Help me Choose my First System!

[ravicus 10+ year member]

Hey, first of all I'm totally new to car audio except for reading up some on what certain components do, and just other basic knowledge that I have...

I have a 1996 Toyota Tacoma Xtracab(My first car), which has:

Front Door: 2 x 6-1/2" speaker opening. (non-standard size according to Crutchfield, but they include a bracket that allows it to fit)

Behind Seat: 2 x 6-3/4" opening.

So basically I'm wondering a few things.

1. Where should I be buying components from? Crutchfield is the only car audio place I know of and I've enjoyed their websites feature that matches things to my car, but are they overpriced? Should I look somewhere else?

2. I don't have a ton of money, and I don't care terribly alot about having a subwoofer (I don't know where i could put one in this truck anyways), I'd like decent bass response though, so I was looking at component systems, are they a good option? Or are they gimmicky?

3. Since my truck has 4 openings for speakers, would it sound bad to only put speakers into either the front or back two slots? Or should i invest in all 4?

4. What components do I need if I am not going to get a dedicated sub? I will be getting a new head unit and speakers at the minimum, but do I need an amp?

Anyways thanks a ton for any help you can provide, I'm honestly pretty lost. I have no idea how to install it either but I can probably figure it out. Maybe with some help from you guys.

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[LosIsATool 5,000+ posts]

$$$ how much you got? Also look at sonicelectronixs, woofers ect, amazon

 

[ravicus 10+ year member]

I can spend about $300 on my system right now. And ok i'll take a look at those! Thanks.

 

[i2ain2thunder 10+ year member]

this site has a classified section //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/fyi.gif.9f1f679348da7204ce960cfc74bca8e0.gif

 

[i2ain2thunder 10+ year member]

If you care about good sound quality and bass you can get a small 8in subwoofer, If I were you I'd get a couple 6.5 components up front and 1 small sub in the trunk, then like a 2/4 channel amp to power it, Subwoofers are important to sound quality and in my opinion the first thing you can do to enhance it. It doesn't have to be massive woofers and big bass smaller subs can sound really good, and they are made to hit the lower frequencies that speakers just aren't made to handle. You do not need to replace your stock unit just yet.

 

[OmegaBunny 10+ year member]

Do you listen to CD's or an iPod/MP3

 

[i2ain2thunder 10+ year member]

for 300$ I'd buy used, get nice 6.5 components, decent amplifier, cheap sub, wiring kit, and line out converter.

 

[i2ain2thunder 10+ year member]

Also depends though do you plan on upgrading this system ever or sticking with what you get for a long time?

 

[CHEMMINS 10+ year member]

Tacoma is a truck. Replace the front speaker with a nice coax, and a small amp. Thats about as good as you are going to do right now. Save up and come back here when ya got a lil more money and we can talk about a sub.

 

[05fronty 5,000+ posts]

i wouldn't worry about your rears man. mine aren't even hooked up in my frontier. get a set of components up front and a amp to run them

 

[ravicus 10+ year member]

If you care about good sound quality and bass you can get a small 8in subwoofer, If I were you I'd get a couple 6.5 components up front and 1 small sub in the trunk, then like a 2/4 channel amp to power it, Subwoofers are important to sound quality and in my opinion the first thing you can do to enhance it. It doesn't have to be massive woofers and big bass smaller subs can sound really good, and they are made to hit the lower frequencies that speakers just aren't made to handle. You do not need to replace your stock unit just yet.

I don't have a trunk, this is a truck, and the only place a sub could go would be to sit on the half backseat(Theres no space under the seat), whats a 2/4 channel amp? Or do you mean a 2 channel or a 4 channel?

Do you listen to CD's or an iPod/MP3

I would be listening to the radio and my iPod.

for 300$ I'd buy used, get nice 6.5 components, decent amplifier, cheap sub, wiring kit, and line out converter.

I don't really know how I feel about buying used since I'm new to this field and don't know what to look for. Whats a line out converter? And whats a wiring kit? I assume 6.5 components means 6.5"?

Also depends though do you plan on upgrading this system ever or sticking with what you get for a long time?

I don't plan on upgrading really. If needed I can dump more money on it now. maybe $400

Tacoma is a truck. Replace the front speaker with a nice coax, and a small amp. Thats about as good as you are going to do right now. Save up and come back here when ya got a lil more money and we can talk about a sub.

