I'm a college student and don't have a very big budget but my speakers are starting to crackle and are getting lower. I believe they are still the stock ones so they aren't even good. I was looking around about getting new speakers and I saw that somebody said that coaxial speakers don't need an amp and can just be wired into the stock wiring by cutting the connector and crimping on a new one. I know the ones in the rear are 6x9 but im not sure about the front. The question is, is that correct, that coaxial speakers can just be added without a amp and sound ok. I know they are not gonna sound great but I'm used to stock speakers so almost anything is an upgrade. Sorry if this seems jumbled but im tired and havent been able to sleep

 

I was in your exact same situation a couple years ago with my truck...but I saved up a little bit and bought some 12ga speaker wire, RCA's, a 2 channel amp and a decent set of 2 way components...Absolutely killed my stock speakers and if you love music like I do, you won't regret it. With an amp tuned correctly, the clarity can be beautiful. That was two years ago and now I have 4 15's in a wall and working on putting 2 10" mid ranges in each door...

With all that being said, if you go with a good front stage, you wont need any rear fill at all. With a good setup in the front, it sounds better than having anything speakers in the rear. Trash those 6x9's!

 

In my truck (which takes a weird size, 5x7 or something like that), I put in 4 infinity reference coaxial speakers which are driven from the headunit (which is a sony head). Sounds good enough for the money I put into it (speakers were 50$ a pair, which is pretty damn cheap.) They are also 2 ohm speakers, so you'll probably get a bit more volume.

There are plenty of budget speaker choices, but honestly, unless you take the time to deaden/seal the doors, most of the sub-100$ speakers will sound pretty similar. Every once in a while, big brands have closeout pricing on amazon and you can pick up decent speakers for around 30$, but I wouldn't count on it. Keep in mind that anything you get will almost indefinitely sound better when coupled with an aftermarket head. Stock headunit output is pretty low. I recommend heading to a pick-n-pull junkyard and browsing around. You never know what you'll find. I found a great, low-wear sony headunit and a pioneer unit and got them for around 17$ a piece. Both work great. Make sure to grab the wiring harness and cage if you do this. You might even be able to find speakers there.

People always whine about "rear fill" muddying up their sound and that a single set of components will sound better, always. I disagree with this, especially on low-budget, low-wattage systems. Having 2 more speakers can make your music more enjoyable, especially considering the kind of sound stage you are going to get with 2 extremely low budget speakers in non-deadened doors.

Anyway, cliffs:
Infinity Reference is a pretty good bang for your buck.
Rear 6x9s MAY (I say probably will, but there is differing opinions) improve sound quality and volume.
2-way coaxials are likely to be cheaper than component speakers in the low low price range.
Stay away from pyle, pyramid, VR3, boss, ect.
12gauge speaker wire is way overkill. You can get away with stock speaker wire.

It is really hard to give you good advice without a ballpark figure of how much you want to spend however.

 

if your looking for good sounding speakers on a budget, i would go with soundstream, after being introduced to soundstream speakers, i've loved the quality of sound they produced for the money, i hope you have an aftermarket HU at least

 

If you buy aftermarket speakers but still have a stock head unit, even a aftermarket head unit to power the speakers, make sure the wattage isn't too high for the speakers. Look for speaker with a max wattage of 100. Otherwise they will be under powered and you will be spending money buying a amp to power them.

Of coarse having a amp to power you mids and highs will result in the best quality.

I am about to pick up some polk dbs off ebay for 40 front and 60 rear bucks. The set of dbs i had in the past were awesome speakers.