Hi, this is my first post here. I have a 96 firebird with a factory six speaker sound system(not 100% if that means it's bose or not). When I got the car it had no Headunit in it. I installed a cheap HU and about 1.5 after I started to experience some poor sound:

It's hard to describe but basically turning up the bass more than 0 distorts the music badly and even with the bass at zero the music often sounds distorted...Kinda like a secondary vibration lagging behind the actual music vibrations...The strange part is this only happens like half the time...Other times I will get in the car and everything will sound great!

I thought the cheap(nextar) HU may have been causing this so I replaced it with a nice pioneer.....Better, but still pretty much the same deal.

So what else can it be that would cause an intermitent problem like this?? I was thinking possibly the speakers themselves, but reading here now I am wondering if there could be an issue with the factory amp(if equipped?)??

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

Probably the speakers crapping out. I'm not sure which system you have, but it's not Bose. Only Camaros came with that. Look at the RPO codes. The radio code will have a W in front of it (like W54).

 

My guess is that the head unit is probably too much for the stock speakers to handle.