[Matt1LE]

Thinking of pulling out the Bose speakers and replacing them with Infinity RS speakers without changing the factory amp. Wonder if anyone has tried that and how it sounded.


From what i'm reading and calculated the RS's are the best option if I want to keep factory amps. I'm just looking for a more warmer richer sound. Not looking for the extra loudness or thump.


"those days are behind me" what????

[bandier]

Hi Matt, I hope all is good in AZ. I'm curious about the same. I researched up and down on installing aftermarket amps and adapters, and I don't want to deal with all that at this time. Yes upgrading speakers would be nice. subscribed.

[Msquared]

I don't think it's going to sound very good. The Bose strategy is to use really cheap speakers, but lots of them, with heavy EQ and other processing to work around the driver's limitations. Therefore, none of the speakers are getting a "flat" signal from the amp. If you put in speakers that cost more than $0.99 each and come close to reproducing a flat response across a wide frequency range, you'll suddenly hear all the EQ being implemented. Therefore, you really need to tap into the signal before the processing, or use something that can correct it.

I don't know whether all this processing takes place in the amp mounted in the trunk, or in the Radio module upstream of that beside the glovebox. Some I'm not sure there's a flat analog signal anywhere in the car to tap.* The two options I know of would be a digital interface, and the Axxess AXDSPX-ETH1 is the one I know of that works with a post-2018 Camaro. It would pull a digital signal, make it flat, and give you full control of DSP options. Another option might be the JL Audio FiX 86, which takes in speaker-level inputs and makes them flat and full range. However, it costs nearly as much as the Axxess interface, and it would theoretically have degraded sound because it's using post-Bose-process sound that's already been amplified by the stock amp. Either way, once you have a reliably flat and full-range signal, then you can do what you want with amps and speakers. If it were me, I'd limit upgrades to the door and corner dash speakers and add one sub, then fade out all the rear speakers.

Even in the lowly 1SS 1LE that has no separate amp, only the front speakers see a full-range, flat signal. The rear side panel spakers get some filtering.

[Matt1LE]

Yeah, i just looked into the Axxess AXDSPX-ETH1 (seems to be the best for GM Bose cars.) And, I watched videos from some car stereo installers working with the 9 speaker Bose. What a pain in the ass. By the time you're done, your spending a lot of money on the amp, the dsp, and wiring. Not worth the money to just be putting in a step up in speakers. I might as well get top of line speakers.



Having said that; I'm not dropping $3k+ on a car stereo system again. Hell, I worked at the good guys years ago and dropped almost $3k in a full blown Alpine system and custom sub. And that's with no labor charges and with a 5% over cost discount as an employee.


Not worth it. The tinnitus in my ears from the marine corps should cover up the flaws in this cheap system in a few more years...

[gblaue]

Originally Posted by Msquared

I don't think it's going to sound very good. The Bose strategy is to use really cheap speakers, but lots of them, with heavy EQ and other processing to work around the driver's limitations. Therefore, none of the speakers are getting a "flat" signal from the amp. If you put in speakers that cost more than $0.99 each and come close to reproducing a flat response across a wide frequency range, you'll suddenly hear all the EQ being implemented. Therefore, you really need to tap into the signal before the processing, or use something that can

That’s a bit of a misinformed statement. I know everybody wants to call them “cheap” speakers. The fact is that they are designed to different requirements than aftermarket speakers. The are three important design criteria. First, weight, neodymium is not cheap. The cones, contrary to everyone’s belief, are not paper. They are a proprietary fiber. It is lightweight and rigid. Second, ease of assembly on the vehicle assembly line. Custom speaker baskets for different cars are not cheap, when you have to make tooling for each basket. Especially for a car like the Camaro when they were only building 20k/year. Those molding tools can cost upwards of $250k, and we’d need 4. Third, high reliability. Aftermarket, doesn’t have to, nor do they design to meet validation OEM requirements. Each part number costs over $1M to run through validation for quality.

Now for EQ, no speaker has a response curve. Neither does the environment that the speakers is placed in. The point of the EQ is give desirable response from the sum of the two, but also taking into account phase and delay.

I don’t know what people are using for source material, but it makes a difference. If you listen to XM, FM or Bluetooth you’re never going to be happy. It’s too compressed and bandwidth limited. Get out the USB cable, enable the loudness curve on your iPhone or android, and you’ll hear the difference.

