Problems with infinity kappa 4's

Ok heres the deal.  I recently installed infinity kappa 4's in my rear doors. I will give you all the details of the setup.  The speaker are located in a little enclosure that has a bass port that came stock in the car, there is a little leftover space around the outside when screwed in that i plan to fix with some wood and a rubber gasket, however i dont think thats my problem.  The speakers have VERY punchy bass that is distorted at average levels of volume. I played the speakers out of the enclosure and got the same punchy distorted bass just not as loud when out of the enclosure.  Anyway i plugged in my old OEM speaker and compared to the other side with infinity in it and the punchy distorted bass went away when the infinity was faded out.  Now i have ran infinities 6x9's off a deck before and they sounded fine, now that i'm running these fours they sound awful.  I wired everything correctly so they are not out of phase, i dont know whats wrong.  The crossovers are wire correctly and the crossover setting on the deck does not change the sound so i leave it at flat and when i adjust the EQ the bass is still punchy and distorted no matter how low i set the right frequencies.  the specs of the speakers are 50 rms and 100 peak, they are bein run at 26 rms. please help. 

I am running them off of an Alpine CDA-9835, i did run new speaker wire (16 guage) and i got them off the internet.

Does the sound quality deteriorate as the volume increases or does it always sound bad? I was going to suggest some sort of clippping or amp distortion if you're only running 25w. Though if you've run 6x9s fine with that power.. Do the speakers themselves come with crossovers? Are you certain you've wired correctly at the speaker terminals?What's that flippie??

They are 4" speakers.  They need a high-pass crossover, probably at no lower than 180 or 240 Hz.  4" speakers are not capable of producing much bass without sounding "distorted," as what you are probably actually doing is over-driving them.  Keep it up and they will eventually fail.Support the12volt.com

when i had the OEM speakers in there they sounded fine, they would distort a little at higher levels which was to be expected that didnt bother me.  Now that the infinities are in they distort at significantly lower levels than the stock speakers and its terrible distortion, sounds horrible, I think they sound awful all the time i just cant hear it as well when the volume is down lower.  The infinities do have a crossover and im pretty sure i wired it correctly.  Now the tweeter sounds fine it just the woofer.  the bass sounds like this "birmmmp" and its like a pop not really like a bass hit ya know.  When i said i ran 6x9's off a deck I forgot to tell you it was a different deck in a different car, but i was trying to say is that i dont think the fact that they were underpowered had any effect on the SQ, well it did but not like these 4's.  anyway thanks for your guys help so far.

i dont understand though they came with a crossover so i would think that they would engineer their own crossover to meet the needs of the speaker, and even when i adjust the active crossover in my deck to 200hz hp it still sounds like crap.  The stock speakers are 4" and they sounded much better than these and were played the exact same way.  I probably just end up goin back to the stock speakers but i really want to know what the deal is.

Even if you DIDN'T have speaker crossovers, using the deck EQ should cut out the non playable freq's. The only time the problem you desribe has happened to me was when my bass EQ was set too high and I didn't notice or when my cones were damaged. I suppose you'll have to go through using the process of elimination. If you can, try your speakers on low volume using an amp in your house to determine whether they are busted. Do the speakers look weird when they're moving? Does the speaker crossover have any controls on it?What's that flippie??

The Infinity crossover is there to direct the correct frequencies to the tweeter.  It does not include a high-pass for the woofer.  If the speakers are "going bimmmmp" they are over-driving.  You will fry them like this.  If the 200Hz hp on your head does not correct the situation, I suspect them may be defective... or they simply cannot handle the power you are feeding them.  Take them back.Support the12volt.com