Amp & Speaker Quality

[jragusa 10+ year member]

My question in short: My speakers are distorted at slightly high volumes. Does this mean I need an amp?

I know an amp does two things: Provides more power to make the speakers louder and adds to sound quality.

I recently installed a pair of Soundstream SST6.9's. According to a few different reviews these speakers are supposed to be pretty good. But when I put the volume up on them, not piercing loud but let's say 25/35 on the hu, they sound somewhat distorted. What is the reason for them being distrorted? Are they not getting enough power? Do they have to be hooked up to an amp in order to sound efficient. The hu has the power of 22w x4 rms.

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[Kangaroux 5,000+ posts]

Make sure you set the high pass on your headunit correctly. If you forgot to set it your speakers will end up sounding like trash because they are playing frequencies they aren't meant to play

 

[jragusa 10+ year member]

What is the high pass freq. supposed to be set at?

 

[maylar 10+ year member]

My question in short: My speakers are distorted at slightly high volumes. Does this mean I need an amp?
I know an amp does two things: Provides more power to make the speakers louder and adds to sound quality.

I recently installed a pair of Soundstream SST6.9's. According to a few different reviews these speakers are supposed to be pretty good. But when I put the volume up on them, not piercing loud but let's say 25/35 on the hu, they sound somewhat distorted. What is the reason for them being distrorted? Are they not getting enough power? Do they have to be hooked up to an amp in order to sound efficient. The hu has the power of 22w x4 rms.

You might be overloading the HU with those, since they are 3 ohms and HU outputs are mostly rated at 4 ohms. So if that's the problem, then yes the right amp will eliminate that.

 

[hispls 5,000+ posts]

Soundstream components and coaxials I've heard have sounded terrible at any listening level. That being said you are probably running the head unit's tiny amp into clipping. A 50W per channel amplifier should give you all you want