So I was thinking recently about the current issue with our inability to reasonably upgrade our stock stereo systems. Installing high quality components and running them from the stock amp has its limitations. You'd take on the general sound of the speakers but it might not make a very big difference. However, there is one thing you might be able to do that could make one of the biggest improvements to the stock audio system without replacing all the speakers. Note that this route is on the expensive side and those of you that aren't audiophiles or have never spent $1,100 on speaker wire (and that is considered somewhat inexpensive in the high-end audio community) might not even think about considering this as an option.

I am about to go through the process of finding the exact speaker wire lengths for each speaker in the '10 TSX and I'm going to order custom lengths and custom terminated Cardas Audio speaker wire. More specifically, Cardas Crosslink. It is almost thin enough to do fairly easy runs. The website even says it can be used for car audio and the rest of their wire is much too expensive and much too thick for this application and wouldn't be worth it unless you had everything replaced with top line components. And since I've used Cardas Crosslink speaker wire in my home audio 2 channel rig, I know exactly what these sound like.

So maybe this might be worth the investment. It may not. At nearly $260 per 8 ft. run (for a pair) and to install it I'm hoping to have some kind of notable improvement since stock wiring is simply garbage and is the result for what I believe to be the biggest single failure in car audio. You spend $500 on a set of component 6.5" speakers and crossovers and you hook them up with crappy $0.15 cents/ft speaker wire? Negative spaceghost. Speaker wire should always be viewed as an audio component itself and not an accessory.

Btw, I am not a Cardas salesmen or dealer or anything of that nature. I own their products and love them. And it seems that this may be the only practical modification to our stock stereos at this time. I'm going to guess this adventure will run me nearly $800 to maybe $1k installed on non-tech (tech should run nearly $1,600). I don't think it'll be a grand worth of improvement, but the day someone figures out how to get the HU to work with an aftermarket amp and keep it all integrated like stock my car will already be wired to handle it flawlessly. Then I'll get new speakers all around.

So I thought I'd put this idea out there. If you have any questions or comments, please post. There are cheaper ways of doing this, yes, but I've auditions all kind of speaker cables. I hate audioquest, and you can buy that in bulk from BB. But I think it's garbage. And I hate the sound. But if you consider this, remember, its YOUR ears that matter. Not mine. But when it comes to high end speaker wire, you generally get what you pay for. And if you wind up doing this before I manage to get this done myself, and spend a grand, and wind up with no benefit whatsoever, don't complain to me. This is an experiment. And I will post my findings once I manage to get this put together.