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Help with 9 speaker Alpine System.

23K views 15 replies 12 participants last post by  junglejuice 
#1 ·
I just picked up a '13 Cherokee with the Laredo X package. It has the 9 speaker Alpine system with 8" sub. The bass sucks and so does the mids from the door speakers. I desperately want to change the 3.5" dash speaker as well as all 4 door speakers. Will I totally screw up the sound of the system if I do that? Will that stock alpine amp power better speakers sufficiently? I want to put in a 3.5" fosgate dash speaker and front 6 x 9 fosgates and back 6.5" fosgates. I am very new at car audio systems. To me, with little knowledge, better speakers should equal better sound but I am sure it's not that simple. If anyone could help me and enlighten me, that would be great. I don't want to waste the money and have it backfire on me by not getting a good upgrade in sound or worse make the sound worse. Thanks!
 
#2 · (Edited)
Greetings,

Grads on JGC and welcome to the club of the great Alpine system.

The Alpine factory system is based upon an internal DSP and power settings of the amp. The amp power allocation is based upon the design of the Alpine speakers as specified by Chrysler. Also, the crossover points, time delays and surround sound is also predetermined within the amp.

To change the speakers is a good first step, but you have to be aware of power requirements of the aftermarket speakers. Some speakers are so power hungry that at low volume they sound bad. Whereas, that same speaker with good aftermarket amp will sound great. The key for you is to look at the specs of the speaker and look at the sensitivity rating, the higher the number, the better it will with the internal factory amp. For example, an 89db speaker would need more power to push it, compare to a 93db. Many of the high end audiophile speakers have a lower number because they need to powered by a quality amp to get that great sound.

Most of us recommend for bass replacement the JL Audio Sleathbox, this defiantly needs the recommend power of an aftermarket amp. If you go with the Sleathbox, I would recommend not to get 6x9 for the front and get a regular 6 1/2 component speaker. This will give you a much better midbass punch which is not present in the JGC. You can use the factory amp to hookup the speakers by simple substituting them for the factory and you do not have to use the passive crossover that come with component speakers.

With the dash speaker replacement, keep in mind it is a center channel speaker and you should looker for midrange type of speaker that does not have a lot of high end in it (ie:100 - 18,000 hz). The rear door is also part of the rear channel, so you do not need a heavy hitting and super high tweeter.

The bottom line in dealing with the Alpine 9 channel factory system, if you want to sound good, you got to spend some loot. Read some our posts here to get a better idea on system configurations. And remember, speakers you must find some way to listen to them before buying.

Best for now.:)
 
#3 ·
Adding 6.5s over 6x9s will not improve your midbass at all. In fact, it will hurt it. 6x9s have MUCH more cone area than 6.5s, which allows them to create lower notes easier.

The question comes down to what you're looking for. The Alpine is actually a very good, balanced system. It sounds like you're looking for boom and hiss. In that case, you'd be happy swapping out the front speakers with some terrible tweeter ridden monstrosities, and putting a big subwoofer in the back.

For what you want, you'd likely be happy going down to a flea market and having them throw in a cheapo big sub and from front 6x9s with a lot of tweeters.

Better sound is all subjective. What you may consider to be good sound I might consider too bright, too boomy, etc. At the same time, something I'd consider good you may consider to be lacking in extremities. Thus there is no set way to upgrade, you just have to go and listen to a lot of stuff and go from there.

As he noted, the only way to really upgrade the stereo in the Jeep is to replace the amps and speakers and bring your big boy wallet.
 
#5 · (Edited)
Kstephens:

I thought the same thing when I got mine; I was disappointed with mine too.

I thought about replacing the speakers and yanking out the whole system.

I was like "I am not even hearing the sub woofer."

Every so often I would play with the equalizer, fader and balance adjustments.

I finally made some headway just recently:

The Gain for the subwoofer does not increase when you turn up the BASS on the EQ.

The more you turn up the bass the more you overpower the speakers with uneccessary low end frequencies

Start by trying these settings


lower the bass ajustment to -2 ( you can go as low as -4 if you like)

Then move your MIDRANGE setting up high enough to your liking

Then move the TREBLE setting up high enough to the point where they are not tinny and scratchy.


When I did this I finally got it to where it should be tolerable. when I cut out all that bass I realized that the system was brighter and more dynamic plus I got the sound staging that was programmed into the system.

When you are adjusting the sound also use a store bought studio recorded album so so you have the highest sound quality available to you.

One more thing you don't hear to full range until you volume is turned up to at least 18


Give these setting a shot and see if you can live with it a little longer.
 
