I had an Eclipse CD8443 HU installed in my car this weekend. At first, I was really happy because the speakers actually worked (I've never had a CD player in there). As I listened, I realized that there was no sound coming from the Wave Tube. The guy at the shop and I unscrewed the Wave Tube and found that it was unplugged (apparently from when the fuel pump was installed). We plugged it in and it started making some sound, but not much. Is this normal? The Bose speakers are actually pretty good, but have very little bass. I did hear a pulsing sound coming from the back. It kinda sounded like an airplane that was flying over really far away. I'm not expecting the little Wave Tube thing to Bump, but it's barely doing anything at all. Please help me figure out what could be causing this...

 

Anyone? Bose tube is doing practically nothing!

 

Hey that's a nice head unit! I was thinking about getting one of those myself. If you don't mind me asking, how much $$$ did it set you back?

As for your problem... do you have any idea how they might have installed the speakers? The bose system has individual amps for each speaker, as you probably know. So I imagine they're sending line level to them, rather than speaker level through a converter. Though that particular unit has internal amps of its own.

The wave tube is no different. The airplane sound is probably a ground loop, or possibly an impedance mismatch if they're plugging the head unit's speaker output into the wave tube's amp input.

 

It is $420 list price. It was a "display model" for less than one day, so the guy (a fellow FD owner) gave it to me for $370.

Regarding the System in General: It seems like I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and buy new speakers and amplify everything. I was planning on doing this anyways, but after first hearing the speakers, I was thinking that just a sub would be ok. I've found that the car is entirely too loud to hear the speakers very well. I'm certainly not going to buy some Focal speakers or something in the $1,000 + price range. Any ideas for a high quality speaker? I think I'm going to get a 5-channel amp to power everything to save on weight.

 

Good deal.

How loud are you trying to get? The Eclipse's internal amps may be enough to get you what you want.

Personally, I think ultra high end speakers are a waste in this car, especially if you've got P-Zeros. Damn noisy tires.

I ended up buying some JBL shallow mount 6.5's. I had one side by side to the stock speakers (non-bose) and it was a night & day comparison. After I installed just ONE in the drivers side, I gave them a listen and can BARELY tell any difference in the quality... mostly in the upper freqs, which car interiors f*ck up pretty badly. The JBL didn't sound bad or anything, it's just not much better, once it's in the car. A word for the wise, mounting depth is EVERYTHING when choosing a speaker. The 2" deep JBL's come pretty close to the window when it's down.

I remember someone tried replacing speakers on the wave tube and had pretty bad results. Try a search.

Does the EQ in the deck help at all?