Because your car should sound good too

Good car audio is a wonderful thing, so please count me in for interest on this topic.

In my 30 years or so of this hobby, a Nakamichi 250 and bi amped a/d/s 2001s gave me some of the most enjoyable and "musical" audiophile experiences - and that was about 30 years ago.

Since then, car audio seems to have gone mostly downhill, other than the wide variety of neon accessories, trunk mounted subwoofers and other freakish, pimp my ride trends.

Indeed, your car should sound good too.

So let's hope there are some good products out there.

Room tuning for cars could be another interesting topic.

If I could still hear the engine faintly, I would like an otherwise quiet Porsche GT3, with say, tube amps and British mini monitors.

Regards,

The best car audio I ever had (or heard) had mini monitors on the rear deck, firing towards the front of the car, so reflections were minimized, at least compared to the usual routine where speakers fire directly into the rear window, front windshield or into the seats or footwells.

So perhaps it is the usual car speaker orientation which challenges most systems before they even have a chance.

Thoughtful installers I have talked to about this have recommended tweeters and/or midrange drivers mounted in custom fiberglass pods - either near the dashboard or sometimes in the footwells - which can then fire more on axis towards the driver. Bass, obviously, is less sensitive to placement.

But whatever the challenges, I totally disagree that ambient noise kills the possiblity for good sound.

Not to mention the fact that many cars are quieter than my house on most days, ambient noise might limit the possibility to discern low level detail, but it does not affect many other qualities and characteristics that can be clearly heard through the noise.

Which do you prefer: 1) ambient noise + high fidelity + clean power or 2) ambient noise + low fidelity + clipping?

That argument is like saying iPod electronics are only so good, so you might as well wear cheap ear buds and compress to MP3.

Circa 2001 I bought a new Porsche, and wanted to upgrade the stock audio system.

Like any self respecting Audiogoner, I would normally get obsessively involved but was busy at the time and therefore deferred to a "high end" car audio guy in CT who recommended new speakers and amps, while keeping the stock head unit which he thought was very good.

Well a couple of thousand bucks later, it seems that the stock head unit did not even have line level out to the amps! So it all sounded absolutely terrible to me, and not even close to my 1978 Nakamichi a/d/s system - I really couldn't believe how bad it was.

For an incremental improvement, I had another dealer install a newer Nakamichi head unit, which was fairly simple, CD+radio, no pimp my ride lights, EQs or DSP - I believe it was a 2002 Nakamichi CD 400 which appears to be available online for < $200.

The simple presence of line level out to the power amps (duh!) made a huge difference.

So could be worth a look, subject to whatever else is available (or not available) from the peddlars of subwoofers and neon.

Others have recommended Butler tube amps, and Dynaudio (?) speakers. There was also a Milbert tube amp, but I never heard one and they were very expensive.