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(90 votes) Published: Nov 12, 2007 6:21 p.m. In 2 Favorites Lists Viewed 390 times
Ok as many of us know, shopping for anything car stereo-based is difficult if you want to keep a tight budget and have high quality equipment. There is no need to spend $1200 on a complete system when you can do it for $600 and be satisfied even more.
UNDERSTANDING IT EASIER:
Head unit: (take deck, in-dash cd player, fm tuner,) this is essentially where the music starts (if you dont have an ipod hooked up to the auxillary jack).
Amplifier: Takes battery power and amplifies the signal from an RCA jack or a high output speaker wire in order to accomodate subwoofers or more speakers.
RMS POWER: This is continuous power. When an amplifier says 1000 watts peak, it could be useless if it is only 120 watts rms. This is the constant power handling that the amplifier can put out and gives the subwoofers or speakers the ability to hit hard in close succession.
PEAK POWER: Amplifiers and subwoofers can be rated at peak power which is the maximum amount of power handling they can put out. This is for that last hard hit at the end of the song or for songs that have a slow hard-hitting beat.
OHMS: Electrical resistance. Reducing electrical resistance by bridging or connecting 2 speakers into one channel can enable higher power handling. If a 1 lane highway is rated at 8 ohms and 100 cars can pass per minute, than that same highway could be doubled to reduce resistance and increase flow. This would allow the highway to pass 200 cars per minute and be 4 ohms.
BRIDGING: Take 2 channels (Left Positive, Right Positive, Left negative, Right negative) and combine them into 1 channel that splits off. (left+right positive, left+right negative). This splits the electrical resistance in half so the wattage can usually be doubled and sometimes tripled depending on the number of channels and the amount of electrical resistance in the first place.
BRANDS:
ALPINE: They make high quality speakers and amplifiers that are manytimes underrated in power. Manytimes one of their 400watt RMS amplifiers will put out 600 watts RMS unbridged. Balanced between peak power and continuous (RMS). A 500 watt RMS subwoofer will be 1500 peak. A 400 watt RMS subwoofer will be 600 watts peak. These speakers are clear and loud and their amplifiers are stable. Cooling Fan used for cooling of electronics.
DUAL: These speakers are loud but not clear. They are inexpensive in general and everyday consumers are generally satisfied with their product but serious audio junkies are not. Cheap Dual speakers are better than cheap Kenwoods. Expensive Kenwoods are alot better than Expensive Duals. Dual’s speakers may be cheap but underpowering of the speakers is pretty common. Some of their speakers are rated at 1100 watts peak and 600 rms at 8 ohms in one channel. there arent many amps for under $700 that can power that even bridged. Usually Heat sink cooled.
KENWOOD: These speakers are a nice consumer product. They arent over the top but they satisfy the everyday guy that wants more kick in his system. The cheap kenwood speakers arent usually very good but higher end ones are very satisfying for their price. Some of their amps suck. Their amps have a high peak power rating but a low rms power rating even after being bridged. Their cheap speakers are meant to be loud but do not always last long. Usually heat sink cooled.
INSIGNIA: After going to Crutchfield.com, Bestbuy.com, going to numerous car audio shops including bestbuy itself, this was the only brand that impressed me for its price. Insignia is actually owned by best buy. They say that the best products are sold as a package because when they are sold as a package, the manufacturer includes equipment that works well together, impresses the consumer and is reliable. I completely agree. I purchased an Insignia Sub and Amp kit for $200 and it blows away my friend’s $600 Alpine sub and amp kit. It blows it away in loudness, clarity, durability and also in ease of installation. Best buy would not sell a package at any price made by their brand with a free 4 year service agreement and 3 year manufacturer warranty unless it was something that impresses the consumer. I purchased the rockford fosgate sub and amp wiring kit, built my own 2 sub boxes and in total it cost me $351.78. It took me 4 hours in total (including the building of the 2 boxes with a kit purchased online). My rear view mirror vibrates so much that i need to push it back up every 30 seconds. The front bucket seats actually vibrate so much that they get slid back in their track. Halfway through playing Insane in the Membrane, i tried to open up a coke and it sprayed everywhere. 600 watts RMS power Bridged to 1 channel split into 2 speakers, I dont know how many watts peak (1000 maybe?). Loud as fuck, hits hard. (as of 1 hour ago, the same kit went on sale for $179.99). Built in adjustable Crossover, Cooling-Fan cooled, Bass Boost, 2 channel amp, Bridgeable, 2 12 inch subs,
PIONEER: They make allright stuff that is good for the average consumer but they dont have a real high end division. Their speakers are durable but dont have a high power handling and arent really loud for their claimed power rating. They make good high quality head units for cheap money and good audio accessories.
