I just got my BA S55s & S35s that everyone has been raving about. I started off easy and replaced the center dash only so far. By listening I could not tell a difference weather it was connected or not. It has so little power going to it you can only tell its working by touching the cone. I used harnesses so the polarity is fine. The factory Bose speaker was the same way. I think I just wasted $63 buying those extra speakers. What did you guys do, just eliminate the center channel altogether? When I replace the door 3 1/2 speakers will that have an impact on the center dash? I heard that if you eliminate the center the radio will then have true stereo sounds. Whats the deal?

 

Don't base the change on the center. The center is only there to help unify the soundstage.. it's fill, not a true channel.

Replacing the speakers in the doors will make an enormous difference.. whether that is good or not is a matter of personal taste of course. To my ears, putting decent speakers (Infinity in the one I did for a friend) made the shortcomings of the system all the more obvious. But YOUR ears are what matters here.

FYI - if you decide a speaker ain't enough and you're going whole hog.. ignore the center, it's useless in a truly GOOD system.

 

Its like a surround sound channel in a home theater. The best effect is achieved if the level is low enough to blend into the mains without being able to locate the speaker with your ears.

Think of it as fill, not as content really.

I listened to my new install after I had disconnected the center channel and I found I did have a hole in the sound. Im a short guy so Im sitting lower than some. I was way off axis from the left channel and my ears were telling me the right channel was most of the content I was hearing. I think not having crisp highs is part of the Bose strategy, because adding highs into the factory locations made it clear how far I was from having a good image.

It got worse as I replaced the rear speakers because I replaced with full range and the extra "highs" pulled the image back behind me and to the right. In a vert, the right rear speaker has a straight shot to my right ear so it really killed the soundstage. EQ helped a bit with that one, but thats a bit of a band-aid.

I relocated the tweeters to the dash corners (will be a different post) to bring the sound stage out in front of me and to lessen the difference between the path to my ear from left and right channels. When I did that, I got some left channel presence but I was left with a "sonic hole" conveniently located in the middle of the windshield. Sounds that had a lot of highs were very strong to the left and right but the midrange content got a little lost. The Center channel is playing 300Hz - 2000Hz as a summed signal of L + R. I told myself the level was going to be too much so I bought low inductance resistors to help me step it down. So far, its still playing at the summed level, and I think I will miss it if I add resistors to knock it down a bit.

So for me, the center in the C6 shows me what I might be missing in the vocal ranges, it helps with the Left\Right differential and helps pull the soundstage up and out in front of me. I think its cool that some guys were able to get a sound they like without it. But with tweeters in the doors and no center, I felt like I was hearing speakers but not music.

 

The factory Bose 3.5"s seem to be very efficient. If you have gone higher end, the new speakers probably wont play the same "volume" as the Bose using the same level on the stereo.

The Real Time Analyzer showed me that the Bose speakers were a solid +3 dB or more than my Alpine Type x's. And that is with a +3 dB jumper on the tweeter level.

If you think the new BA center is too quiet, its probably cause the Bose are running off with the sound. Wait until you get everything replaced so you can hear them relative to the other BAs instead of the Bose.