Please Help: High-End car audio

From Poster to Swampwalker: The amp and speakers I installed myself, the $70 was for both indash units (the changer and the cd receiver). The eclispse claims a 5V preout on my unit which should be sufficient (the one above it had an 8V preout). I've noticed most others start at about 1.8 or 2v and top of at around 4.5v. Now I don't judge the units solely on that number, but I should have enought output (not to mention the amp does have gain to accomadate weaker signals). The interconnects are 16ft runs of Lightning Audio Strike series. The interconnect and speaker cable are down the passenger side and the power and remote lead are down the driver side. At this point I still don't know what to do. To me the sound is "stuck in the drivers" if you know what I mean. It doesn't have that ethereal quality where a sound sounds like its coming from behind the tweeter or something, there's not much air or ambience.

From poster: If its of any consequence the amp is mounted on 3/4" particle board which is then mounted to the metal floor, so its not touching any metal (it even has the rubber sleeves for the screws). All connections are simple crimp on spades. Mids are running full range and tweets have there lows filtered via a 12db high-pass crossover (which I had to build, single coil and cap, I did all the soldering). Speaker cables is 16gauge radio shack. I figured if nothing else, since it wasn't the best amp in the world, give it a little help by lowering the overall resistance giving it slightly better midbass control for a couple of bucks. I don't know if the Nakamichi is the ticket.

Ez- You're right, the 5v output should be sufficient. Sorry, I can't say much about sound being "stuck in the drivers". My Eclipse set up (w/eclipse speakers) is in my Jeep Cherokee with a rack and box on top. At 70 mph, sometimes its hard not to drive the 50 wpc ADS to clipping. But when I'm stationary, it sounds pretty good, tonally. But I'm not looking for imaging. One issue might be where the drivers are mounted. I have the mid/woof in the standard front door cut out and the tweets on an angled surface mount provided with the eclipse, on the kick panels facing up toward the driver. Anyways, I would try swapping out the amp first to see if it helps. Should be easier than re-doing the head unit.

Swampwalker is right. An increase in output isn't going to help, and mounting location and the quality of the installation are paramount to the sound. Partnered with a 35watt pioneer and BA pro 6.5s, I too have an Eclipse. My tonal balance is weak right now (xover needs adjustment), but the imaging and soundstage is as much as you could expect for this price range. Ezmeralda, from how you have recently described your sound, it really seems that it is a problem with your speakers and/or amp. Maybe a defect, maybe bad mojo. I'd go to a couple of car audio places and have them check it out, especially if this is the first time you have mounted seperates yourself.

Thanks for all the support/advice, at this point its basically see if I can trade them in for something else, or get money back and maybe pay a restocking fee. The 6.5" mids and 1" tweets are mounted on the rear deack in the factory 6*9 openings. I was going for the factory look and so they are hidden under the factory grills firing into the rear window. The front 6.5" are mounted in the door panels where the old 6.5" were and the tweets are mounted on the sills at the top of the door where the side mirror is on the other side. I didn't mess with angling them, I figured just getting the tweets up there would be a step up from anything stuck down in the door. The guy at one of the other car audio places in town thought it sounded fine and said the whole installation looked better than what was in his car. When I asked my sister to listen she described it as "tinny and everything sounds on top" (which I agree with). It was my first component driver/ext. amp install, but I had done other cars in the past. I'll admit the amp isn't the best in the world, but I figured any power amp, and especailly this one, would give better sound than any in-dash chip amp. And on the same token any decent componenet drivers w/ an ext. X-over will sound better than some coax's. And it all did, things just went wrong at the head unit. For the same, if not less, money as the eclipses I could get an Audio Alchemy DLC, a power invertor, and a sherwood unit with a coax output to run into my tube dac and come out with better sound by far. Its more elaborate than I wanted and I'm still tempted try Nakamichi. Whatever ends up in the dash can't sound any worse than what I have now. The factory unit, even with its noise, had more body in the music. I expressed my concerns to the dealer and they are going to look at it monday, they want to try a new amp in, but I don't want to spend more money on an amp. I'll bring in my home audio DAC, transport and preamp and run them through to see how much difference the front end makes.