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I'm putting a new system in my car and I'm on the fence about something. I was going to put in an aftermarket deck to power my new speakers (infinitys) and an amp for 2 10" subs in the trunk. But I'm wondering about something. If I keep the factory deck, and the subs are run from the rear speakers with an amp, is there a sound quality loss as opposed to using an aftermarket deck? Basically, I'm wondering if the bass would be more accurate if the subs are wired directly into the deck instead of run off the rear speakers.

Also, would I be better off amping my speakers? I'm putting infinity reference components in the front and infinity reference 2ways in the rear, and I'm wondering if the output from an aftermarket deck would be as good as amping the speakers with a four channel amp?

 
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aftermarket deck puts out a much cleaner signal using RCA preouts. if you use stock deck, you have to use speaker inputs which is a terrible way to hook it up. as far as amping, aftermarket deck is decent and maybe puts out 20w per channel. factory deck maybe 5-10w. with an amp, depending on the power, could be 30-60w per channel.

 
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DONT wire your amps from the rear speakers, either if thats bridging the connectors or no rears and running sound through to amps in the rear, you wont get the sound crisp and clean, to answer your question yes a HUGE amount of sound loss, use the RCA's from your head unit, if your head is a stock, you can buy adapters for your make of car, if you have the money then buy a new head unit, they look better and sound better, allowing you to make adjustments to the equalizers and such. in my opinion, you wont need a (cap) capacitor if you're running this system, only inline before/for the amps, to power your bass at a constant 12.~~ Volts. but you honestly wont recognise a difference unless you're going professional sound competition.

what are your plans for the system? for show? or just custom mod (:

goodluck with the build!

 
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If you're running components, definitely amp them. Gearbox is right on the RCA preamps. Even though it doesn't seem like they do much it means a lot when it comes to sound quality. Head units don't have to be fancy. A lot of companies will try to advertise iPod compatibility and so on, but if you just want something very basic, just look for something with RCA preamps. They run for about 100$.