#8 · (Edited)
Great thread - I'm a new, 2017 GC owner, with the Alpine system

One thing I find is that it sounds very different depending on which album I'm playing.

Some sound fantastic as is, some had me convinced that maybe I should just drop in new speakers, but the more I read it doesn't sound that will make a lot of a difference without getting into new amps / etc

For my taste in music, (progressive rock), the setting that seems to sound best is using the apple cable to USB from my I-pod classic, with the pod's EQ set to *Rock*, and the Alpine all set at flat, fade one click to the rear

Tomorrow, I look forward to trying the EQ setting suggested above on my ride to my buds crib

As I've said in another audio thread on the forum, I think the Alpine sounds very very nice for a stock system

E
 
#10 · (Edited)
I may be a little late on this, but what I found is that the system is heavy on synthetic bass and kick drum, but weak in the bass guitar range. There are graphs on this site that show a large dip in the area where the bass guitar operates. It's almost like the designers only listened to hip hop.

As a bass player who is also a basshead, this sucked. I also felt the system had a lack of clarity up front (but not from the back seat surprisingly, maybe they designed the car without seats installed)

I only like changing out what is needed, so I am doing my changes in steps and let it break in before changing the next item. I only changed out the front doors at first for the infinity kappa 693's, I had to pump the bass on the EQ to +9, but the entire 30-200 Hz became audible , clean, and smooth.
I could hear the kick as well as bass guitar. As the speakers broke in (took 3 months for me(!)), the low frequencies started getting louder and louder but still smooth and flat without any apparent frequency holes like the factory system has. I did lower the bass on the eq to +6.

I more recently changed the center speaker to the infinity 3022cfx, and the clarity improvements were astounding, I even bumped up the bass to +8 to keep it full sounding.

If I fade from front to rear, I can tell the rear doors are very midrangy, but together (fader centered) it blends well.

This is a good and cheap setup for a system improvement, only changing 3 speakers. I got everything on sale at Frys, it was $110 for the doors and $45 for the center, *huge* improvement, would do it again in a heartbeat even if I had to pay full retail. The speakers themselves seem to be a bit higher sensitivity, so the radio is also louder than stock. This would probably be enough for most people quite frankly, and it's fairly cheap.

My next item, being a bass head and all, is to upgrade the sub with infinity 1200S subwoofer in a custom box. My plan is to do just the sub first (yes I know it's a single VC but it is very efficient, so I'm just going to run one channel at first), see how it is, then if needed, take the unused channel and run it to a an infinity 1000s sub under one of the seats (the drivers seat seems to have the most room, and it looks like it would fit in a proper sized box). Because the sub channel gain on the factory amp isn't able to be adjusted, the infinity speakers will allow me to change the impedance from 2 to 4 ohms, which could be enough adjustment to flatten it should it be overbearing.

After that, the plan of attack for me is take a Audiocontrol lc6, sum the front tweeter, door and sub channels to an infinity class D amp, and drive the front doors with a full range signal (Factory is 60-800ish), and the sub(s) with a crossover around 60-80 Hz instead of the stupid 32ish Hz crossover the factory has it at. I am undecided if I am going to let the factory amp also drive the front tweeters, or power them off of the full range door amp; my understanding (though I haven't disassembled it yet), is that there are caps installed on the tweeters for high pass filtering in addition to the DSP digitally filtering the lows out. Easy enough to add if not.

I may also sell off my lc6i and infinity amp, and just run a single LC6.1200 or the like so I can completely tune the system, but I'm not there yet and it probably isn't needed unless time delays with the add on amp causes issues.


Here is one of the frequency response threads.
Factory Frequency Response - Page 2 - Jeep Garage - Jeep Forum
 
#9 · (Edited)
Greetings and welcome,

By now your speakers should be broken in. Play with the eq settings to find your sweet spot for tuning.

If you feel the sound is muddy in the all important mid bass to the lower midrange area, you might want to consider swapping from the 6x9 to a 6.5 speaker for the front door. This will help with the drums and other instruments that primary are in this frequency range. Many sound engineers at the studio like to play with the frequencies in this range.

Best for now.:)
 
#16 ·
Hi all, I know that this is an older thread now but here goes....

We just bought a MY2014 Overland with the Alpine speaker system and there appears to be next to zero midrange coming from the front doors, I contacted a local car audio place and they said this is intentional and is band limited at the amplifier so this would suggest that replacing the speakers in the doors wouldn't improve the midrange as there isn't any.
Does anybody have any insights to this at all?

TIA.....
 
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