I don't really think there's a whole lot of room for a sub anyways. And what is a coax?

i wouldn't worry about your rears man. mine aren't even hooked up in my frontier. get a set of components up front and a amp to run them

Ok well thats good. I just want it to sound decent, no one will be sitting in the back seat ever anyways. The door speakers are on the lower-front portion of the door though so I didn't know if the sound would be dispersed well enough from there.

Also, do I need an amp for just aftermarket speakers?

If anyone here has skype or MSN messenger or something and could let me IM them, that would probably help me a lot faster, and I'd really appreciate it!

Backseat looks like this(Except a lot cleaner, grabbed this image off a junkyard website hahaha)

This is a (very expensive) custom box that is shown in the truck.

 

[i2ain2thunder 10+ year member]

hrm well theres a few different routes you can choose. Like I said before a sub really makes music sound better. However you can get good midbass response from 6.5-8inch speakers if you choose the right ones. You don't need an amplifier, aftermarkets headunits provide a little bit of power, you can get some that provide almost decent power but in order for the speakers to sound the best you really should have an amplifier. If you get an amplifier you will need a wiring kit, amplifiers require a power wire ran from the battery, a remote wire ran from the head unit(or anywhere you can get power upon ignition), patch cables or RCAs ran from the head unit, if you do not have an aftermarket head unit that has outputs you can get rca outputs off a stock deck using a line out converter, this isn't as good of quality as an aftermarket head unit with rca outputs would be. and you will need a ground wire ran from the amp to anywhere on the vehicle that is a good ground location to the body preferably as close to the amp as possible. There is always a way to make room for a subwoofer, but if you don't want one, I would improve the speakers to components(seperate mids and tweeters) these use a crossover network which separates the high frequencies and sends them to your tweeters and the lower frequencies and sends them to your speaker. This makes the sound a little bit nicer. Amplifiers have speaker outputs in the form of channels mono=1 channel, 2channel, 4channel, 5 and even 6 channel amps. each channel supplies a certain amount of power from the amp at a given resistance. IE a amp that is a 2 channel could produce say 170watts rms per channel at 4 ohms. This same amp could produce 250watts rms per channel at 2 ohms, or depending on the amp it may be bridgable meaning you can wire it so that its only useing one channel with the combined power of both channels than it might do 500watts bridged at 4 ohms and 1000watts bridged at 2ohms. Speakers and subwoofers have different Impedances, for example you can have a sub that is a dual voice coil 2ohms per voice coil. You could wire that sub to be at 4 ohms bridged on the amp at 500 watts, or you could wire 2 subs together at 2ohms bridged on the amp for 1000watts.

 

[i2ain2thunder 10+ year member]

When wiring just one voicecoil (pretty much all speakers only have one voice coil output) it is easy if the speaker says it is 4 ohm than thats what it will be at the amp. When wiring multiple speakers or voicecoils together. IE you are wiring 2 speakers together (so you can use the same channel on the amp for both speakers) that are each 4 ohms you can wire them in parallel or in series. If you wire them in parallel the resistance of both speakers is devided in half so they will be at 2ohms together. If you wire them in series they will add to eachothers resistane and both speakers will be wired at 8ohms together.

 

[i2ain2thunder 10+ year member]

Now for a real life buying experience. Say you just bought 4 new speakers or components. Each component is 4ohms and can handle 75watts RMS. You will want to look for an amp that can supply that power. You could get a 4 channel amp that does 75watts rms @4ohms per channel and just wire each speaker to each channel on the amp. Or you could get a 2 channel amp that does 150watts at 2ohms per channel and wire the components together in parallel so that you have 2 pairs of them wired together on each channel. The speakers will recieve 150watts together meaning they will recieve 75watts a piece.

 

[mylows10 5,000+ posts]

get yourself a small bandpass box with an 8" or 10" woofer around 100.00 ,depending on how tall you are put on the back seat .a small amp to power it 50.00 - 100.00 ,a new deck 125.00and frt components 80.00 dont forget the dash kit 15.00and wiring harnesses 5.00 and amp kit 30.00 ,i did my step dads 2000 s10 for less than $400 all used except the deck and frt speakers