I recently purchased a new set of Pioneer C720PRS components and they look great! Unfortunately, I installed one mid/tweeter in my Buick Lucerne driver's side and it sounds... Less than great.
I installed it using the factory wiring (running on a small Clarion XC1410 amp, 50wx4). This is what I'm assuming must include the factory crossover. I have a decent door enclosure with deadener applied. The speakers have little or no midbass and distort at medium volumes, especially the tweeter. The factory speaker definitely sounded the same or better.
Could this be due to the poor factory wiring (looks like ~24ga) and crossover? Sub-par amp performance? I'm pretty disappointed in the sound of these almost universally acclaimed speakers.
yup all of the above..... AND THEN SOME!
A proper door enclosure is just one part which you might not have finished. If you havent actually fully sealed the door rather than just laying deadener over it, its not gonna be that much of an improvement. Inside the door, you need some absorption material to deal with the rear waves as well.
First culprit is phasing. You might be out of phase somewhere in your system. Reverse speaker positives and negatives to see if anything improves.
Also you havent told us what you are using for sound processing. A dsp or head unit? what head unit model? is it a stock head unit? A mediocre, cheap or stock head unit will always put out cheap, mediocre and more or less, garbage sound. If you are using a stock head unit and that clarion amp with speaker level inputs. EVERY speaker set will sound like dog poo, factory signal is the worst because the stock head unit has its own EQ curve and crossover points along with ABSOLUTE JUNK Digital audio converters. Reason why the factory speakers sound better is because the head unit is TUNED specifically for that factory speaker, not for any other speaker.
You dont have nearly enough power along with Junk wiring so thats definitely an issue. This component set says 50 per side but will handle 100 watts rms per side easily and that will wake up the midbass potential indefinitely. Get a nice class A/B amp to power them as well or bridge your clarion amp.
Other thing is to go active and ditch the passive crossovers.
Tweeter positioning is important as well, makes all the difference really. The set might not like stock locations or where you are putting them.
This is a prime example of even if you have all the money in the world for a hella nice speaker set, a poor install will make them sound like garbage. While a cheap set with a good install will turn heads and surprise people. NOW once you get a good install in with this nice speaker set, you'll be on cloud 9....
Everything that was talked about is included in a "proper install". The tuning is another story if you actually have proper processing.