Car Audio - The missing link in music forums...

Right, I car very much when I'm buying or leasing a new car how the factory sound system sounds because I do listen to a lot of music in the car and I do do a hour or more of daily driving. But I don't chase even better car audio because -- for the reasons I mentioned, noise, multitasking -- it's just a casual listening environment. I'm sure a DSP heavy purpose build active crossover based system with a high end DAC and using hi res files in an extremely quiet car like certain Lexus models sound better than my factory rig. But the idea of trying to replicate that in my car, even if I could, would to me be a waste of money given the inherent limitations of the situation of listening to music while driving a moving car (in a noisy city often, on top of that).

 

Yeah, I'm sure with sufficient levels of DSP you can do some cool things in a car environment.

 

you can. it was never my focus though. I didn't go crazy with it...i just used time correction to make drivers of unequal distance hit my ears at the same time.

car priorities, for me, are different than at home.

 

This post just rubs me the wrong way.

 

BTW, you can at least get basic stereo effect in your car, correct?

I don't have DSP. With just speakers in front doors and a sub in the trunk, I can get decent stereo effect.

For example, in Esperanza Spalding' Chamber Music Society album, the song Inutil Paisagem has two voices and one bass. In my car, I can hear one voice on the right, one voice on the left, bass left of middle, all in front of me at shoulder level.

 

When I was single, the car was never even a real consideration for decent audio playback. I'd just play everything over the speakers at my leisure without giving it any thought. But now days the car is about the only 'safe haven' for playing genres such as metal or punk unless I feel like getting yelled at. Headphones are an option as well but I tend to play them way too loud.

 

Well sure obvious and substantial left right center panning.

 

The problems with car audio are high ambient noise levels and off center positioning of the listener. I prefer the sound of the 6.2 liter V8 to the fairly decent sound system that came in my car.

 

Wow -50dB noise floor would be awesome. Obviously, there is going to be noise, you want to be able to hear car horns and traffic. It's not about critical listening, its about enjoying the music, unless your in competition. Dynamat helps dampen rattling doors and road noise. Every installer would recommend it. At least at places like CarToys.

An after market system is going to have cross overs and matched speakers to reveal more information. You wouldnt need to turn up the volume more to hear something, like on a crappy tinny stock system. Does it make more sense to crank up a lousey stock speaker that adds to the noise? Which, often wont even be able to play some frequencies like sub bass. Ruining your hearing with distorted piercing highs.

It is nice having those extra watts and being able to feel the music as well.

Forget soundstage? There is a reason people design enclosures and think about speaker placement. Soundstaging is an important part of designing a car audio system and this is without using gimics like DSP. I mean you can do a simple test on a stock car system to get the point. Put all the sound to the back. Now put it all in the front. Now try side to side. There is a huge difference.

Comeon man I seen some of your posts and you can do better than that.

 

That's not sound stage. Sound stage is the presentation of the originally recorded spread and location information and ambient cues of a recording made to capture such things -- which is not most pop and rock records. That's just panning.

My point is exactly that listening to music in the car is not about critical listening, therefore for me the kinds of things and investments I'm interested in as an audiophile are something I'm unconcerned with as a background music car listener.

I know dynamat and second skin and stuff like that well and have used such CLD products in a variety of circumstances but there's only so much you can do in a car environment. I do think some lexuses are like -40 dB at idle.

 

Speaker placement and design are what create the sound stage. Sure you can add time delay to help create it, thats just another benefit of an aftermarket head unit.

You might not care about the sound quality in your car but other people do.

 

I upgraded the FM radio in my Chevelle and put in rear speakers. However I wouldn't dream of messing with or removing the original 8 track player.

 

When I upgraded my Toyota Avalon, the installers had to put the original head unit in the trunk to keep everything working. They made custom trim pieces for the Pioneer nav head unit. Looks like it's from the factory. I have always done some kind of upgrading to stock stereo units. Cars are far from ideal places to listen to music, but it's better than no tunes.

 

I'm certain, knowing my family, and no one else is likely to be in my car, that not only am I the person who will most care about the sound quality in the car, but I'm pretty much the only person who will care a wit about the sound quality in my car. It's a decent little factory premium 8-channel Infinity-branded system w/ 50 wpc of power and a typically horrible 10% THD distortion spec (which I read somewhere not off a spec sheet so who knows if it's true) and some kind of DSP, though I'm not sure exactly what the signal processing consists of. It's beyond adequate to fill my needs of listening to background music or baseball games or news while I'm commuting or doing errands. Spending more money on it would serve no useful purpose for me and I don't even feel the need to know much more about it. Which is not necessarily the way I feel about listening to music on my home hifi, which I don't do while multitasking for the most part or use for background listening but actually sit and listen to music on.

 

I'd also add that recordings are what create a sound stage and stereo recordings are made with the expectation that the listener has a stereo pair in front of him, not an 8 channel system around him.

 

Obviously the source is, well the source of the sound stage. The speakers and placement recreate it. And not all recordings are made in stereo anymore, we progressed in car audio having 5.1/7.1 as well as having A/V capabilities for screens for children etc. Thats on top of being able to play stereo in better fidelity. It's all good though, enjoy what you want. Stock systems have improved quite a bit.