BTW, the EQ is done in the amplifier.

[Msquared]

Originally Posted by gblaue

That’s a bit of a misinformed statement. I know everybody wants to call them “cheap” speakers. The fact is that they are designed to different requirements than aftermarket speakers.

I don't think it's misinformation to say that the Bose drivers (or any factory driver for that matter) are "cheap." Keep in mind I didn't mean "cheap" in a pejorative sense, just that these things are built to a low price point that is very different from (much of) the aftermarket. OE drivers are also obviously getting good performance at their price point: not arguing that at all. Okay, well let's break down your design criteria for these drivers (bolding is mine):

The are three important design criteria. First, weight, neodymium is not cheap. The cones, contrary to everyone’s belief, are not paper. They are a proprietary fiber. It is lightweight and rigid.

So yes, the materials are chosen with a low price point in mind. Again, this isn't an insult - it's just a fact.

Second, ease of assembly on the vehicle assembly line. Custom speaker baskets for different cars are not cheap, when you have to make tooling for each basket. Especially for a car like the Camaro when they were only building 20k/year. Those molding tools can cost upwards of $250k, and we’d need 4.

Again, you are literally saying the same thing I did: that OE speakers are built to a low price point, especially for a low-volume production run.

Third, high reliability. Aftermarket, doesn’t have to, nor do they design to meet validation OEM requirements. Each part number costs over $1M to run through validation for quality.

Reliability for an OE is a huge criterion, and for good reason. However, even reliability comes down to a long-term cost:benefit analysis. And as you again note, cost is a big factor here because all the testing for a part is expensive, so ultimate performance is again compromised for cost.

Now for EQ, no speaker has a {I assume you meant to add the word "flat" here} response curve. Neither does the environment that the speakers is placed in. The point of the EQ is give desirable response from the sum of the two, but also taking into account phase and delay.

100% true, and I am not against EQ or DSP, especially in a car environment (I'm using these in my Camaro). However, some speakers are much closer to linear and have far more resolution than others. If you start with a more linear and resolving driver, you have a better chance to get true hi-fi sound. Again, I think in general that what engineers can achieve within OE cost and durability constraints his often impressive. I also see/hear a lot of aftermarket setups that sound worse than OE...sometimes by a lot. A lot of people go for "boom and tizz" which is neither high-fidelity or linear, and many people have no idea what live music actually sounds like in real life. And of course there are lots of crappy aftermarket components out there that aren't even as linear as the OEM drivers.

I haven't even heard the stock Bose Camaro system, so I'm not saying it sounds bad. My only point to the OP was that the Bose system is heavily EQ'd (and probably otherwise DSP'd) to get the best performance out of the OE drivers, and those drivers have response curves that are very different from most high-quality aftermarket drivers (due to price point and reliability criteria, as you said). Therefore, dropping in more linear and resolving drivers into an otherwise stock 2SS system is not likely to bring good results.

I don’t know what people are using for source material, but it makes a difference. If you listen to XM, FM or Bluetooth you’re never going to be happy. It’s too compressed and bandwidth limited. Get out the USB cable, enable the loudness curve on your iPhone or android, and you’ll hear the difference.

100% true. Also, make sure the music you are playing from your phone is at least CD "red book" quality: 44khz sampling rate and 16-bit resolution. Well-encoded MP3s can sometimes sound good, but in this day and age I don't see the reason to compress files like that. Digital storage is cheap, and USB can transmit a really high bandwidth (much higher than red book standards!).

BTW, on Sirius XM, a few channels sound like they have much better bandwidth than the rest. The Symphony Hall and Real Jazz channels are the two examples I know: they sound way better than the various rock stations, for example. This makes me hypothesize that Sirius varies its bandwidth among its music channels based on the listener expectations they anticipate.

BTW, the EQ is done in the amplifier.

Good for those with 2SS systems to know. In that setup, there are only digital signals going to the amp, right? That is, the amp is also a DAC, so there is no way to tap flat analog signals for an aftermarket amp in a 2SS car? This goes back to my advice to the OP: to make driver upgrades work properly, he's going to want a digital interface or a speaker-level correction device of some sort followed by an amp and DSP.

