Any advice on car audio?


I have an older Saab and am thinking about investing in a new audio system since this one does not have a cd player\, or an amp.
Is it possible to get good sound in a car? Any advice on how do to so without spending a ton of money, money that i could put into my home system?
asamuelson

Showing 1 response by sdcampbell

Yes, it is possible to get good sound -- infact, surprisingly good sound -- in a car. However, it is NOT possible to do this cheaply. In addition to the cost of the equipment itself, it is absolutely necessary to install sound deadening materials inside the car. Road noise is very intrusive, particularly if you have an older car that lacked good soundproofing in the first place. Without good soundproofing, you'll lose most of the high frequencies, and need a lot more amplification to compensate for the loss of low frequencies due to road/tire/engine noise.

When I installed a good audio system in my car, I had the help of a friend who was a professional car audio technician. We essentially stripped the inside of the car (seats, carpets, headliner, dash and transmission consoles, door panels, etc), and then applied Dexdamp soundproofing panels (DynaMat is the other commercial material) to all of the interior surfaces, as well as the trunk, inside surface of the trunk lid, and inside surface of the hood. To complete the treatment, we shot expanding soundproofing foam inside the door shells. Then, on top of the damping panels on the floorboards, I then installed a heavy under-carpet soundproofing material designed for yachts. All of this is pretty labor-intensive, but there is little point in buying good car audio gear if you fail to provide a relatively quiet car interior. With good soundproofing, you can reduce the interior noise level by at least 6 db, and sometimes by as much as 10-12 db. This may not sound like a big reduction in noise, but it is.

In addition to the soundproofing, you will also need -- at a minimum -- decent replacement speakers and a good amp (or amps). You will probably also find that you need a new CD player, separate subwoofer, and probably an equalizer or digital signal processor (DSP) to contour the frequency response (which can pretty non-linear in a car). If you get really serious about this, you will also want to have 1-2 large power supply capacitors (in the 0.5 to 1.0 farad range). Top all of this gear off with some good audio wiring harnesses, and you can easily spend in the $2000-2500 range (assuming you or a friend do the labor).

When the job is done right, a good car audio system can have excellent frequency response, great imaging, and very good dynamic range. It's certainly not equal to a top home system -- think of it more as a really large set of headphones.