I have a Sony 35x4 cd player in my 96 F-150. I replaced the factory speakers with Polk EX365 6 1/2's in the front and Polk EX357's in the back. I expected to get a lot more sound out of them but it still gets distorted when I turn it up. Do I need an amp and what type, two or four way. I am not powering a sub, just the speakers. Don't want to spend a whole lot more as I only drive this once a week.

 

hey! welcome to fte!

i wouldnt use an amp, just turn the bass and mid down a little. use a amp if you wanna run subs. i wouldnt personally, but thats just me

 

ur speakers are only seeing 15-20w and are prolly rated for 40-50 so there not seeing the full potiental. the rating on ur CD player is the max power it puts out, which is a marketing gimic to fool people into believing there getting more power then the have. also not to bust ur ***** but sony HUs arent the best for sound quality and are known to distort at higher volumes. it could also be a bad ground if u grounded it to metal. also adjust ur treble and bass levels to zero and adjust little by little till the seem to sound good. an amp would make them speakers come alive. im not going to suggest a brand, that'll be up to u based on how much u wanna spend. all i will say is get a 4 channel amp that will put out 40-50w RMS (constant)x4

 

myh sony does great. its not sitting in moms merc with no distortion in sight.

 

some insight here. An amp will *TRY* to do what you ask of it, in most cases it does. However, when we ask too much of it, it does something we call "clipping". Picture a nice sine wave, now cut the tops and bottoms off. Thats what your amp is doing when you turn it up too much. Its trying to do what you ask, but it simply cannot finish its cycle in time due to lack of power, so it clips. I can blow a 500 watt speaker with a 50 watt amp 10 times easier than I could with a 1000 watt amp. Just to clear things up here, head units have amps, eq's have amps, anything that receives and transmits a signal has to have an amp. And any amp can be over driven.

What you can do:
1) Get access to an oscilloscope (beg, borrow or rent - but get it).
2) Disconnect everything and hook the scope to the head unit outputs.
3) Set the eq curves flat and turn all options off.
4) Fire up the head unit and slowly turn up the vol until you see clipping. (note that vol number, you can never go higher than this, ever!)
5) If your one of the lucky few to pass step #4 with no clipping all the way up to max vol, you got a good head unit! Now, raise the eq levels one at a time noting any clipping (still at max vol of course). (remember these #'s, you can never go higher at full vol.)
6) Once you have done this, you can move on to the amps. Put the head unit on the max vol setting you can with no clip and hook the scope to the amp output (with no speakers of course). Turn the gain up till u see clipping (leave it there, never turn the gain up anymore, it will clip!)
7) Do all the bass boosts and so on, whatever your amp may have.
8) your set, you can now turn your set up and know you are not clipping.

I can say that if you own a pioneer premier DEX-P1R, congrats, it will not clip at high vol. Only when the lowest 2 eq slides are up +8, all others can be max. I love this head unit and highly recommend it.