Hey Fellas, i've recently purchased a second hand 2003 audi a3 and its a great little car but the sound quality leaves quite alot to be desired. I've got a good mate with an 06 A4 and it sounds a thousand times better, mainly because it doesn't sound like there is cave man sitting in the boot slapping a broken drum with a wet fish. Seriosly, it's got a 6" sub in a ported plastic box tucked in above the passenger wheel arch (factory) and it sounds horrible. Recently i pulled it out and filled the box with deadening in an attempt to stop the tackey thumping but it hasn't helped much.

All that aside, here's the potential plan for the new system. The main theme will be to attempt to keep everything looking stock.....and this may be my downfall. I would like to keep the stock head unit and stacker.....and this is the main thing i need advice on. I need to know if its pointless upgrading the rest of the system if i'm going to leave the head unit stock?

The rest of the plan is to change the front splits to Focal Polyglass 160v2's (something with good sq), change to rear's to Focal 165KF's (something with a bit more power) and either the Focal 13BS utopia 5" sub or the focal 13KS 5" sub in the stock inclosure (after i brace it) and power the lot with either an eclipse XA4000 amp for the speakers and a dedicated amp for the sub or a focal FP5.500 5 channel for the lot.

It comes back to the same question though, is this a pointless exorcise without upgrading the head unit. I should point out too that i dont want the thing to be a pounding sub machine, just produce great quality audio. I'm also open to other speaker/ amp whatever suggestions.

Any advice from you gurus would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Jingles.

I know someone who competed in SQ comps in a 5 series bimmer with the stock head unit. He took the outputs from it and ran them through an alpine processor, and into the amps. It all depends on how good the original sound from the stock unit is - you could be better off putting in an aftermarket head unit, rather than messing around adding processors/line drivers etc, just to get the sound up to a decent quality.

Also, from what I know of the car (I am thinking of upgrading to one) it has a standard DIN sized head unit, so wouldn't be hard to replace the stocky with a decent aftermarket

If you are interested in SQ comps then your HU will be your downfall.

If you just want a good sounding Daily Driver then keeping your hu will be fine - even with a decent system.

It sounds like you have been hitting up the Focal website a bit, but personally I would steer clear of a Focal front end if you are keeping the stock HU. I had Focal K2P's with an Alpine 9815 (a decent SQ deck) and loved the combo, but when I put them in the VE with its stock HU the result was not so good. The Focals have a habit of sonically displaying every bad recording/source/amp that you throw at them. They can be very detailed with the right equipment and install, but I found them harsh from the stock HU.

I went all the way with a solid sq system in the VE, only to be frustrated by incessant noise issues. In the end I have settled on a basic system that I think sounds great for the price.

Front end: Morel MT-23's, Morel Supremo 6's. I went with these as they are still a super detailed tweeter, but being a dome, help smooth over the bad vibes from a poor source. The Supremo mids are very smooth, and add a rich 'fullness' to the sound, something I really like. I have biamped the Morel X-Over's as running active will bring out every little detail, and every poorly reproduced sound from the HU. I like the sound from the X-Over's as well so this certainly helps.

Subs, well it depends on what you want. I find the Focal Polyglass subs very musical and easy to get sounding good. They don't blow your head off like a lot of other subs out there, but if you want good SQ then they are certainly worth a listen.

If I was you, I would get out there (to car audio shops) and listen to as many brands as possible. Work out a budget before you go, but don't be afraid to listen to stuff outside of your budget. It will let you know whether you really need to spend more or not, or whether the speakers that you are looking at sound perfectly fine.

I have been through this exercise recently with my brother. Initially he just wanted the 'sound' that I had from the K2P's, but I convinced him that he should perhaps listen to a few different brands. After listening to some Morel Elates, K2P's, RF Punch, MBQ's, he finally settled on some Hertz MLK165's. He had never heard the brand, but he is absolutely stoked with his choice.

Oh yea don't waste your time spending money on the rears unless you really want to.

Also, I recommend spending at least 2/3rds of your budget on speakers, 1/3 on amps. You will get a much bigger increase in SQ from the bigger spend on speakers than you will on amps. Not a lot of people on here agree totally with that, but that has been my experience with Car Audio.

Stock headunits can be a serious pain.

if your REALLY lucky you might have a headunit with a low level RCA Output.

but 99% of integrated OEM Headunits don't have this.

The issues you can run into is, the High Level outputs can often have Crossovers on them,
meaning the output is not 20hz - 20khz. it can be crossed out 100hz or higher often, and lacks
response above 10-14khz.

Or on the other foot, the output can be heavily EQ'ed, and have big bass boosts, and treble cuts or boosts which means your speakers never sound like they are supposed to. You end up with extreme amounts of distortion, or you end up with no bass and muddy midrange.

The only way to completely erradicate these issues is to go with a aftermarket headunit.

Alternatively you can invest in products like the rockford 360, but at best, these are a fancy bandaid.. sadly with stereo integration these days sometimes you have little or no choice.

I guess my point is, if you can easily fit a aftermarket headunit, without having to cut or seriously
modify the car.. then you'd be a fool not to go straight with a aftermarket headunit.

With Quality Headunits with extremely powerful tuning tools available from as little as $599 RRP,
(ex: Alpine 9887) it's really a no brainer. because a Good Bandaid for your Stock headunit will be $1000+
but it's still only a bandaid at the end of the day.

Juls