So far owning a cobalt I am impressed with the pioneer stock system, although the bass could hit a little harder. The HU that is in it seems like it more than likely has more hit, it just is not amplified enough. I was looking to get an aftermarket amp, but stay with the stock subwoofer and I am not exactly sure which one I should get, and what to expect installing it.

Can someone please tell me what I would have to do in order to install the new amp. Would I have to do an amp bypass? Oh btw im no expert in car audio, but I do have common sense

 

upgrade stock pioneer sub for a nice shallow mount and get a decent amp to match most newer amps have high level inputs so you can wire from stock wires to amp.

 

I just replaced my headunit and turned up my chimes, which in turn turned up my audio and the power delivered to the sub. BUT! I turned it back down because my fiance didn't like how loud the blinker and door chime was. :P

 

yea like was said before just get a new shallow mount sub, make sure its a 2 ohm sub though

 

so something like this?

or should I stay pioneer? i would rather get an 8'' because i dont want to have to deal with cutting the stock housing down

 

I ran a small amp I had laying around to the stock sub via an LOC attached to the stock wires, sounded a lot better. Not a fancy setup, but more base for free (I had all the parts here already) and really helped round out the sound.

The stock enclosure is shallow, not all 8" subs will fit, it's only about 4" deep I believe. Have to get something designed for a shallow box.

 

thats what i was hoping to do, where did you get the LOC and the wiring?

 

Like the other guys said, get an amp, line out converter and a shattow sub (stock sub depth is 4") and there will be a huge difference. I used a normal depth sub as I already had it, but a shallow makes installation so much easier.

 

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Atrend+-...&skuId=9041048

http://www.crutchfield.com/p_500SWS1...3D.html?tp=111

Think they'll work?!?!?

 

Any LOC will work, you can get one from any place that sells stereo stuff. Hell, wal-mart has them.

Wiring is minimal if you use that method, since the battery is in the back, your power/ground wires are really short, and since the amp is right next to the lead and the speaker, so are the connection wires. Any amp kit will work just fine. Takes longer to run the remote turn-on wire up front than anything else. Just pull it through the console to the fuse panel on the lower right and tap into the sunroof fuse or anything else that comes on when the key is on.

Possibly, I've never personally tried to open the stock enclosure for a 10". I'd say just get an 8" and leave it.

Stock enclosure is hollow plastic, it won't work too well at higher pressure anyway, so I wouldn't get carried away. A little more power on the stock sub actually is pretty decent, any more than that and I would just ditch all the stock stuff and go with a real box for a decent single setup if you're worried about space.

 

 

10'' sub puts out like twice as much power as an 8", how much cutting will i have to do to fit it in the stock housing? or can someone confirm that those spacers work?

 

Easiest way is to upgrade the headunit with a quality one.

I have a Pioneer touchscreen double-din DVD player and it slams with the stock speakers. It has an equalizer so you can tune it to match the system's efficiency range.

Absolute best way to upgrade your sound without ghettofying everything up like the majority of members' cars on this forum.

 

i dont have 500 dollars just lying around bro.

im trying to get a good bump, spending less than 150. but i do agree, a good head unit makes a HUGE difference

 

You can get a good HU for 200 bucks nowadays if you shop around. Amazon is your friend.

It's just going to sound like **** if you just slap a cheap sub and amp on there. Again, these are relatively nice cars, not a $500 Civic.

Mod accordingly.

 

if you want to spend less then 150 bucks then the best thing you can do is pretty much nothing. buy a sub on the stock amp and its going to sound like **** (stock amp has a whooping 50w at best) buy a new hu and you might bet a little better but in reality not. buy an amp on the stock sub then theres a real good chance you going to blow it.

unfortunately you need an amp and sub to make it worth while IMO

 

haha a HU dosent really do **** for sound IMO, you can do more adjustments with a nice aftermarket HU, but even a $1500 top of the line HU isnt going to make stock speakers sound that much better

 

I still lol when I see this thread and think it's about boxing or something.

 

Are you ******* kidding me? Have you ever swapped a decent HU into these cars before and actually tuned the output to tailor the specific system? I would hope so with that signature of yours.

Or did you just jack up the bass boost and tune the EQ without knowing what you are doing.

With the factory headunit, the rear sub is being powered as a speaker, which is USELESS for hard-hitting bass like an aftermarket subwoofer would give you. A lot of good HU's allow the rear 3 speakers to receive sub-only signals (below 75hz or whatever you tune it to). My car slams with this setup and every other speaker tuned correctly with the EQ. It's very much comparable to my old 12" JL setup with a 200W RMS amp that I had in my old Cavalier.

 

i went from the stock HU on aftermarket speakers to a decent eclipse HU to a nice pioneer in dash and noticed no difference in sound quality....im not even talking about bass btw

also i can turn my sub amp off and disable the HPF on my 4 channel amp and get all 4 of my speakers to thump but it sounds like ****.

 

Well then something is wrong because on my 07 there was a HUGE night and day difference.

 

mind you both of you guys are talking about different things. brik is talking about overall sound from the speakers. chris is talking about bass when setting the rear output to "sub"

 

ohh i filtered out all the bass going to my 4 speakers...the only thing putting out any bass is the sub