(12-28-2020, 09:50 AM)Jags Wrote: Yes, I guess I’m looking for sound enhancement.  Maybe I don’t know enough about it to ask the right questions.  A song came on in my wife’s car and I said “oh, turn this up” after doing so I said”never mind”. It sounded hollow and tinny.  In my truck it sounds good.  In my dads truck it sounds even better.  I want the even better.  That’s all.  I figured it would be a simple upgrading to better speakers.  I’ve had the truck 3 years now, if I don’t upgrade it’s not a big deal.  It’s something that’s crossed my mind on/off for a while.  Increasingly lately.  So Im just trying to figure it out.

It's more than just speakers. The audio head unit is the heart of the system (or is it the head?). Anyway, good equalization and linear amplification are important to get any speaker sounding good. Speakers respond to input. Bad input makes for bad output. Better speakers will make bad input sound a little better, but you get the idea.

This is why the Sony system in my wife's old car sounded so well. We bought the vehicle used but I'm sure the sound system was an upgrade from the factory. The Sony audio head unit drove the speakers beautifully. I'm not even sure what kind of speakers they were, but the head unit was so well engineered that it would have made most speakers sound better. 

Concentrate on the head unit if you want better sound. If the speakers you have now still don't give the sound you want then look at upgrading those next, but start with the head unit.

As far as speakers go, crossovers were mentioned above. What crossover circuitry does is assign given frequencies the proper speaker to duplicate the sound. For instance, a multi-element speaker will have a larger speaker for lower frequencies, a smaller speaker for midrange, and a small tweeter for the highest range sounds. They are mechanically limited to producing those sounds. An straight input to a multi-element speaker without a crossover simply floods each speaker with the range of frequencies which then causes distortion because each is trying to duplicate that flood of input.

This is where good speakers separate themselves from the rest. High end speakers, for the home or car, will have good quality crossovers which properly separate the frequencies. The term crossover comes from the ability of the circuitry, matched to the speaker types and sizes, to accurately crossover a changing sound frequency from one speaker to the other, such as a rising guitar riff or a singer's rising pitch. The larger speaker will pull most of the duty while in lower ranges and then smoothly transition, or crossover, to the other speakers for accurate duplication.

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