[gblaue]

Originally Posted by Msquared

I don't think it's misinformation to say that the Bose drivers (or any factory driver for that matter) are "cheap." Keep in mind I didn't mean "cheap" in a pejorative sense, just that these things are built to a low price point that is very different from (much of) the aftermarket. OE drivers are also obviously getting good performance at their price point: not arguing that at all. Okay, well let's break down your design criteria for these drivers (bolding is mine):

So yes, the materials are chosen with a low price point in mind. Again, this isn't an insult - it's just a fact.

Again, you are literally saying the same thing I did: that OE speakers are built to a low price point, especially for a low-volume production run.

Reliability for an OE is a huge criterion, and for good reason. However, even reliability comes down to a long-term cost:benefit analysis. And as you again note, cost is a big factor here because all the testing for a part is expensive, so ultimate performance is again compromised for cost.

100% true, and I am not against EQ or DSP, especially in a car environment (I'm using these in my Camaro). However, some speakers are much closer to linear and have far more resolution than others. If you start with a more linear and resolving driver, you have a better chance to get true hi-fi sound. Again, I think in general that what engineers can achieve within OE cost and durability constraints his often impressive. I also see/hear a lot of aftermarket setups that sound worse than OE...sometimes by a lot. A lot of people go for "boom and tizz" which is neither high-fidelity or linear, and many people have no idea what live music actually sounds like in real life. And of course there are lots of crappy aftermarket components out there that aren't even as linear as the OEM drivers.

I haven't even heard the stock Bose Camaro system, so I'm not saying it sounds bad. My only point to the OP was that the Bose system is heavily EQ'd (and probably otherwise DSP'd) to get the best performance out of the OE drivers, and those drivers have response curves that are very different from most high-quality aftermarket drivers (due to price point and reliability criteria, as you said). Therefore, dropping in more linear and resolving drivers into an otherwise stock 2SS system is not likely to bring good results.


100% true. Also, make sure the music you are playing from your phone is at least CD "red book" quality: 44khz sampling rate and 16-bit resolution. Well-encoded MP3s can sometimes sound good, but in this day and age I don't see the reason to compress files like that. Digital storage is cheap, and USB can transmit a really high bandwidth (much higher than red book standards!).

BTW, on Sirius XM, a few channels sound like they have much better bandwidth than the rest. The Symphony Hall and Real Jazz channels are the two examples I know: they sound way better than the various rock stations, for example. This makes me hypothesize that Sirius varies its bandwidth among its music channels based on the listener expectations they anticipate.

Good for those with 2SS systems to know. In that setup, there are only digital signals going to the amp, right? That is, the amp is also a DAC, so there is no way to tap flat analog signals for an aftermarket amp in a 2SS car? This goes back to my advice to the OP: to make driver upgrades work properly, he's going to want a digital interface or a speaker-level correction device of some sort followed by an amp and DSP.

That’s the problem. You put the speakers on the same level as any of the other factory speakers. They are not.
Let me just counter some of points.
1. Neodymium is definitely not chosen for cost. It chose for energy density to size and and weight. It allows us to package speakers in to tighter areas, make them light, reduce the size of the motor structure while improving efficiency.
2. The fiber cones are made specifically for each speaker application to provide the response that we are looking for to match the spider and surround. The fiber light and rigid. We control how rigid in our process. The 3 plus the voice coil and motor structures are matched for specific applications. Our EQ curves take advantage of and maximize the impedance characteristics of the speakers. We then you current feedback in our power amplifiers to measure any nonlinearities across the speaker. That measurement gets fed back into the power amplifiers and DSP where we can counter the nonlinearity.

Our parts that we use are twice the price of aftermarket. Automotive parts are required to be AEC-Q100 and AEC-Q200 rated. That is on stroke of military or aerospace rated parts. Only difference price and radiation hardening. Automotive parts can’t fail.

I think the factory tune could have been better. I have a custom tune in mine with the stock system and the car rocks. It really did take much to wake it up. The 2019 and up tuning was based on my car, except they held the compressors back still.

I have to disagree as to satellite radio. It just sucks.they do have dynamic bandwidth allocation, but even with that the bit rate is still to low. It ranges from 128k down to 32k. It only has an SNR of 90dB. That’s half of CD.