MTX: They produce extremely high quality loud subwoofers, amps and audio equipment. Very high quality, very affordable and always reasonable. One of my favorite brands because their power rating feels very real and doesnt feel like they just claim 1000 watts for the hell of it but only put out 200.
Sony: Great head units, speakers and amps are allright for an everyday consumer but arent anything i would put in my car. Their amps are average priced but unreasonable in power. They have a tendency of claiming to put out more power than they really are. An 800 watt amplifier will only put out 175 watts rms x1 bridged. That type of power is useless. It also takes you to the cleaners ($200 for one amp, no cooling fan, no wiring, low power output).
People dont know how loud speaker systems really are until they sit in their friend’s car. The speaker systems may be 800+ watts but the amp powering them is only 200 watts. They make it sound clear but they dont open up the true potential of the speakers.
In the following list, we are talking about RMS (continuous) power out of subwoofers not peak. Peak power is assumed as double that number.
200 watts: Feel a strong boom, doesnt hurt your chest, eventually gives you a headache.
400 watts: Strong, felt in your chest and neck, gives headache after 15-20 minutes, shakes car.
600 watts: VERY STRONG, hurts chest, hurts neck, gives headache and earache after 10-15 minutes, makes headlights flicker to the music from so much power consumtion, shakes bolts loose in car, overexposure can cause irregular heartbeat.
MORE THAN 800 WATTS: Unreasonably loud, nothing smaller than a Schoolbus would need 800 watts RMS power from subwoofers, so loud that it wouldnt even sound like music anymore, it would just sound like metal scraping pavement.
Tricks to save you money:
Most headunits have the same power output. So if you want to save yourself from needing to spend $300 on a headunit with a remote line-out that goes to the amplifier. This remote line out (REM) turns the amp on whenever the headunit is on. The amplifier needs this signal in order to stay active. What most people dont know is that the useable signal is anywhere from 7-15 volts. That is the same number of volts as your battery. So you can actually take a big shortcut and save your wallet, save your car battery and save your alternator all in one step. Youll save yourself $200+ by not buying a fancy headunit just for a special jack out the back. The reason why youll save your battery and alternator is because, you can hook this remote line right up to your cigarette lighter. Whenever you want to have your amplifier on, just plug in the cigarette lighter adaptor or just flick the switch. When the battery voltage drops below 7 volts (into danger zone) it will shut off the amp. This acts similar to a home thermostat. You can just run the subwoofers and amps in the trunk with the car off, and they will shut off automatically before you run the battery dead.
Most headunits today are digital so the difference in sound between a $300 one and a $150 one is very minimal. The only difference is the number of features and EQ systems it has. IF you use you Ipod through the AUX jack on the headunit than you will already have access to a number of apple pre-programmed Equalizer settings, and if you use amplifiers and other crossover/EQ systems, than there is no need for a fancy head unit.
