Upgrading speakers

sdeck

Veteran Member
Joined
Aug 25, 2006
Location
Northern Colorado Front Range
TDI
2003 Jetta, 253K, 01M, DLC520s, VNT-17(sold); 2014 Passat SE 6M, 61,000 miles (Feb 16 buyback date)
So I'm not an audiophile, I don't want to spend $$$$$ on having something installed, but I drive 120 miles a day and listen to a lot of audio books. I've been reading about upgrading the speakers in my Passat but there are too many opinions on all the little nuances and details. I just want to spend a few hundred bucks on better speakers and some sound dampening/insulation.

1. Component or coaxial? Near as I can tell without having taken the door panels off, the Passat has component speakers but is there already a crossover built in? If I install coaxial speakers in the door, do I need to bypass said crossover?

2. How many watts should the speakers draw? I have the 6MT SE so the basic head unit. It works fine for me and I'd rather not mess with it. How many watts does it put out?

Thanks
 

DaveTC

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 14, 2013
Location
Minneapolis, MN
TDI
2013 Passat TDI SE
I am an audiophile, but in my car, I just prefer decent sound. I found the factory speakers to be pretty bad and I could recognize the voice of artists that I knew well.
We probably have the same head unit. I put Infinity Primus PR6500cs speakers from Crutchfield. They are component speakers. The sensitivity of the speakers is 93 db, so you may want to look for something with the same or higher sensitivity rather than looking at Watts. The sound improvement was descent but not spectacular when paired with the head unit and the speakers were relatively cheap. I believe that I mounted the rear crossovers that come with the speakers with double faced tape in the door. In the front, I am drawing a blank as to what I did. I believe the front tweeters are in the dash, so it was more effort than I was willing to put into it in colder weather.
One warning is that the speakers set into the door more than the original speakers, so I had to build up the foam(?) on the door panel to bridge the gap between the door panel and the new speakers. Do a search on "Focal IC 165VW" to get a representation of the speakers that are in the door. Another problem of the speakers setting more into the door MAY be that more moisture that gets past the windows seems to freeze the speaker cones so that they do not work as well or at times at all in freezing temperatures. I have not had issues this winter with the milder temperatures.
Some installation tips would be to pick up some extra door panel connectors, since it is almost inevitable that some may break. Also, you need to drill out the rivets holding the old speakers in place, so make sure that you clean up all metal shavings on the inside of the door. The inside of the door has decent corrosion protection and I think that I saw leaving debris inside the door could cause corrosion problems.
 
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