Is it worth the extra work to run new speaker wires to the door speakers when upgrading the head and speakers?

The stuff I ordered from Crutchfield came with little adapters that don't require me to cut the wires but will having all of those mechanical connections add noise? Will larger gauge wire help the sound that much?

TIA

 

That's a tough call. Being a bit of an audiophile, I've invested a lot of money in my audio system at home. Certainly very good quality speaker wiring - all wiring for that matter, makes a big difference in a home system. However, in a car, you've got all that road noise, and I like listening to my MINI's engine so I just don't pay a lot of attention to the "quality" of sound from my car system.

In a MINI, if you've added big amps which might send a lot of current through the wiring, I would suggest you do upgrade speaker wiring, otherwise if you've just replaced your head-unit, you probably won't notice a lot if difference and would be spending a lot of money doing it.

Others might disagree.

 

I looked at trying to do the wires in the front doors and decided to just try them out with the stock wires and it sounds pretty good.

I replaced the front speakers with Polk db6500's (6.5 components) they have a non-adjustable crossover that fits perfectly next to the speaker in the bottom of the door, just had to cut out two plastic casting ribs on the door panel (see attachment).

I replaced the rear speakers with Polk db690's (3 way 6x9).

Testing with the stock head my impression is:
Fronts sound great even at volumes where the stock speakers would break up (I assumed the break was caused by the amp). They have a broader range without being too bright (even with the tweeter mounted in the stock location).

Rears play a broader range also much better base and highs than the stock, but they start to break up at about the same volume as the stock speakers.

Overall I think just replacing the speakers would make the non-HK system sound much better provided you don't want it loud.

But I want it very loud so its back to the garage. To replace the head. I haven't decided if I will try running the speakers directly from the Eclipse CD5000 head to see how it sounds, seems like a lot of work for an experiment. But I would guess if nothing else it would give you clean sound at a little higher volume.

 

Just another data point for you: I faced the same decision when I installed my audio in 03. I saw how much work it was going to be and decided to try the stock wiring first. Sounded great to me, so I moved on. No regrets so far.