HELP Crappy Stock Audio Dodge Durango!

[E_A]

I have a 2011 Dodge Durango that I have been fortunate to get as my father's last car. I had a 2005 outback with GOD-TIER audio that was put in stock by the crazy Subaru engineers in the premium models. I love good audio but have never dabbled in-car audio, only headphones and stuff for home.

The problem is my ears have been spoiled by my last car and the audio sounds like complete garbage despite what looks like a good stock system on paper. This comes directly from the Alpine Audio site who makes the system in the car:
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2011 Dodge Durango
7.1 Channel Surround Sound System
Standard on the R/T, Crew & Citadel

• 12-channel surround sound amplifier with 506 watts of power
• Two 25mm silk dome tweeters
• 3.5” center channel speaker
• Two 6x9” front door speakers
• Two 6.5” rear door surround speakers
• Two 2.5” surround speakers in the D pillar
• 8” DVC subwoofer in dedicated enclosure under the load floor

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I want to know what the heck is bottlenecking the system, do I need a new amp? Or is the head unit not giving a good clean source? How can I go about testing these things?
I am pretty sure the amp is separate from the head unit, which is this thing: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=RHB+430N

Thanks!

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[wew lad 5,000+ posts]

What is "garbage" to you in this case? Not loud? Breaks up? Hard to know what the problem is without more information.

Is the headunit set to flat? Are speakers blown?

 

[E_A]

What is "garbage" to you in this case? Not loud? Breaks up? Hard to know what the problem is without more information.

Is the headunit set to flat? Are speakers blown?

All the details, especially high stuff like cymbals sound kind of garbled and unclean, the low frequencies don't have that buttery smooth warmth to them that my last car had, but instead, sound distant and lacking. Anything middle frequency sounds boosted to hell and kind of empty even though the head unit is set to flat.

It does get loud enough for me but since it is all middle frequencies it just murders your ears if turned up.

Pretty sure no speakers have been blown, nobody here likes to blast the music like crazy.

 

[wew lad 5,000+ posts]

All the details, especially high stuff like cymbals sound kind of garbled and unclean, the low frequencies don't have that buttery smooth warmth to them that my last car had, but instead, sound distant and lacking. Anything middle frequency sounds boosted to hell and kind of empty even though the head unit is set to flat.

It does get loud enough for me but since it is all middle frequencies it just murders your ears if turned up.

Pretty sure no speakers have been blown, nobody here likes to blast the music like crazy.

Middle frequency in your ears is probably the 2-5khz range. The doors probably aren't deadened very well and there's probably a lot of peaks in the midrange drivers.

The other possiblity is your "500w" amp is a peak rating and you're only getting half that, causing you to have to turn it up and it ends up distorting.

The real question here is how far are you willing to go to get better sound quality out of it? For less than $700-1k along with some labor of your own, you can get some drastic improvements.

 

[wew lad 5,000+ posts]

Taking a look at durango oriented forums will yield some good information on what the culprit is. Every vehicle is different. Surely others have had the same discussion and can at least point you in the right direction and from there we can provide recommendations when it comes to equipment and installation