Kicker sounds terrible, I know this first hand from a friend who had some. I had alpine at the time, and my system destroyed his. I have SPX-13REFs (Type-x ref 5.25 comps) up front, and SPR-69Cs (Type-r 6x9s) in the rear, it sounds great, at least the components do, the 6x9s do great for rear-fill. Then he moved onto Rainbow, another respectable brand, and once again proved that his "old" kicker speakers were just terrible sounding.