The driving experience can be improved with a good sound system, and high-quality 6×8 car speakers are a foundational part of that. The quality of the sound system in our cars is usually based on the amount of money we paid for our car. Most cars are equipped with sound systems that are simply adequate to hear music. Very often a relatively small investment (less than $100) and some time (from 30 to 90 minutes) can change our listening pleasure to an amazing degree. We simply replace the factory installed speakers with a new set of 6 x 8 speakers.

There are many manufactures of 6 x 8 car speakers; Pioneer, JBL, Kenwood, Polk, Infinity, Rockford Fosgate, Boston Acoustics, just to name a few. Before we make any decision as to which set of speakers to buy, we really need to do some important research. Regarding the size of the speakers, most cars have factory installed 5 x 7 or 6 x 8 speakers. Usually the speaker holes will allow the 6 x 8 speakers to replace 5 x 7 speakers. We can go online to sites like Crutchfield and find which speaker sizes will fit our car. In terms of speakers, size does matter. Identical 6 x 8 speakers and 5 x 7 speakers produce different results. The larger speakers will produce crisper highs, clearer mid-ranges and richer bass sounds.

The single most important step in buying the right 6 x 8 car speakers is to be certain that they correctly match the output of our music source, often called the head unit (HU), (radio, CD player, MP3 player, etc.). If we buy speakers that have an RMS wattage capacity that is greater than the RMS wattage output of our system, we may blow up our system trying to drive those speakers. The general rule of thumb is that our HU should have twice the RMS wattage output as our 6 x 8 speakers RMS wattage capacity. It is better to have a little more output power in reserve to deal with peaks without creating distortion.

Once we have matched the system and speakers in terms of power, we will want to decide what driver configuration we want. The driver configuration will have the greatest impact on the quality of the reproduction of the music. Music is simply organized audio frequencies. The frequencies are divided into three ranges: bass (from 20 Hertz [Hz] to 1K Hz), mid-range (from 300 Hz to 7.5K Hz) and treble (from 1K Hz to 17K Hz). Yes, there is an overlap in those ranges. The 6 x 8 speakers typically come in four types: one-way, two-way, three-way and four-way. One-way speakers are rare because they produce poor music quality. A two-way speaker is a combination of a tweeter (treble range) and woofer (bass range) drivers. A three-way speaker has a tweeter, mid-range and woofer drivers, so all three frequency ranges have their own driver. A four-way speaker is a three-way with a sub-woofer driver. A sub-woofer emphasizes the lower bass range. Now find out the RMS of your HU and go to your local radio store and try a system with a little less power than yours on some 6 x 8 speakers. You are ready to buy.