Use Short Ground wires. A $800 Rockford Fosgate system can sound just like a $139.99 Pepboys SPX audio system if the groundwires are too long. Make sure that the wires you use are high quality Rockford Fosgate 8AWG wires. these have less electrical resistance (less heat, more power handling) and are just more reliable. It costs $65+ for an entire kit to wire the amps and subs for one whole car start to finish including speaker wire, but it is totally worth it. Using Short Ground wires will reduce electrical static and make the system sound clearer and recover from hard hits quicker. The great thing about car audio is that the negative terminal of the car battery is already hooked up to the chassis and engine of the car so if you ever need to hook up any wire to the negative ground terminal, than just touch the metal of the car. So you only need 1 positive cable coming from the battery to the amp, and 1 short cable coming from the amp to the metal of the car. This makes wiring very quick and easy.
The great thing about installing higher quality amplifiers is that even if you dont have the rca jacks off the back of your head unit, once you install the amplifier and wire it up, you now have the RCA OUT jacks on the amp if you ever want to attach another amp and hook up more subwoofers or more speakers.
Nov 12, 2007 6:41 pm - People always brag shit about their car stereos and their friends stereos but they just buy the flashiest looking speakers that say "1300watts" on each one, and then they just run the cheapest amp on the market. If you get the highest output subs and the highest output amps than people will just learn to look over and keep their mouth shut. Its not about who has the best looking shit, its about who has the loudest, best sounding shit. My ears hurt sooo bad, my chest is still pounding and my head feels like i snorted 5 lbs of cocaine. People dont realize how loud 600 watts RMS is, theyre used to 600 watts PEAK (which is about 150 watts rms). Spicks, Ricers and showoffs will tell people that they have a 600 watt subwoofer system but its really only 600 peak, 150 rms. Deaf people will tell other people that they have a 600 watt subwoofer system that is 1300 peak and 600 watts rms. HUGE DIFFERENCE. Its 4 times louder on average and twice as loud during peak power.
Nov 12, 2007 7:44 pm - Why would you want to damage your hearing, heart, head, etc. for no reason. In my opinion, music should only be that loud at a concert not in your car, but 5*s anyway.
Nov 13, 2007 4:25 pm - i have posted ALOT ALOT ALOT of pics of my car in my previous eggs. So maybe if you searched through my previous eggs, you would see some of them. I will post pictures of my new stereo system soon. I built my own subwoofer boxes and im in the process of writing an egg on building quality subwoofer boxes.
Nov 13, 2007 5:46 pm - this egg had no meaning to me, but im nice and i will give you a 4 because you know what your talking about.
i had 3 alpine type R’s in a ported home made box with 2 kicker mono block amp’s, 2 stinger power caps, and a pioneer touch screen cd player, but i sold all of it for some money to buy a dirt bike. Now i currently have a 12" MTX sub, a 12" memphis m3 and i love it. pretty loud but i need a better amp.
Nov 13, 2007 6:29 pm - get an alpine V-Power. Their amps are significantly underrated in power. I ran one of those in my car a long time ago and it claimed to be 400 watts rms and like 600 peak, it was definately more than that. I knew that it was more. 400 watts wouldnt make my headlights flicker completely on and off everytime the bass hit. So i checked the wattage coming from the amp and sure enough, it was 620 watts rms. It is a very stable amp and very universal for different subwoofers. The issue with some brands is that their subwoofers are rated for like 1,200 watts at 8 ohms and you need to find an amp package that puts out 1200 watts peak at 8 ohms which is about 800 watts rms at 8 ohms. The subwoofers arent really what gouges your wallet. Its usually the sub boxes and the wiring kits. Rockford Fosgate makes SOOOO much money from their wiring kits. THEYRE GOOD WIRING KITS THOUGH. You buy the kit, bring it home and you dont need to worry about shopping for more wire, more connectors. Find an amp that is stable at 2 ohms, has a high power output at any impedance and can be bridged. You can differentiate between good and bad amps just by bridging one. If the amp heats up, sounds like shit and doesnt hit hard continuously after being bridged than it was a waste of money. Sometimes large amps that are mid-power are actually more stable because thicker internal wiring is used, bigger cooling fans are used, better heat sinks are used and it has more overall space to make the electronics more stable and resistant to heat. The issue today isnt about power vs. price, it is the issue between power, price, reliability and versitality.
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