Using Bluetooth to transmit audio in your car, at least older cars, sucks due to perceptual encoding techniques. They gotten really good at it. My 2025 GMC Sierra is damn good. I would swear that the frequency of the encoder in the iPhone are flat, and the Broadcom Bluetooth receiver/decoders are flat. Prior to Bluetooth 4.0 or so, I swear they threw a lot of bits away in the upper end of the spectrum. People made no high no lows…….. it wasn’t us. We will faithfully
reproduce the content. We EQ for the environment, for dynamic loudness, and compression.

There is no way to tap a flat signal in the amplifier. The signal are EQ’d in the DSP and sent to the power amplifier in TDM format..the power amplifier does the A/D conversion and amplification.

[2018 Blue 1LE]

I pulled the factory Bose speakers, because I thought I had a blown speaker that turned out to be an unplugged speaker, for 4 different pairs of speakers.


Note that the Bose speakers are an odd ohm rating(IIRC) and that does play a role in their performance.


When I put the other speakers in, they were FAR more muffled/quit than the Bose.


Here is what I tried:


New Infinity Kappa 62IX

JBL GTO629



Alpine S2-S65

JBL CLUB6520



These were for the passenger location, never went any further.


I am no audiophile, but the Bose system sounded better without any other mods.
Now if you go the full amp bypass route and DSP, it would probably be better. I just don't need that for now.

[Msquared]

Originally Posted by gblaue

That’s the problem. You put the speakers on the same level as any of the other factory speakers. They are not.
Let me just counter some of points.
1. Neodymium is definitely not chosen for cost. It chose for energy density to size and and weight. It allows us to package speakers in to tighter areas, make them light, reduce the size of the motor structure while improving efficiency.

I misunderstood you before. I thought you were saying the Bose drivers don't use neodymium because it's expensive. My mistake.

Our parts that we use are twice the price of aftermarket. Automotive parts are required to be AEC-Q100 and AEC-Q200 rated. That is on stroke of military or aerospace rated parts. Only difference price and radiation hardening. Automotive parts can’t fail.

Fair enough. I'll retract the description of "cheap." Instead, I'll say that the Bose drivers are unique, and the DSP is set up specifically to work with those drivers. In addition, I forgot to mention before their lower nominal impedance, which 2018 Blue 1LE pointed out. My point was and still is that just dropping aftermarket drivers in place of the OE Bose drivers is unlikely to yield a good result. I think we agree on that.

[2018 Blue 1LE]

Originally Posted by Msquared

My point was and still is that just dropping aftermarket drivers in place of the OE Bose drivers is unlikely to yield a good result. I think we agree on that.

100% my experience.

[PeteSS2018]

Really interesting reading gentlemen.

So ... if I wanted to spend some money and get a really upgraded sound system into my 2018 2SS, I assume that means:
- Taking a signal out of the head unit via a DSP/signal tap of some sort?
- Replace the BOSE amp and speakers
- Installing a new amp to drive the new speakers
- Installing a mild sub somewhere

My likely goal would be to go with upgraded speakers for front tweeters, mid range doors & rear seat sides. Delete the rear parcel shelf speakers. Install a sub in the trunk.

Thoughts from those who've done it or know enough to comment!???

[ctrlz]

Originally Posted by PeteSS2018

So ... if I wanted to spend some money and get a really upgraded sound system into my 2018 2SS, I assume that means:
- Taking a signal out of the head unit via a DSP/signal tap of some sort?

Not sure the head unit outputs anything you can work with. You might need to take speaker level signals out of the Bose amp and feed them into your signal processor/combiner.

I would probably leave the rear speakers in place, even if you add a sub. You could always run them at reduced output even if you add a sub. Some low ohm power resistors in series with the 6x9's will easily do that and they will never be driven hard enough to distort. My old sub amp (Rockford fosgate) had a mixed stereo/mono mode i used to drive a 12" sub I added plus factory 6x9's I left in place.

[Msquared]

There is no "head unit" in our cars. The Radio module to the right of the glovebox is the starting point for audio signals. However, as discussed above, there are no flat speaker-level outputs from the Bose system. The factory Bose amp gets a digital signal from the Radio module and does the digital-to-analog conversion in the amp. It also does DSP that includes equalization, active filtering/crossover, and presumably time delays as well. There is nothing usable for you to tap.

The way to start an upgrade would be with a digital interface such as one from Axxes or NavTV. That would get you flat line level outputs with the ability to do DSP in the interface or send a signal to a separate DSP unit, then send line levels to separate amps and new speakers of your choice.