More speaker ?????

[jjjmm56]

I'm starting to assemble my audio system. I got a double din 7" dvd with touch screen. This unit supplys 50x4 watts. When buying speakers is it better to look for a speaker that puts out the most dbs at a wattage closer to what the head unit is suppling. Example a 61/2" speaker will take 200 watts max with a db rateing of 90. A 6" speaker may put out a db of 90 with a max watt of 100. And a 4" speaker puts out 90 db with 80 watts. Which will sound better and is more efficient? I plan to install speakers off to the side of my seats and in the door panels, along with a 1000 watt 2 channel amp bridged powering a 10 pioneer shallow mount sub. Thanks!

[tubbedII]

I've never payed attention to the db rating of the high/mids. With 1000 watts of 10" sub in the background, you'll probably need to amplify the highs to balance it out or the 50 watts of highs will be un-noticable. When looking for highs, I either go listen to some or just take people's advise on a good set, review the RMS wattage on them and find an amp that meets that.

If money is an issue, I'd still buy a good set of highs and run them off the deck for a temporary fix with a plan to save up for the matching amp in the very near future.

[pockets]

it is generally a bad idea to compare speakers based on those factors. manufacturers will give you max ratings, but don't tell you how they sound at those ratings. A general rule of thumb is that a small speaker will be more efficient at higher frequencies. I don't know of anyone that goes from a 10" sub to a 4"mid though, except a car company (gm, ford, etc.). a 5 1/4 or 6" is your best bet for good mids with a tweeter.

I would find a decent brand speaker and just stick with it. MbQuart, JL Audio, Kicker, Focal, Rockford Fosgate, etc are your upper tiers. Pioneer, Sony, etc. are you mid tiers. One thing I did was go to a couple local shops and listen to what sounds good. Then I went to ebay and bought new-in-box speakers of that brand. I got "last year's" model for less than half of retail They were Focals BTW.

a thousand watts to a single 10" is a bit extreme. Also remember that that wattage that an amp or deck puts out isn't constant, and the more off brand you get, the worse their ratings actually are. Something like a 1000 watt Rockwood (not Rockford Fosgate) amp will probably never, ever achieve that, while a fosgate amp of the same rating you can be guaranteed it can. For just about any amp, the closer you get to full power the more distortion you'll get as well. That is why it is not uncommon to see pro audio cars have many hundreds if not a thousand watts going to mids and highs. They'll never see all that power, but the power they do get when cranked up is very clean power, because the amp has so much more capacity, it isn't working vary hard. However, most people will never know the difference.

A final bit of advice, the power capability of the speaker is also a max, and the power received by the speaker varies a bit with frequency. The speaker's impedance actually changes with frequency, therefore the power received changes as well. Yet another reason to not compare based on power capability alone.

tubbedII's advice is sound. run the mids and highs off the deck for now until you can get a decent amp to power them.

[jimmydean]

Just make sure the speakers you run off the deck aren't too high/low RMS to use off the deck and later with an amp.