I have Infinity Reference speakers all around. 5.25 2-way in the front and 6x9 3-ways in the rear. I got these back in 2005 and they have been in two of my cars with no issues. I am driving them off my Alpine 9887 HU. Recently, I Imprinted my 9887. After the Imprint, I started to notice my speakers sounded scratchy at higher volumes on certain songs. I tried a few different types of music at different volumes to see if maybe I just blew my tweeters. It sounds like the tweeters are fine to me, they just start to distort if I turn the Volume up past about 19 or 20. I would think if the tweeters were blown (I have heard blown tweeters before) it would sound much worse or they would just not work at all.

Ok so now the question, distortion at higher volume on the highs only....Are the speakers giving out because I am feeding too much power? These Infinity's are a few years old, but I checked the specs, and my Alpine is well within their recommended power ratings. I have had many infinity speakers in the past and many of them have developed this scratchy type sound after a few years of use. Maybe I am just blowing all of them, or do Infinity speakers just tend to sound more scratchy? Anyway, is it time to replace the Infinity's with say some Alpine Type R's, or maybe an external amplifier would give them more clean power?

My guess is that after you ran Imprint, it must have re-adjusted the HU gain. So you may be pulling too much power out of the HU. The HU may be clipping, sending distortion to your speakers. Get an amp :)

A clipping source (for some speakers) can be just as bad as overdriving a speaker with too much power, so be careful with that.

Another possibility is that the HU might have changed to active mode when running Imprint, and your crossover points got all jacked up.

Everything is run off the head unit, and I would imagine the head unit has built in active crossovers. I am starting to think the head unit does not have enough clean power to drive all four speakers. I am going to try hooking the speakers up to another amp and see if they sound any better. My hunch is I am killing the head unit trying to run everything off of it.