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On my 03 Aero, upgrading the 3.5" dash speakers only made a huge difference. Then upgrading the capacitors in the Kappa 32.5CF external crossover networks made a big difference again. All proving that in that vehicles electronics, that there is a lot of signal quality that one can reveal only with better dash speakers. As the radio head unit is the same on the various audio systems, I assume that the situation is largely the same for the different audio packages as far as midrange and trebble issues go.
The stock 3.5" drivers are a simple single driver cardboard cone. These do not do justice to the quality of the head units. You cannot judge the head unit quality with the stock 3.5" speakers.
Most or all other 3.5" speakers do not have a proper crossover network, but a tiny bipolar electrolytic capacitor glued to the tweeter driver. These caps are about the size of two popcorn kernels. These do not keep bass off of the tweeter or high frequencies off of the midrange driver. So there is intermodulation distortion and phase errors. And the electrolytic capacitor has some nasty non idea behavours that mess things up.
So I guess my point is that your system cannot be any better than those 3.5" dash speakers and you really cannot hear whats there, or what you are doing with electonic mods, unless you have revealing speakers. So the 32.5CF is the best solution that I know of. There are some mechanical installation issues, but the result is well worth it.
I have a set of 32.5CFs to install in my wife's 9-5. I have removed the electrolytic caps from its X-overs and replace with large polypropylene caps. The one that feed the tweeter is an expensive film and metal foil audiophile grade cap. We will compare that install with the one in my 9-5 that has the electrolytic caps bypassed, then after that comparo, I will rework the X-overs in my 9-5 replacing the bylassed caps with the same poly film caps that are on hand for the job. A lot of work perhaps, but often with audio, you can only get the best performance by doing such mods.
(The 32.5CF's caps are 2.2mF and 12mF. I can email pix of before and after on the X-overs)
posted by 68.91.15...
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