You can imagine how many customers come to us because their door speakers stopped working.

…or because they sound distorted.

…or because they come on and off intermittently.

Usually their first thought is to just replace them. And in a perfect world, this would work.

The problem?

Replacing a speaker might not always fix the crackling, popping… or just the absence of sound coming from your speaker location.

So what will?

Well before we answer that, you have to figure out WHY the speaker sounds terrible/doesn’t work…

…then you can match it with the RIGHT solution

Here are 3 reasons why your speakers sound bad (or don’t work at all)

1. Your factory amplifier is bad

If your car comes with a premium audio system from the manufacture, chances are there’s a factory amp in there. You can tell if it says “Bose”, “JBL”, “Mach”, “Monsoon”, “Mark Levison” or another name brand on the dash or door panels. Even still, sometimes you won’t see a name brand anywhere in the car, but you’ll still have a factory amp.

Now, if your speaker is cutting in and out… or if it doesn’t work at all… then you may have a bad channel on your factory amp.

In our store, we’ll run a number of tests to gauge this.

If we find there’s a bad channel in the amp, then we’ll either bypass the amp and replace the car stereo (because the factory stereo won’t work without its amp), or we’ll replace the factory amplifier.

If there’s no factory amp (or if the factory amp is fine) then we’ll just replace the speaker, because that’s what was blown in the first place.

2. Too Much Bass Coming Out of Your Speakers

This one KILLS me.

Look, if you’re not getting enough bass out of your sound system, come in and have a subwoofer installed.

But for the love of all that is holy, PLEASE don’t raise the ‘Bass’ setting up on you stereo – it’ll do nothing more than turn those speakers into confetti.

The fact is, you door speakers are too small to handle this bass frequency.

For that reason they’ll distort when you crank it up.

So if your speakers sound like they’ve got a bunch of sand in them, there’s a good chance you’re cranking that bass too much.

Of course, your speakers could just be dying a “natural” death… which you can’t avoid.

But a lot of times the culprit is too much bass flowing through them.

3. The Environment

Ok, so this mostly applies to rear decklid speakers. (you know, the speakers in the way back facing your back window)

Over time, the sun will have its way with your speakers’ paper-thin cones.

When that happens, you get deterioration.

And when that happens, you get nails-to-a-chalkboard kind of sound. It’s painful to hear.

In this case, simply replacing those speakers will do you a world of good.

Well, I hope this makes sense.

It can be frustrating when your speakers sound bad and you’ve got no idea what the cause is.

Just remember to look out for the Big 3 culprits that I listed above.

And if you’re still having a tough time trying to figure it out, give us a call at 510-527-9888.