Upgrading speakers/amp with factory bose?

[Horneth145]

Hi all,

I apologize if this has been covered, I've searched the forum and can't seem to piece together the information I'm looking for.

First off, I'm NOT looking to dump a ton of money into my stereo, just looking to improve the factory sound. I plan to keep the factory head unit (Bose) in my 2006 Armada LE.

I was thinking of replacing the factory door speakers and I ran across a deal on some Alpines that are on their way. My question is; can I just replace the factory speakers and use the existing wiring and will that indeed sound better? Or do I need to replace the factory Amp?

If I replace the factory amp, I've seen things like the AOEM-NIS2 which provide the harnesses/connectors to bypass the factory amp and provide RCA outputs to the new amp, but what about re-using the factory speaker wiring, are those harnesses included? I have no interest in re-wiring the speakers. I want this to be as simple as possible.

I'm not looking to win any awards with my system, just want the stock head unit to sound better...

Thoughts? Ideas? Answers? Any input would be appreciated..

Thanks!

[ntrddragn]

in short, yes.

upgrade the stock speakers with give you better sound but its only as good as the power source (head unit) can power them. they wont play to their max potential but they will be better then stock. you will have to buy the right size speakers and wire it to the existing wire. no re-wiring is needed.

I believe the only factory amp the armada has is for powering the sub. if you are going to get an amp to power the speakers without changing the head unit..you will have to splice one set of speaker wires and convert those to RCA (male) to go into the amp. from there you can rca the sound out to pre-existing speaker wires but tapping into them. they sell those speaker wires with one rca end and the other end is open. so you will have to cut those stock wires or you can wire them from the amp to the speakers directly but you seem not to want to do that.

personally i have stock speaker still but i change my head unit and now my oem system sound way better. and ppl cant believe its stock speakers.

maybe the other audiophiles will chime in with better suggestions or if im wrong.

[TexasEdition]

You can replace the speakers to run off the factory Bose Head Unit, however you may experience lower volume due to the factory speaker impedance mismatch. Nearly all factory speakers have an odd ohm rating, often times 3 ohm speakers. The Alpine speakers, like 95% of speakers out there, are 4 ohm speakers. In order to get the best sound, its best to drive them with an external amplifier. In this case, you would need to run new wires from your amp to your speakers. Doing this will improve your sound GREATLY, sound quality wise and volume. You can try it out and see if it's enough volume for you.

My Armada came with MA Audio speakers in the doors and the speakers in the dash are the factory Bose speakers. My door speakers are driven off of an old school Planet Audio amplifier. I will be soon replacing the MA Audio speakers and the dash tweeters with my Focal Utopia 6.5" component speakers that I have had for the past oh, 6 or so years. The rear will be replaced with either my Focal K2P with Digital Design T1 silk dome tweeters or my Focal Performance PS165 6.5" components. Both will be bridged off of a 4 channel amp each as the Focal speakers can take some serious wattage.