Eliminate Factory AMP with Aftermarket HU?

[SHO Nick]

I Have some friends in Audio Industry and they advised me to take out my factory amp, when doing so Id get some clearer & louder souding High's from what my Deck can put out...anyone ever heard this? Id beleive have the extra power would help more...hmm..dunno..

 

[Sexymeatball]

in my personal experience, i have found that the factory amps give a much cleaner sound then an aftermarket HU. This is related to 2 issues. First of all most Aftermarket HU simply do not produce enough current to drive most automotive speakers (dont be fooled by max wattage). For instance i have a Clarion DXZ715 which is by no means a cheap unit, but it still just does not produce enough power to drive my speakers without significant distortion at higher volumes. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, is that the car wiring was designed to work with amps in the back. This means that the wires traveling from the HU to the back of the car are not nearly thick enough to carry enough current, even if you had a HU that could produce adequate power. there may be those who disagree wtih me, but from my personal experience, you're better off integreting the factory amps instead of bypassing them, or better yet, get an aftermarket 4 ch instead.
-Jeremy

 

[Sho_Freak]

i had my aftermarket hu hooked up to my factory amp(premium), and it sounded good. then i decided to try to pull the extra harness from the inside of the dash and bypass the amps, and it sounds pretty much the same, even at high volumes, so id rather do the bypass and spend ~$6 for the wiring harness instead fo ~$15 for the wiring harness. from my experience it will pretty much sound the same either way.

 

[jeremy manlief]

if you use the factory amp with an aftermarket head unit, it is possible that when you turn up the volume, it gets loud quick(lower volume # on the HU). this is because the signal(sound) is being amplified twice. once from the HU and again from the factory amp. if you are planning to put in some subs, i would bypass the factory amp with the bypass harness. if you dont, you might not get the sub amp up to power since the head unit is at a lower volume # and the highs are blaring your ears. on my car stereo system, this is what happened to me with the jbl factory system. IMOE i would bypass the factory amp.

 

[Dassin]

It all depends on what outputs you're using from the deck.

In the stock JBL premium system, the outputs going to the rear are not amplified yet. They are the equivalent of using RCA cables. When I put my headunit in (before I put the rest of my system in), I modified the amp integration harness by soldering on RCA connectors which I bought at Radio Shack, and plugging them into the preouts on the deck. This worked fine and dandy. If you have it set up like THIS and bypass the amps, you won't have what we like to call "volume". If you instead decide to run the speaker wire outputs from the deck through that same harness, and run to the amps, it will, as Jeremy said, be amplified twice. In which case, bypassing might be a way to go, but I doubt I would. The amps built into headunits are puny and far overrated. I heard from an audio friend that they aren't even regulated like home theater stuff is, so in theory they could say "700x4 power, yo!!!!!!!!!11111".

My 7 cents.