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rocknrollslc
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26 Mar 2011, 5:27 am

could someone please give me some pointers about car stereos? i plan to walk into the shop, make my intention to buy clear, have them educate me, and purchase my stereo... but i think having a little knowledge would be smart. i get the basic idea, but i have no idea what im doing when it comes to selecting equipment for my car, let alone installing it myself (i want to have installed for me).

im going to be walking into the shop in the next week/week and a half. i drive a 1991 honda accord, and the stock speakers are pretty terrible.

so i have $800-850 to spend. when i'm driving, i primarily listen to old school hip hop (wu-tang, ice cube, dr. dre, mac dre, three six, eminem, etc). the most important thing to me is that the subwoofer hits **hard**, and that the sound quality is decent. noo "ghetto bass". i definitely lean in favor of a "tight and punchy" sound rather than the alternative.... the sub should be deafening, and i should be able to feel it good in my chest. maybe even painful, if that kinda power is in my budget... also the lower the frequency response, the better. the more the sound stays inside my car the better too... rather than reverberating into other people's cars/homes.

while i do not plan to do my shopping at car toys, i was told there i could purchase a sub similar to the one i described above and have it installed for around $600.

the remaining $200-250 is for speakers and a cd deck. id really like the deck to have an ipod insert, if possible.

one more thing- subwoofer(s) under the seats as opposed to in the trunk?

i'm probably forgetting something..how realistic does this sound? is there anything i should know before i walk into the store?


thanks in advance :)



huntedman
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26 Mar 2011, 6:51 pm

One of the major defining features for a sub-woofer is its Frequency range. You want to look for something that has a F3 frequency bellow 35Hz, above this music will start to sound flat. If you can look for a graph called SPL vs frequency (example bellow), its a good indicator of quality

Image

The flatter this response is, the higher quality the sound reproduction will be. It is also how you start to match speakers, the above graph for example is for a mid range woofer it should be paired with a sub that can produce up to 200Hz and a tweeter that starts between 5K-10K.

In terms of under seat vs trunk sub woofer, trunk is probably better if you can spare the space. The larger case a sub is placed in the better it will typically preform. Sealed enclosures will give you tighter, cleaner bass response, vented enclosures usually have lower response higher DB output for a given size.

The subs people use to shake everyone else's car are typically what is called band-bypass designs. Don't get these, they have low frequency response and high power, but they will sound terrible. They only preform properly over a very narrow range of frequencies, about which they are designed, and cause a large amount of distortion outside their range. Even if it sounds good at the store, it likely won't when installed in your car.

I don't know if the $600 that your looking at for the subwoofer includes an power amplifier (it should), but you should pay attention to the amplifier quality. The THD % or signal to noise ratio are good initial indicator of that <1% THD >70DB S/N is a good staring point.

Don't necessarily look at power ratings for an indication of how hard it hits, but SPL output (@1m/1W). High power systems are usually also high distortion, the more you can push efficiency (high SPL at low power) the cleaner you will typically end up.

I would say take some of the $600 for the sub and put it toward a better deck and main speakers. If the bass on the main speakers isn't very good, even if you have a good sub the music will sound hollow. Lack of mid-range is very noticeable in guitar, although we listen to different types of music, i suspect you would miss it in hip hop as well. SPL output of the sub-woofer, mid-woofer and tweeter have to roughly match for the music to be properly balanced

That advice is kind of all over the place, but take of it what you will



rocknrollslc
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27 Mar 2011, 1:45 am

thank you!



rocknrollslc
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14 Apr 2011, 5:06 pm

could i ask you another question? i bought the system but having some issues.........

i bought a kenwood system. deck, four speakers, sub amp, sub.

im having serious stereo imaging problems. the sound is coming more from the right side of my car, but occasionally, at high volume, the sound will shift to the center and sound like how i imagine it should. then it moves back to the right side. my buddy also noticed the problem too. i talked to the shop about it, and had the guy get in my car and listen, and while he agreed that the sound was coming more from the right (he moved his head in the center of the car) there was unfortunately no image shift in the 10 minutes we sat there. he said that because my speakers are being powered by the deck and not an amp, that there wasn't anything they could do. they told me that i should buy an amplifier for the speakers, and that that would solve the problem. it's harder to be sure of course, but my ears want to say that i think the sub might be having an imaging problem too. i could definitely be wrong there though. anyway does this sound ridiculous? any suggested course of action? i don't even know where to begin troubleshooting this issue...

thanx