I don't have any intention of spending crazy amounts of money on the car audio system, unless I get a job that pays too much and is too far away, making me spend at least two hours in the car every day. Otherwise it's a waste of money. And I really doubt that a good set of Pioneer speakers would sound worse than the factory speakers.
LOL seems to me that you're trying to make me spend way too much money. But whatever, you don't seem to understand that I don't want to spend a lot of money on the super system for my new car, I just want something that allows me to enjoy the music, so I'll replace the speakers in a few months, and then if Ford has a certified technician that can install my amp and subwoofer (which I installed myself 7 years ago in my old car, but I'm not so willing to start taking my new car apart), then even better. If there's a way to install an EQ great, because you may think they're pointless, but to many people, myself included, they are great. And if it's not possible to install one with the factory stereo, so be it, unless I start using my car 2 or more hours every day, I'm not going to waste money in that, in any case I would put it into making payments for the car.
Gotta point out that Yes a pair of unamped and underpowered pioneer speakers will sound worse than stock factory speakers. You will literally have no bass/midbass, muddy midrange and peaky highs that sound really nasty. Stock decks pump out at most 5-8 watts per speaker and yes that includes 2013-2014 models too unless you have the dynaudio/bose/jbl/mosconi package. The reason why it will sound shi
tty is because the voice coil/ motor needs more power to keep the speaker excursion under control and bring life to the mids.
Think of it this way, you have two workers, one really big muscle guy and a small toned guy. You can only feed them one small meal of a few bread crumbs (your head unit power) a day and they have to work hard labor. That meal will fill up the small guy and give him lots of energy to work efficiently meanwhile the bigger guy will starve and work at a severe deficiency.
When you calculate all the money spent on labor because you have to make a proper seal and baffle for the speakers(around 100-200... Ford technicians overcharge like crazy). The cost of the speakers themselves(200 for all 4), and then a 4 channel amplifier to amp them up(200) then that clarion EQ (50$). I guarantee you still would have to keep tweaking and adjusting the sound to your liking and will not be as satisfied as expected..
If you save up and buy the DSP which would be around the same price as the above option, I have no doubt that it will flat out stomp the living **** out of ^^^^ that setup up there in every way possible in terms of sound quality and price to performance ratio.
Now let me explain why
In car audio, theres your audio data that needs to be converted into a digital audio signal that will be sent to your speakers and your speakers will play the music. Pretty much all non-dynaudio/bose/jbl/mosconi upgraded, meaning just pure stock systems have a horrible digital audio convertor thats around 12-18 bit. Meanwhile high quality head units have 24 bit burr brown DACs and you will hear a definite difference.
Back then when i had the clarion EQ, I've upgraded my amps, my electrical systems, treated my doors, and went through countless of super high dollar speakers and none of it really ever gave the sound quality I wanted always had a little harshess in the 5-7k range and lacking mids, the graphical EQ reduced the harshness but tanked the sound quality pretty bad. Upgrading my head unit to the pioneer 80prs was the biggest difference in sound I had ever experienced. Quite literally with just a 24 bit digital audio converter and running the auto eq/time alignment, I have never ever needed to touch EQ options ever again. Speakers sounded great with anything, never harsh, mids were full and spot on. Made even the stock speakers sound like focals on the local stereo shop tester walls. I upgraded to the 80prs from a middle of the road head unit that was still a lot better sounding then my stock deck.
I honestly thought it was not gonna make any difference really. just thought it would have fancy options but NO. the inernal sound processors make the biggest difference in overall sound quality, ages and eons beyond what it was before. Now this is just a normal SQ oriented head unit with 24 bit processors. With the JBL ms8 DSP, its a 32 bit sound processor capable of 5.1 surround sound and more spot on digital time alignment.
All I can say is, never underestimate the power of a strong clean signal from a proper music source. The reason why sound processors get so much respect around here is because those who have seen/heard it in action knows that its worlds apart in its own league of high quality sound. You said you like equalizers right? It is the holy grail of equalizers offering pinpoint precision tuning to only get rid of that one annoyance you might have. However i doubt you'd even need to use it, once properly tuned, in you'll never need to worry about that ever again.
