New speakers sound bad

Okay so I have a 2nd gen Tacoma. I installed a new

$280 Alpine ILX W650 Digital Multimedia Receiver with CarPlay and Android Auto Compatibility

Alpine ILX W650 Head Unit with its amp counterpart (KTA 450). I later installed 2 sets of Kicker CS series speakers, 2 6x9s for the front and 2 6 3/4 for the back. After installing everything and listening to everything I can’t really explain why but everything just sounds bad. I have no bass and I feel like I am missing mids too. I kept my tweeters stock for now as I didn’t feel like paying for the kicker Subaru tweeters I have heard a lot about in this fourm. I feel like all of my aftermarket speakers now sound bad and honestly the tweeters may sound better. I have also tried reversing the polarity because I have seen some places it may help certain things and nothing changed. On top of that I have spent a lot of time messing around with amp settings and eq settings and no matter what I do everything still just sounds bad. I have run out of ideas so any help is obliged.

 

Try checking out and posting in the Audio section. https://www.tacomaworld.com/forums/audio-video.12/
The members watching there might be better able to help you. I don't know enough about this stuff to offer advice.

 

Same here, I added a 12” sub and an amp and im happy. What you need is to amplify the door speakers. Put a 4 channel amp under the seat, run the out wires directly to the back of the head unit and tap into each speaker wire. Youll have to do the quick math of course to figure out how powerful of an amp you can run with your speaker setup.

Its almost as if once you change the head unit the factory amp just say “NO” and everything is shitty from there on out

 

That was what the KTA 450 was for, I have amplified all four speakers.

 

Is the amp being fed with speaker level or line (RCA jacks) inputs?

Try turning the gains down on the amp. Ultimately, you want to keep these as low a practical.

Make sure that all speakers are wired properly and that they are in phase; meaning all the speakers move in the same direction. The tweeter gets wired + speaker wire, capacitor, to NEGATIVE tweeter terminal. - speaker wire to POSITIVE tweeter terminal. This is done because the capacitor inverts the signal passing through it.

I'm not familiar with the speakers you installed; are they 2 or 3 way speakers? If they are, then having the second tweeter, may be putting the amp below it's minimum impedance rating.

 

The amp is being connected via rca. My front speakers are 3 way and my rear speakers are 2 way. What is minimum impedance?

 

This may not be your problem, but when I installed new component speakers and an amp to power them I also had to install crossovers. I've been reading some speakers have them built in (passive crossover), mine are active however. May be something to look into.

But since you are saying you have no bass/mids we can at least narrow it down to the speakers, not the tweeters. Its a little weird to me that you replaced the head unit and the tweeters still sound fine so its either the way the door speakers are wired or the way the head unit is sending out signal. Set the head unit equalizer to neutral for all frequency ranges then adjust the amp from there till you get a desired sound. But you should double check the wiring first.

 

Have you checked the gain knobs on the amp?
I've got the exact same setup, well, the headunit and amp. Running the Memphis component kit for drivers, no sub.

Be sure to always test before putting the dash back together....

 

Also, solder or butt splice. I picked up some shitty connectors that boy-racer recommended at AutoBone. Never even made it through the Apline wiring jacket to the copper!

 

The amp needs a fused battery connection for proper power as well.

By chance, did you buy from Crutchfield? Because you should've. Those techs do NOT give up when troubleshooting!

 

My bad i missed that. Every headunit has an option in its sub menu to actually turn on the amp. I know mine shuts itself off every time i disconnect the battery for electrical work. Is the amp actually turned on? With the amp set to "through"

 

Check your headunit's sound settings and see if you're got the crossovers "on." If you have the high pass filter activated and it's set high enough you'll have no bass and limited midrange.

 

@Rdsnead258 impedance is the total resistance of an AC circuit. Things like capacitors and inductors (chokes) are frequency resistors so to speak.

And inductors resistance to an AC sound signal increases with the frequency, effectively choking out the high frequencies.

Capacitors do the same thing exactly opposite. Their resistance is high when the frequency is low. They also invert the signal as it passes through. Hence the need to wire the tweeter in reverse.

Amplifiers have a minimum impedance rating that you do not want to go below. That is a surefire way to be needing to send it out for repair of you're gonna run at any serious volume.

And, as others have mentioned, check the head units settings to make sure any internal crossovers are disabled.

 

I have not seen anything in my head unit about turning on the amp and I don't know what "through" is. My amp is fairly limited in what you can physically do with it ,the only things on the amp are dials for gain in the front and the back and rca/in line dipswitches and high pass filter dipswitches.

 

This ^^
I put a new Pioneer double din in my 2nd gen about 2 years ago after my Kenwood of 5 years died.
It was pushing a Rockford Fosgate P400/4 driving 4 JBL GTO door speakers and 4 JBL GTO satellite tweeters.
It also had a Rockford P400/1 driving a Kicker 12" sub. Both Amps birth certificates were well over 600 watts each.
Sounded like sh*t. Couldn't figure it out. Sounded worse than the stock rig did. Took me about an hour learning the new head units sound
controls to get the sound out of her. Once I did, she Rocked!

 

Have you looked at the manual? It has all the sound processing settings that are being recommended to you. I just looked at the manual online.

 

You mean that thing with all the pictures?

@Rdsnead258 welcome to TW btw.

 

Follow that quote of myself. To your other thread in the Audio sub-forum.

 

What are some of the things I would be looking for in the manual? Sorry I am still fairly new to all this stuff.

 

So I swapped one of the 6x9s in the front and one of the 6 3/4 in the back with the old speakers and here's what I learned. The old 6x9 sounds way fuller than my new one, it has more bass and is a good bit louder. With my 6 3/4 when I swapped them that noticeably worse sound was not there. Could I have been sent a bad batch of 6x9s?