Alpine vs Kenwood - very disappointed

[Evergreen]

I have upgraded a lot of my cars/jeeps to aftermarket speakers which outputs dramatically better sound and range. Well today the Kenwood excelon kfc-x3c 3.5 changed that. To put it bluntly - they suck! I tired it with and without the crossover. I am missing depth, range and the tweeters have minimal output. An example of this is at the beginning of hotel California, the maracas disappear when I switch to the left channel (kenwoods).

Take a listen and let me know your thoughts. Excuse the crappy non-copyright music, not the best representation of the drastic difference but hope you can hear it. Right = Alpine Left = Kenwood

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[falcon241073]

Wow. Those kenwoods are horrible

 

[Bzinsky]

I have upgraded a lot of my cars/jeeps to aftermarket speakers which outputs dramatically better sound and range. Well today the Kenwood excelon kfc-x3c 3.5 changed that. To put it bluntly - they suck! I tired it with and without the crossover. I am missing depth, range and the tweeters have minimal output. An example of this is at the beginning of hotel California, the maracas disappear when I switch to the left channel (kenwoods).

Take a listen and let me know your thoughts. Excuse the crappy non-copyright music, not the best representation of the drastic difference but hope you can hear it. Right = Alpine Left = Kenwood

Most cars in the 20th century put very little priority on sound quality. Upgrading made a lot of sense because the stock speakers were just $5 full range paper drivers with hardly any sound tuning.

auto manufacturers take it way more seriously these days. If you’re upgrading a mid range oem sound system these you need some decent hardware.

$80 2 way kenwoods aint gonna cut it anymore.

edit: I read some reviews on these speakers on crutchfield and there were a lot of people that raved about them in their JL’s. Didn’t see anything specific about upgrading from alpine though. Hmm

 

[Deleted member 59498]

Wow I generally can't hear differences but holy hell that is bad.

 

[Astro Jeep]

Alpine for the win!

Jeeps = Mountains
Mountains = Alpines

Makes sense to me.

Ken's in the woods doing what? Not making good speakers that's what.

 

[SouthValleyPerformance]

I have upgraded a lot of my cars/jeeps to aftermarket speakers which outputs dramatically better sound and range. Well today the Kenwood excelon kfc-x3c 3.5 changed that. To put it bluntly - they suck! I tired it with and without the crossover. I am missing depth, range and the tweeters have minimal output. An example of this is at the beginning of hotel California, the maracas disappear when I switch to the left channel (kenwoods).

Take a listen and let me know your thoughts. Excuse the crappy non-copyright music, not the best representation of the drastic difference but hope you can hear it. Right = Alpine Left = Kenwood

Are they the correct ohm replacement for your application?

 

[Deleted member 59498]

Alpine for the win!

Jeeps = Mountains
Mountains = Alpines

Makes sense to me.

Ken's in the woods doing what? Not making good speakers that's what.

Thinking of which my neighbor is BBQ'ing right now, I could go over and be like "How you like those Kenwood speakers" then he will ask if I am mooching a hamburger.

 

[TheDukeofLark]

Are they the correct ohm replacement for your application?

And are they upside down in a glass of water? That's so bad it sounds like you are just getting kick panel sound rather than dash sound. Not only sound quality issues, but even volume issues. I don't have the Alpine system in mine, but I can't imagine that is better than even bone stock. Have you tried both speakers in the pack? In case that is a bad unit somehow?

I ask because I don't want to believe they are that bad. That's no upgrade.

 

[rubiria]

Alpine for the win!

Jeeps = Mountains
Mountains = Alpines

Makes sense to me.

Ken's in the woods doing what? Not making good speakers that's what.

At least we didn't get Sonys either... Otherwise they would literally Xplod....

 

[Bzinsky]

I have upgraded a lot of my cars/jeeps to aftermarket speakers which outputs dramatically better sound and range. Well today the Kenwood excelon kfc-x3c 3.5 changed that. To put it bluntly - they suck! I tired it with and without the crossover. I am missing depth, range and the tweeters have minimal output. An example of this is at the beginning of hotel California, the maracas disappear when I switch to the left channel (kenwoods).

Take a listen and let me know your thoughts. Excuse the crappy non-copyright music, not the best representation of the drastic difference but hope you can hear it. Right = Alpine Left = Kenwood

Sounds disappearing when switching left to right is extremely common. The stereo music was just made that way. Certain sounds come from left channel and certain right channel.

hopefully you tried numerous audio tracks

 

[Evergreen]

Sounds disappearing when switching left to right is extremely common. The stereo music was just made that way. Certain sounds come from left channel and certain right channel.

hopefully you tried numerous audio tracks

I understand but it was playing the same out to each speaker. I listed too many tracks, and the sound quality is just poor.

 

[Wbino]

Hotel California is a better song with the mute enabled.
Alpine for the win!

 

[Jebiruph]

Are the Kenwoods out of phase, do you need to reverse the wiring?

 

[Bzinsky]

I understand but it was playing the same out to each speaker. I listed too many tracks, and the sound quality is just poor.

Guessing the oem alpine is tuned to bounce off the windshield and the kenwood is not. Because I did look it up and it seems like a decent speaker.

i used to be a car stereo installer a long time ago. One thing I noticed is that the oem’s engineer these systems to levels almost impossible for the aftermarket to duplicate. This seems like its a perfect example of that happening. Everything from the overall car sound deadening to the enclosure behind the speaker or lack there of. Often times I would replace some simple parts bin drivers with more expensive drivers powered by high quality amps….it would change the sound, it might have much crisper and detailed highs, but you often loose some low/midrange, it wasn’t necessarily “bett

i think some higher end aftermarket systems these days are essentially ditching the stock speaker enclosures because they can’t make them work. Or they basically take about the speaker enclosure and try to build a real one, which is difficult.

Like I would never ever upgrade my bose system in my gmc sierra. I’m well aware it’s not a high end system, but I’d need to do a full system $5k overall and a ton of tuning to beat it.

 

[Bzinsky]

Are the Kenwoods out of phase, do you need to reverse the wiring?

That probably wouldn’t be an audible difference. That usually just effects the sound waves being reverse of the other speakers sound waves. But if you’re only playing one speaker at a time you shouldn’t notice it. Or atleast I never did.

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