Ok, my first "mod" to the car, and it's a hack that plays a "surround sound" effect in the rear speakers. I do this by forcing the rear speakers to play the out-of-phase material, which is basically the same thing good old Dolby Surround does, execpt for a couple of differences: 1) they use a delay, and 2) I think they invert the phase of one of the speakers. (Maybe one day I can flip the phase and see if that changes anything.)

Certain audio die-hards out there don't like rear fill. Well, I'm not a big fan of it in that I don't want the sound to be "coming from the rear", but sometimes it can add to the overall effect and help keep the sound from sounding like it's coming from just 2 speakers low in the doors. By playing the "surround" material, you pick up a lot of ambiance that sounds like the reverberations in a concert hall, for example. This is the same theory that typical home surround uses for 2 channel sources (before true discrete channels came about).

So how does it work? It's very dependent upon the source material, but I tend to like it. However, on the TSX, it turns out that the volume to the rear speakers after this procedure is quite low (which is good if you don't like rear fill, haha). I can't fade much to the rear without the bass getting too loud. With replacement speakers, the volume might tend to balance out better, so it might work better for me in the future. Right now, I'd say the results are mixed.

Ok, I suppose someone out there is going to be crazy enough out there to want to try it too. Alright, let's just get one thing clear -- I take no responsibility for any problems that occur with this change. You can easily screw up the wiring and make life difficult for yourself either now or later when you try to put it back to stock. So, don't do this unless you are used to wiring car audio. All you do is cut the wires for the rear "-" speaker terminals and crimp-connect them together. (Not the ends leading to the connector, the ends leading to the speakers.) Yup, that's it, 2 wires. And you can see which ones using the charts that have been posted on the FAQ (also on http://tsx.bloghole.net/). It took me a long time to perform this simple operation because there's not much room nor wire to work with.

To flip the phase around would require cutting an additional wire, so I didn't do that. And forget having a delay, just live with this as being Good Enough.

I'm going to have to give it some time before making final conclusions but I'm fairly pleased. I think I'll be even more pleased once I have better speakers elsewhere (but I can just leave the stocks in the rear doors, since they're not playing much material). You want a hint of rear fill, but not really hear it.