btw I always liked these enhancers in the studio, in halls and in home audio systems. I am guessing they will work nicely in a car too: Behringer: ULTRAFEX CAR EX100 just don't use the silly surround sound

hmmm I am thinking those surround sound stereos for home theater with all of the small satellite speakers may be great as a donor of drivers for car audio speaker placement experiments. I see these all the time in the classifieds and have a couple of panasonic systems here that sound OK.

Edited October 15, 201311 yr by Blue

Thanks again guys.

I'm going to retry my pre-packaged speakers in the Z and make sure I was hearing what I thought I was hearing.

I've also got two or three aftermarket head units sitting on the shelf that I could throw in temporarily just to try to see if they sound any better. I'm sure the aftermarkets I have include better output stages than the Kia. Wouldn't solve the problem, but might help me identify if the problem is at the source or the destination.

Ironically I've been on the inside of more car stereos than I can count... I was the repair tech at an audio video store for a couple years to get through college. I can make them work, but apparently can't make them sound good!

And Blue... Mi casa es su casa!

I'll show you my newest secret projects in the lab. :tapemouth

I think blue had a detailed and frankly awesome answer but here's my opinion from personal experience:

1. your head unit is an OEM stereo and will sound like one. My experience is that they are tuned to work with the crappy speakers that the car came with which moves the sound into the high-mid range of sound. Some of them even have "enhancements" that make synthetic bass that gets pumped out of your mid range speakers which sounds terrible. Additionally Kia/Hyundai make the cheapest cars on the road and I doubt they invest much into making quality audio systems.

2. I doubt that deck puts out enough wattage to power those 6x9's effectively like you mentioned. If you switch to one of the aftermarket units you have and then bridge the front and rear speaker connections you can probably make those things sound pretty good. This is my recommended course of action, then make it sound "great" by following the detailed advice from blue.

3. The long term solution would be to get a nice aftermarket deck that makes enough power to run everything you want, and you should consider getting an amp if you want a subwoofer or more than 2 speakers. Personally I prefer Kenwood (for the high end/mine) or Pioneer (for the in-laws car) equipment but you're going to get lots of different opinions in that category. Sony (including aiwa) has the worst customer service of any company i have ever worked with but they generally offer the most features at the lowest price so they are a popular brand.

4. Speaker selection is important. Consider the type of music you listen to and pay attention to the material the tweeter is made of. A strong material such as metal with make an extremely responsive high frequency sound but for certain types of music this can be overpowering and drive you insane. My current setup uses silk tweeters which sound realistic and work perfectly with rock, classic rock and even classical sounds. I have personal experience and great results with JBL,Infinity and Polk speakers. I have used other brands including Sony with OK results but the previously mentioned 3 brands were noticeably better.

Kurbycar, Thanks for the input. I didn't get the chance to do any experimentation yet. Soon I hope.

The long term solution would be to get a nice aftermarket deck that makes enough power to run everything you want

See here's one of the problems. I would love to use a higher power higher quality aftermarket head unit, but I've looked at a bunch of aftermarket stuff and I don't think what I want exists... (anymore). Everything aftermarket is loaded with too much crap with tiny buttons on multi-colored distracting dynamic displays.

Put the stuff I use the most on the left and the stuff I use the least on the right.

Don't put all sorts of crap around the volume knob that I'll hit by accident in the dark. Keep it simple.

For your consideration:Kenwood - KDC-X597

It's full of features but after configuring you generally use the volume, tuning and source buttons on the left, and your presets on the lower section. You can also set the display to just show the clock or station id in one color with adjustable brightness. I put a similar system in my truck and even the parents don't have issues using it, it's generally bling free