Audio system help

[eddieengle]

Made this thread so I could ask some questions about sound systems to people who have similar cars, instead of googling and finding a million (not always helpful) answers. Need help deciding what kind of subs/amp/crossovers to buy. Just trying to get my car to sound good, its the place I listen to most of music unfortunately. Tips/suggestions? Pretty much have no idea where to start. Thanks for the help guys!

[Dr_Snooz]

Listening tastes are so different. The only thing that is really going to work is to go into the stereo store with a stack of your favorite CDs and listen to different setups until you find what you like. I recommend CDs because the audio quality of MP3s is about 1/4th that of CDs. My philosophy on car audio is somewhat different than most peoples'.

First, unless you are driving a very expensive and thoroughly sound-deadened car, there is going to be a lot of road noise. There will be so much road noise, in fact, that you aren't going to hear a lot of the subtle differences between many setups. You'll do well to hear the lyrics most of the time (unless you have it turned up so loud that it causes hearing damage).

Second, car stereo equipment stands a much higher likelihood of being stolen than home stereo equipment.

Based on that logic, I have my nice stereo equipment in the house. In the car, I have a mid-range deck and mid-range speakers that fit in the factory enclosures, behind the factory covers. I don't have any amps or crossovers or anything. It sounds nice, wasn't too expensive and (so far) has stuck around.

[89T]

any more for a simple setup all you need is a good head unit, with the crossovers built into it. decent 3 way speakers for the doors and the rear deck, and a sub amp. 10 or 12 inch speakers should do in a vented box. it wont be real loud but it will be effective.

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[King Peetis]

Well I happen to listen to music mainly in my car too. I drive quite a bit. You can build a decent system relatively cheap. Start with a deck that has an MP3 input, pretty cheap these days; you can get one for less than $100. Then get (4) 2-way, aftermarket speakers that fit in the factory cut outs-2-way speakers give you the most sound output for the budget conscience builder-$150-200. Find a 12" sub you are pleased with-ported, sealed or band pass and spend around $150-200. Now here's the trick, find a 5-channel amp that will support your speaker requirements-$200-350. Get it wired up by a pro-$150. Any where from $750-1000 will build you a nice system on the cheap. Down the road you could add some sound proofing to cut down on all rattling for another $150 and you are done!!!

[Taylor Smith]

all i did was get a nice head unit then cut the openings for the speakers in the doors to fit 5.5 inch 2 ways at first there was a lot of rattling and but it seems to have gone away mysteriously and now it sounds great... i also had a bunch of intermittent electrical problems in my car that just stopped happening about 4 months ago and haven't been back since.. knock on wood

[POS carb]

I've had quite a few different setups...
Start with a good head unit
I have an old Alpine head unit I bought used on ebay maybe 10 years ago.
It has 5-band parametric eq, 3-way crossover, and independently adjustable time delay., 6 custom presets for each of those. This is the best purchase for the audio system because I listen to a lot of different music and sometimes I want bass-heavy or high level listening and I can switch the eq and xover presets quickly without leaving my seat. I hate sound enhancers and preset listening position settings like you get in most head units. This unit even came with a step-up transformer so the internal amp is rated at 60wx4 (peak of course) but I don't use it, I have a dedicated amp for all the speakers.

I agree on the sound deadening, makes the car feel nicer too when the music is off

An amplifier will really wake up your system, aftermarket head units only make about 20 watts per channel rms. When choosing an amp its usually best to stay away from the ones that say 100000000 watts in large letters. Go by RMS rating, not peak, and the RMS rating should include a THD next to it of 0.1 or less. If these specs are not included stay away. You can usually tell if an amplifier's output rating is bullshit by the fuses. Add up all the fuses, multiply by 14.4, multiply by 0.65 (0.75 for class D). if it's close to the claimed output it's a good start. I'm running the new MB Quart ONYX amps in the Crown Vic, they are cheap and make good power and sound decent.

When choosing speakers a 2-way is fine. A lot of 3-ways come with a fake-ass piezo-electric third tweeter which is basically a wristwatch alarm speaker, doesn't really do anything for sound. They are easy to identify if you know what you are looking for, usually a small plastic dome with a tiny hole in the center and are very thin because they don't have a magnet in the back and don't have a filtering capacitor. I like soft dome tweeters best. Bonus if they are angled or swivel because you can point them. Most cheaper 2-way coaxial speakers use a single filtering capacitor on the tweeter (6dB per octave), better ones add an inductor (12dB per octave), and the best ones come with a crossover, but you usually don't get one unless you go with a component kit $$$$$