No no no.. stock sucks fullstop. I've never heard a good stock system even after tuning. I'm my own tuner so no matter what I do I cannot make my stock system sound like my old Dynaudios.i find out that oem HU/speaker setup is quite ok if tuned properly (bass trebel basic adjustment)
but would never really satisfied...usually a good woofer was needed....and should be enough for day to day usage basis
Problem is I'm poisoned by my own system, which i no longer own.Try to avoid getting 'poisoned' by listening to nice sounding system! Coz once you heard those, then you'll surely feel your own system sounds like crap.
Fortunately for me Howie and me have different hearing tastes. I've heard his customers cars and so far I haven't heard anything I am crazy about. My ears aren't competition level yet so I dunno how to appreciate his systems. They aren't bad, just not my taste.Succumbing once get to know Howie from EA.
Ho ho ho... that F1 HU and Dyns make all the difference man. McIntosh amps too fuh. Last time I recall hearing this Kancil that had cabling that cost more than the car by a lot. The speakers and amps and all were decent brands but not insanely expensive brands. The cables made such an impact it was easily comparable with other kitted out cars.Last time when I was more into ICE, I listened once to a very good sounding system in a Merc C Class using Alpine F1 HU with the DSP, Dyn Audio components front and no rear speakers at all, McIntosh power amps (don't know how many though), a Velodyne sub, with some branded wiring which prices were insane (something like 3-4x the prices of Monster or Streetwires). Total cost of that system I was told was around rm30-40k or something (and this was prices like >10yrs ago!). Well it blew my mind away and afterwards when I went back home in my car, it sounded absolutely like shit despite I had already spent thousands on it which was my whole month salary that time! That just made me a bit depressed and took some time for me to get used to my system and tried to accept it (coz I absolutely cannot afford to upgrade it anymore hence got no choice anyway).
Then there's my Myvi with stock HU and just a underseat woofer + component speakers, I went to a Myvi ICE gathering. There was a SPL Myvi and a few SQ cars, oddly enough when the fellas played "Hotel California" it sounded better in my car than those cars with amps, full on woofers, etc. I think I hurt a few feelings that day.
If you wanna talk about branding and poison, I've heard a psychotically expensive setup that consisted of 2 Luxman amps, a TRU Hammer monoblock, a twin Phase Aliante sealed sub combo, Scanspeak Revelator midbass, mids and tweeters, Clarion HXD2 HU, exotic speaker cables and RCAs, and minor sound proofing. Homaigawd that was good. The price of the whole setup is a really good cure for the poison though.