I have a Kenwood KDC 3022 deck hooked up in my dad's 93' Corolla. The front speakers are Cliff Designs 4'', which are supposed to hold 200W, and 100w rms. I had two 6x9's cliff desings kicking in the back before but took them out to put 'em my ride.

However now i notice that the front two speakers in the car distort when i turn up the deck to 22. The bas, trb, and ___ are at 0. The deck puts out 50W per channel so why is this happening?

 

this one....http://www.radiomancaraudio.com/detail.asp?PRODUCT_ID=kenwood-kdc3022

 

They are being underpowered, which is causing them to distort.

 

what does tha mean? i dont know much about decks and speakers. My buddy told me to get these cuz they were good. When you say underpowered, what do you mean?

excuse my stupidity

 

Well, in my experience, when you have speaker that is rated at 100 watts continuous, and you feed it like 18, it won't sound that good.
You need to amp those speakers, give them the power they need.

 

oh i thought as long as ur speakers watts are more than the deck pushes per channel ur good. Also i had two 6x9's kicking before, and there was no distortion. so why does it distort when i have them out and only 4'' speakers?

 

ok i read up a bit on the distortion. What i need to know now is it possible to buy speakers that are small nuff to handle jus what the deck puts out. i dont want to hook up an amp. Plus i think that deck can't take an amp.

 

The 4" probably alaywas distorted, you just didn't hear it because it was drowned out by the 6x9's.
Maybe try getting some speakers that are like 30-40 watts rms.
It could also be that the speakers are just garbage, hook them up inside and see what happens.

 

ok 2 things...
1- when im buying speakers, should i look at how close the total watts are, or the how close the total rms watts are?

2-what do you mean hook them up inside.?

 

Holy misinformation here. Your speakers do not distort from "They are being underpowered, which is causing them to distort." Here is what is really happening, this is actually two parts.

Part one. A larger speaker can handle more amplitude and lower frequencies. Bass response and distortion can lie in the same frequency range. As the speaker that is larger is more powerful, it masks the distortion coming out of the smaller speaker. Thus you did not hear it.

Part two. Your cd amplifier is not 50w x 4. On life support it is struggling to produce 18 watts x 4. The quote above can be viewed the same as , my cars speedo says it can do 220, I guess I have to drive at that speed all the time or the car is going to blowup fro mbeing driven at the wrong speed. Think of this, your car has a tach. Your tach has a redline, you know that if you go above redline, bad things will happen to the engine. Your tiny little amp also has a redline, you continually went past it. The larger speakers could handle it, the smaller ones could not. If you turn up things like bass, treble and loudness, the redline is going to be lower than before. You need to learn the capabilites and limitations of your stereo.

Weston, if you are going to be posting recommendations to other, please ensure that it is the correct information as well. We don't need someone doing more damage to something based on the wrong information.