Had my 2014 Journey R/T a little over a week and I am pretty happy with it. When I test drove it, they didn't have my car on the lot, so I drove a different one without the "premium" Alpine sound package in it. I thought the radio sounded good in that one, so the next day when I got mt R/T, I didn't even bother trying out the stereo. I figured, hey if the stock radio sounds good, then the premium package has to sound even better. Well, I wish I had listened, because I honestly wouldn't have purchased my car. I couldn't be more disappointed in an audio system. The bass, even with the 8" sub in back, is non existent. I have the bass turned all of the way up on the receiver, and there is still barely any bass from the speakers, or the sub in back. My wife has a '14 Dart with the standard audio, and it literally sounds 10x better. If you were to listen to both of our vehicles, you would swear she had the premium audio and I had the base crap audio.
So yesterday, in hopes to fix my problem, I installed new speakers, hoping for more output. These speakers sound exactly the same, no additional bass at all. So this leads me to the next obvious issue, the amplifier. The crossovers in the Alpine amplifier have to be set in such a way that they are cancelling out basically all of the bass frequencies from the speakers. I can't handle this. I can't own a car for the next 3 years with poor audio quality. I want to return this damn car, I'm so upset about it. How you can call this a premium sound option blows my mind. Honestly, the stock speakers in my 02 Aztek I had before this car sound ten times better.
But I digress. Is there a way to bypass the premium amplifier? If I have to install my own amplifier, I'm fine with that. Is there a harness I can purchase where the factory wiring harness going into the amplifier can unplug from the amp, plug into the new harness, and I can run signal from there into my new amp? I had purchased the Audio Control LQ2i in order to install an amp for a new subwoofer, however this has only 2 channels of output.
Any ideas? In summary, I want to replace my factory amplifier without cutting wires since it is a lease.