limited power it has they needed to cut the low end to avoid distortion and cut the high end to hide any distortion that might happen.

Tomorrow I plan to bring out my test rig* and feed the stock speakers directly with a normal signal and see how they sound. If it clears up I'll see if it's the stock headunit screwing up the sound or if it's the Bose amps. If it's the amps I may remove the EQ from them if it's not littered with untracable surface mount components.

*Test rig consists of a Pioneer HU and 12v 7ah battery in a portable box with 15' speaker cables with aligator clips. Also has a push-to-test DC output function (through the speakers leads) to find mis-wired speakers.

 

I went from a rx8 without bose to an rx8 with bose....There is a difference. I'm not really into sound systems anymore so the bose setup does a great job to me. Keep us updated on what you find out.

 

The biggest problem with the Bose, isn't the Bose, it's the car. Being built as a lightweight sports car, the bass power from the speakers goes to vibrating sheet metal. Second skin or dynamat even just the door skins behind the 8" woofers, and you'll hear a big improvement.

https://www.rx8club.com/interior-aud...1/#post3958448

 

The door "tweeters" use a 22uf capacitor. It's a 4ohm speaker so the x-over frequency with 22uf is 1800hz. That's a little bit low for a tweeter and explains the shreeking that would be music coming out of them. I've replaced them with 10uf capacitors to put the x-over frequency at a bit more respectable 4000hz. I may go higher. 3.3uf would get you a nice crispy 12khz but the stock bose door speakers can't go anywhere near that high. When I replace the door speakers, I'll be puting dome tweeters in place of the Bose "tweeters". I also believe the door speakers are being both high-passed and low passed. They act more as a mid-bass/mid-range speaker. I've seen a photo of the door speaker and it looks to have an amp attached to it. Anyone verify? If the band-pass is being accomplished by that little amp, I can likely bypass/mod it's x-over. I'll keep you posted.

My ultimate goal is to make the stock Bose system sound as good as I can.

Another note... The center speaker is playing trebble. That absolutly DESTROYS the stereo image as higher frequencies are more directional. I shall be disabling it. -.-

 

The signals going to the speakers are already heavily modified/equalized by the Bose amp in the rear. Yes, there are amps in the door as mentioned in the sticky: https://www.rx8club.com/interior-aud...-first-226065/

Upgrading the Bose is a well-trodden path. Reading may save time and money. This is one of the better threads: https://www.rx8club.com/interior-aud...pgrade-103771/

The "tweeters" are really tweeter/mids, which complicates their replacements. Capping and pulling the center speaker will kill the midrange.

I'm reasonably happy with:

Second Skin Damplifier soundproofing.
Image Dynamics XS-28 front mid-tweeters.
Alpine SPS-609 rear speakers (6"x9").
Boston A. S-35 center-front speaker (3.5").
Polk Audio AA3105-A MM1040 DVC Sub (10").
4080 RHS trunk-mount Subwoofer Enclosure.
Kenwood 6104D mono amp (200/300W).
Auxmod "basic" auxiliary head unit input.
Sanyo Sirius receiver 0000-81-G01B.

 

I don't personally have a bose system, but I heard from my friend that trying to upgrade the sound system is not fun. Something about 6 feet of grounding wire running from your dash to your trunk. Not exactly what I'd want to deal with

 

my friend put in a head unit this weekend (bose system) he said it was 8hrs and 24 feet of wires

 

good god. do the wires zig zag like everywhere?

 

It has plenty of whatever midrange it had there, just softer. There's still a massive hole in the spectrum but the harshness has improved. I have yet to pull the center speaker and I can forsee a drop in mids but I really don't want any form of center speaker. Center speakers are for mono movie dialog not music. If the doors are lowpassed it's likely I can bring back some of what's missing that way. It's not rocket science.

In that FAQ there's a LOC80 listed. no no no. LOC80 = 200Hz to 15KHz bandwidth.

 

here is what I did with my bose system...

https://www.rx8club.com/interior-aud...nstall-209570/

 

It's like bose tried to put a home theater system in a car, which is nice... but not anything like what it would have sounded like if they actually tried to put an automotive sound system in.