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My '06 Winning Blue Mazda3s Touring hatchback was a steal at well under $20,000. Its acceleration left one friend wondering if there was a V6 under the hood. Its handling reminded Motor Trend of another car named "3". The one glaring deficiency in the Mazda3, common with all other compact cars, was the audio system. The generously sized 6"x8" front and rear speakers provided decent midbass, but the mids and highs were lacking. And of course, there was no deep bass to speak of. So I started to save up my money and make plans for a new stereo. Step 1 was purchasing the JL Audio A4300 4-channel class A/B amplifier and hooking the front channels up to a pair of 6"x8" Infinity Reference speakers. I could have gotten a 2-channel amp, but I figured those rear 2 channels would be useful for a "rainy day". The rainy day came two months later, when I returned to my friendly local shop to install a JL Audio Sealed PowerWedge complete with a 12" W1 subwoofer. Coincidentally, it was raining very heavily on that day. I zoom-zoomed out of the shop a happy man. The bass was grin-inducing even at half-volume, while the sound clarity was like a thick veil had been lifted off the speakers. The rap on JL Audio is that their products are too expensive, but that is because their "entry-level" equipment does not get noticed as much as components like the W7 and 1000/1. The total cost of my stereo, including installation, was well under $1,000. In June 2008, I upgraded my speakers to a set of Hertz ESK 570 components. While a big improvement over the Infinitys, they sounded harsh at high volumes and there was an incredible amount of bass distortion under 100 hz. I blew my crossover in June 2010, and I was kind of glad that it happened. I just got a set of JL Audio C2-650 components to replace the Hertz speakers. The difference in sound quality is amazing. I put on DJ Unk's "2 Step" at the maximum undistorted volume (31/34) with the high-pass filter set to 60 hz. No bass distortion at all!