Today I had a Kenwood DDX516 Double Din head unit installed. Now the oem speakers sound all distorted and muffled. It basically makes me just want turn it off and listen traffic.

I believe the factory amp was pushing 25watts to those oem speakers. The kenwood is pushin 22w RMS.

From what I have read after some searching, the stockies are 20watt 2 ohm speakers.

Can anyone explain why this deck cant push some 20 watt stock speakers, or am I missing something here? Could it be something else perhaps?

 

I don't know for sure about the Acura, but some OEM systems actually limit certain frequencies to specific speakers, and when the head unit is replaced with an aftermarket unit, the system sounds bad because you are now getting full frequencies to all speakers.

When I had my Corvette with the Bose, I tried just changing the head unit and it sounded awful. I then swapped the Bose amp with an aftermarket unit and the sound became perfect....maybe it's something similar with the Acura system...you may need to place bass blocker resistors (which are crossovers to eliminate bass signals to small speakers not designed to handle low frequencies) to the small speaker wire to stop the distortion.

http://www.crutchfield.com/Learn/lea...est_sound.html

 

Was the stock amp bypassed, or was it retained?

If it was retained did you use the high level (speaker wire) or low level (rca) to feed the factory amp?

 

The factory amp was retained. I didnt install it so i dont know what was used.

 

I think we're at a dead end lol.

People rarely replace the deck in these cars because they offer excellent sound quality. In fact, a couple people have won SQ contests with the stock deck. The problem is most likely in how the aftermaket deck interfaces with the stock amp. The TL's front and rear speakers are full range and though they are rated at 20 watts, I'm pushing significantly more in the rear speakers and they sound great.

 

If the new deck is 4 ohm and the speakers are 2 ohm then that could cause a problem could it not? It would double the output depending on if they are still being pushed by the stock amp or the head unit. May have to call the installer and ask if they bypassed the amp.

EA

 

The stock deck puts out ~1 volt at peak to the stock amp. If they ran high level in from the new radio the amp is now getting 12ish volts input likely completely over driving the input section. This would cause the distorted crappy sound you describe.

what deck did you put in? If the deck has more than a 2v preamp you may still need a line level converter to get the output down to something the stock amp will like.

 

For my own curiosity, do you think the best route at this point would be to eliminate the stock amp and run the speakers straight off of the new deck or to an aftermaket amp? With the exception of bluetooth and navi which is probably lost anyway, is there any reason to go through the stock amp with his setup?

 

eh...depends what you want out of the system and if you plan on doing anything else. That and honestly I don't know off the top of my head if the stock speakers are 2 ohm. I just haven't taken any out to check since I plan on replacing all of mine anyway. I'm sure it has been discussed and confirmed on here. If they are 2 ohm that will be tricky since the new deck will want a 4 ohm load on all channels.

Only other reason to keep the stock amp would be to keep the stock sub. You would need to feed signal to the sub channel on the stock amp to do that though.

If you plan on a new sub, then the stock amp is pointless. And FWIW, you could keep the navi you'd just lose all voice guidance.