- Tue Dec 01, 2015 7:05 am
#357726
(In describing my setup and goals I ended writing more of a how-to haha)
Car Audio SetupMy years as a car audio installer strongly influence and inform my taste in sound quality. I've never been a fan of putting very high end products in an environment which is inherently bad for sound quality. I prefer to buy good quality products and get the absolute best performance out of them, with a strong leaning toward saving weight and not putting holes in the chassis and interior plastic.
Rewire Stereo
Whenever I take on a project car that already has an aftermarket stereo, I always pull the stereo and look at the harness. A lot of times it will look like the disaster above. Fifteen minutes to clean it up is probably the biggest investment/benefit time ratio you could spend on a car, short of vacuuming and washing it.
The pics above were actually from a previous project. There was no need to do that on this car since I planned to completely rewire the stereo with aftermarket wire and forgo the stock stereo harness altogether.With any car that I plan on having for a long period of time, I run new heavy gauge power and ground wires directly to the battery, and then I run new heavy gauge speaker wire into the front doors*. I remove the rear speakers to decrease weight, save cost, free up wattage for the front speakers, and to improve staging.
*Running wires into the doors is a huge PITA. Make the most of it and run actuator and potential future tweeter wiring, or leave the stock stereo wires to reuse for tweeters since they don't require heavy gauge wiring.
The only factory wire left over would be the accessory power wire, which I run straight to the under dash fuse box to avoid needing the stock stereo harness at all.
My current stereo is a Kenwood, but I recommend Pioneer.Stereo ChoiceMost new stereos today put out as much power as the high end stereos of a decade ago, but I still look over the specs when making a decision. For the longest time I was a loyal customer of Alpine stereos, but their quality took a slide while Pioneer took a step forward. Most recently I've given up on CD players altogether. Keeping CDs in a car is a disaster. They're clumsy to handle, they get messed up easily, you have to change them frequently, they skip, they entice thieves, and who the hell still buys CDs anyway??
Manufacturers have started offering digital media players that lack cd drives altogether. I had hoped they would use the freed up space to increase the size of the internal amp, but so far they've chosen to reduce the price instead. They sell digital media players as a low cost alternative, and so the faceplate and trim ring look like those you'd find on the bottom of the line. The overall quality of the Pioneer is good, but I found a problem that could not be resolved through their tech support and is an apparent problem with the OS across their entire 2014 line, so I switched to a Kenwood. The look and usability of the Kenwood is not as good as the Pioneer, but the sound quality is comparable and it recognizes all the music on a 64 gig thumb drive, while the Pioneer does not (only recognizes the first 4 gigs). I'm hoping that Pioneer will correct this issue in their next lineup.
The smaller depth of a digital media player is very welcome on the EG chassis which is notorious for being an extremely tight fit for stereo wiring. The lack of a CD drive saves over a pound and a half. The stereo on the right is one I've had in seven vehicles. It still works great but lacked modern technological advances like USB.
Speaker ChoiceUnlike stereo brands, there are a lot of good brand speaker options. Pioneer is the clear choice in stereo brands as of 2015, but I don't recommend their speakers at all. Sound and build quality are lacking, as is the case with Sony. Alpine, Polk, Infinity, and Kenwood are all great options. Listen to them on the displays or preferably in a friend's car, compare the specs, prices, and make your choice.
My personal favorite are Kicker components. They are a cut above the brands I mentioned, but they have models at a price point between the average brands and the really high end brands like Focal etc. My car already has Infinity Kappas in it, which are great sounding speakers, so replacing them with Kicker components is not a priority. I'd rather spend that money on sound deadening which is a topic I hope to cover later.
4 Channel Amplifier Or NotWhen choosing speakers, you need to decide whether you plan on amplifying them or not. If you have money, don't race, and plan on adding a subwoofer, you're going to want to amplify your front speakers. If you take my advice and only run front speakers, you can combine two amps in one and choose just a single four channel amp. The amp needs to have high and low pass filters. Your stereo should have a subwoofer RCA output so you can have some controls through your stereo.
Use the high pass filter on the front, somewhere around the 100 range. The lower the number, the more bass your front speakers will play, which is bad. That draws power away from their ability to play mids and highs, which is what they're best at. Use the low pass filter on your sub, again around the 100 range to prevent it from trying to play highs and too much midrange. Amp tuning is best left to someone with experience but it's good to know where to expect the knobs to be.
Basic is BestThe best bang for your buck, lightweight system wont have a subwoofer or amps. You'll never have real bass, but you can have good sound quality for driving to work and back each day. You wont have a lot of equipment to lose in theft or in an accident. Choose a stereo with a high rms output (ignore outrageous watt claims) and speakers with a high sensitivity rating. Every dB counts. Choose speakers that most closely match their max rms power handling with the stereo's rms output. If you're amplifying the system, sensitivity is much less important. Don't match speakers with very high power handling to a stock stereo. Lower will sound much better. Nothing worse than underpowered speakers, and cranking them up will blow them more easily than you can blow overpowered speakers.
Component SpeakersThe differences between regular speakers and component speakers are that the tweeter is separated from the mid range mounted separately and passive crossovers are provided to optimally divide the frequencies between them. They'll give you better sound quality but are more expensive and more difficult to install. If you go this route, I suggest swapping EX coupe or Si door panels into your hatch and mounting the component tweeters over the stock tweeter locations. Also, if you're at this level, at the very least you should sound deaden your doors because it will make as big a difference in sound as going from cheap speakers to good ones. Speaker cones need to vibrate to produce sound but they lose that ability if the surface they're mounted on vibrates in opposition.
My PlansI plan on someday sound deadening the whole car with a kit from
http://www.sounddeadenershowdown.com/, putting the Kappas in my CRX and getting Kicker components for the EG. I'll have custom fiberglass boxes made for some small kicker subs in each of the OEM rear speaker locations, and finding somewhere to hide a four channel amp. In the meantime I'm enjoying my budget setup and occasionally getting compliments on the sound quality.