I'll leave this link in regards to some of the other stuff mentioned earlier.

Car Speaker Placement and Kickpanels

 

Right. I'm sure it would be possible to make a recording optimized for a typical contemporary 5 channel car stereo, or whatever is most typical. But I'm exclusively listening to stereo and mono recordings as I assume most car listeners are. I will say the stock system in my car, which is the Harman made top of the line factory option in the model affords a much better listening experience that the budget stock decks in my wife's car or my daughter's in terms of distortion and frequency balance and extension and cabin wide dispersion. I'm not suggesting all systems are equal, I'm just saying that for me and I suspect for a lot of audiophiles, the very different natures of the car and home environments and listening goals, mean that I have different needs, expectations and desires in terms of what's satisfactory in the different situations.

 

There in lies the problem, you assume. Because you dont care for it, no one else should. Its not really a debate. There is no need to argue with me dude. Some people enjoy listening to their music while in their cars and look for a better experience.

 

No, I'm not saying no one else should. "Should" has nothing to do with it. I have no issue with what anyone wants to do with regard to listening to music and I certainly don't think anyone should or shouldn't do any one thing or another with respect to listening to music. (And I also didn't say anything of the kind).

The OP was wondering why there's not more talk of car audio in this or other forums like audiokarma ("So what I wonder is why the disconnect?"). I'm offering my experience about the listening environment and the different nature of home and car listening in particular as a possible reason, certainly a reason for me to be very interested in audio at home and not particularly interested in audio in the car ("the disconnect"), and possibly a reason for others (some of which has been echoed by others in the thread). Certainly audiophile mag coverage of car audio also is slim, and the publishers of those magazines know from surveys and responses what their readers are interested in.

Maybe I'm wrong as to the reasons, maybe my reasons aren't the same reasons other audiophiles have (and they're certainly not the reasons all audiophiles have). But I don't think the OP's observation is inaccurate -- there isn't a lot of talk about car audio among the forums in question, so there must be some reasons.

I dunno, maybe if this forum had a car audio subforum it would be very active with lots of crossover traffic from people involved in the general audio forum.

 

If you are going to use car vs home then car will always lose. It should be car audio talk, not car audio vs home, movie theater, concert hall, ect. IMO of course.

 

Trying to equalize the path length is fundamentally the best thing you can do to increase your chances of a quality stereo image. The other thing kick panel installs do is to avoid the nasty reflections off of the interior greenhouse.
The down sides are passenger interference and having the room for them. I chose to go conventional with the midwoofer in the doors and the midrange and tweeter up high.

 

One thing I've learned over the years is that the factory speakers are almost always more efficient than 99% of the aftermarket speakers out there. You have to almost always add an amplifier to aftermarket speakers to achieve the same level of volume as the factory speakers. I've also found that factory speakers have much better bass response than aftermarket speakers.

In a car, efficiency is king if you want to overcome road noise. I think it's smarter to amplify (within reason) the factory speakers and maybe add a subwoofer if you feel you need it to fill in the sound. Add sound deadening to the front doors and rear deck if you have one and you will increase the sound quality even further.

I used to believe that changing out the head unit was a must. Then I realized that nothing beats the ergonomics of a factory head unit. I never change it anymore. And with many newer vehicles, it's almost impossible to do.

 

All of this is because most factory headunits are so underpowered, so the speakers need to be efficient.

 

I designed and sold car audio systems for 30 years. I never was an installer full time but I sure loved getting my fingers dirty. I still play around with high end car audio in my own car. Here is a thread I created about my current vehicle. There are a ton of pictures in the thread. If you don't want to look at it, I've addressed road noise issues, plus my system uses time alignment to get a great stereo image and has individual third octave EQs on each driver, along with variable crossover slopes and frequencies among the four amps that power the system.

My high end car stereo system

I'm sympathetic with the OP but only to a point. A great car stereo can be revealing but is rarely accurate. It can be musical but not real. No one would ever confuse the sound coming out of my stereo with live music. Still, it makes long drives much more tolerable. I get great pleasure out of my system but it's not a reference. Those are two separate issues.

Car audio is very enjoyable. It allows me to play with toys. Fabrication is fun. Making things that look good and work well is satisfying. You can also learn a lot about reproducing music through car audio. Most everything I know about bi or tri-amping, subwoofers, speaker enclosures, passive crossover design, the acoustical properties of glass, and time delays has come from car audio. It has its place in the consumer electronics industry, or maybe it would be better to say it had its place. With the better stereos now in cars, plus the integration of many essential car features into one central hub in the dash, few people build great car stereo systems anymore.

I would take the fact that my thread died after 40 posts as a vote of SH.tv members regarding their interest in car audio. Few people care.

 

I recently bought a new Nissan and one of the first things I did was remove the
door panels and replace the stock speakers. I put in 4 6.5 " rockford fosgate, I
also installed some sound damping material to help with noise and speaker efficiency.
The new speakers and sound damping really helped. I could not believe how much
it increased the bass response. I'm still using the stock cd/usb/radio.
I think my next project will be to put in after market amp.