Possibly the toughest aspect of owning a custom car audio system is just searching through piles of magazines, catalogs, and sale flyers to pick out the components that you want. There's a mind boggling array of car stereo equipment on the market, and it can be rather difficult to research all of it. After awhile, you might be ready to pull out your hair and continue listening to the only station that you can receive on the AM/FM radio in your '88 Dodge.
Of course you don't like the format of banjo opera music that is featured on there, but you're struck, right? If the banjos start to catch up with you, you might break down and ask the local car stereo installation center to "pick something that sounds good for XXXXX amount of dollars." Taking that route will most likely pull in a good system, but one that's not worth the stack of bills that you will have to pull from your wallet. Otherwise, you might read through the car stereo magazines and find a few highly rated components. Once again, this is a great way to pay for much more than you are getting.
The next option is to get nervous about all of the prices that you have seen in the car stereo magazines and from the local installation shop and settle on something that is inexpensive from a discount department store. This route is somewhat different from the other two because you will get exactly what you pay for. Taking the third route will probably land you a cheaply manufactured system that sounds bad.
The last option is to search through
stereo magazines and check out the prices from the mail-order companies.
With a little work and luck, you will wind up with a good system at a low
price.
Different people have different tastes in sound and different needs. I am not terribly impressed with either very loud music or music with extremely good fidelity. Most of the music that I listen to is rock that is recorded with average or worse-than-average fidelity. Not only would I not need to spend $1000 for speakers that would accurately reproduce every high, but I don't need a bridge of subwoofers to rock the neighborhood. Although I do listen to music louder in the car than I do elsewhere, the in-car volume probably doesn't go over about 80 to 100 dB.
My lack of desire for super high-fidelity audio reduces my need for many speakers, and my lack of desire to blast the bass reduces my need for multiple amplifiers. What's left? I don't own a MiniDisc home deck, so those types of head units would be an unlikely choice. Likewise, I am still too cheap to buy a CD player, so a car CD deck is out of the question.
I went with a cassette deck so that I could play music or pre-recorded radio programs that I wanted to listen to. The strangest feature on my head unit is its ability to receive shortwave signals. Being a long-time shortwave listener, that's an important feature to me.
Other than the head unit, I also purchased two pairs of good speakers for the rear deck and the dashboard plus one woofer for the center of the rear deck. As it turned out, one unnecessary purchase for this system was a new amplifier; the 100-watt (total) amplifier in the head unit has proven to be sufficient for me. Some of the other goodies haven't been essential, either. An equalizer might be fun to play with, but I don't need one at this point. I don't need crossovers because my audio feeds into 3-way speakers. I don't need "stiffening capacitors" or enhancements to the car's power supply system because the audio system doesn't require much power.
Your system could require more revising or less revising than mine did.
For example, if your factory-installed car stereo system sounds fairly
good and the CD deck was standard, you might want to only replace the factory
speakers with solid, aftermarket 2-way or 3-way speakers. Another good
upgrade is to add one or two woofers or subwoofers. The small, cheap speakers
that are generally sold with all but the most expensive cars just can't
reproduce the bass frequencies. That's because to accurately reproduce
the bass frequencies withstand the greater movement, the speakers and magnets
must be larger and the cone must be heavier. This costs much more money
and uses more space--space that some people would much rather devote to
hauling things in the trunk. If you are working on a tight budget
and want to slowly convert your system over, you should start with the
speakers; they generally make the greatest difference in sound
quality.
Power has its price. Not only do the amplifiers cost money, but you have to figure out where to mount that many units. Under the seat is out of the question, and putting that many amplifiers in the trunk will eliminate a lot of space. Do you really need that much power? In addition to the space problems, you will have to run all of the wires that are required to interconnect that many amplifiers.
The next problem is that if you install high powered amplifiers, the energy that is required to power the system must be created by your car. Most car power generating and power saving systems (the alternator and battery, respectively) generate and save enough power to operate the car and a few accessories, such as an air conditioner, all lights, the heater fan, the cigarette lighter, and the stock radio. With a high powered amplifier or several amplifiers, you will likely overtax the alternator, which will drain the battery. With the added current flow, you will likely need to replace some of the wiring with heavier gauges of wire to prevent overheating. Is having a massively loud system worth having to replace your alternator and some of the wiring? For me, no, but many people would disagree.
Multiple amplifiers are not necessary at first; you can always test out a system first with one amplifier, then if you decide that you need more power, you can add another one later. This procedure could save you hundreds of dollars if you originally planned to buy two amplifiers, but decide that just one sounded fine.
The other complication with amplifiers is that the manufacturers often use deceptive tactics to boost the power rating of their equipment. Power can be rated in a number of different ways. A few of the common measurement techniques are in input power, output power, peak power, and average power. To make a measurement look higher, the peak input power could be measured. To actually determine how much power an amplifier is outputting, average output power would be used. Most amplifiers don't list the measurement style on the box or amplifier that was used to determine the result. Chances are that the manufacturer used a measurement that will pad its figures.
To be continued...