Car Audio

Car Audio General?

Discuss upgrading your shitbox's audio with new heads and technologies. What do you have? What brands to avoid?

You can't properly enjoy eurobeats without a decent stereo.

...

Enjoy your 8wpc with 10% distortion
Why didn't you just buy a panel mount aux input either?
like come on.

Headunits have a surprisingly huge influence on the quality of car audio.
I used to have a Sony headunit and while the quality was much better than stock, it lacked depth and the bass was very hard and stiff. I got a used Pioneer headunit for free and the jump in quality was mesmerizing. Bass is now soft and succulent and you don't need to turn the volume all the way up to be able to enjoy every sound. Listening to MW2 soundtrack makes me feel like I'm in cinema, even on stock speakers.
My parents bought a Pioneer headunit for our Golf which was around 2004 and it served until last year in our Golf, then Audi 80 and then Twingo and I'm sticking with buying Pioneer forever. I myself would recommend starting any upgrades with a new headunit and then if you require even better quality, replacing the speakers or getting a subwoofer.
The bottleneck in my E36 are the stock speakers. I'm considering getting either Blaupunkt or Hertz speakers eventually.

If you use the stock headunit with a cassette aux adapter or an FM transmitter you need to kill yourself.

This post is just so wrong, their was either something wrong with your sony radio or you're experiencing heavy placebo.
An amplifier is extremely easy to get right, it's not a mechanical device, it's all simple components.
It's 1000x easier to make a good amp than to make a good speaker, speakers will always provide the biggest improvement in quality.

I want to do a complete sound system/head unit upgrade to my XJ, on the cheap if possible. Is there some sort of kit you guys would recommend?

Sing the songs yourself. Cheapest price, only plays what you want, and it has good, realistic acoustics! Good luck!

The day Veeky Forums inspired me to become a singer.

Suh bruh

I have pic related eclipse CD5435.
What kind of cable do I need to get aux from the back?

What are some >$150 stereos that have an AUX and wouldn't look too out of place in an 80's interior, specifically a third gen Firebird interior. All I listen to is stoner rock/metal, power metal, and a bit of trance and I'd rather the display to have >green text

>Headunits have a surprisingly huge influence on the quality of car audio

Wrong, its literally just the input for the audio, unless its dysfunctional its going to have no effect on audio quality, its all about the output(speakers).

Are you dumb?

What's the point of good speakers if the headunit will distort the signal at low volumes?

>tfw color matching

Good fight

Not placebo.
>what is an equalizer
>what is bass boost

My current car had a ancient aftermarket radio in it, replaced it with the CDless version of pic related stereo, and just set it to the same colour as my dash lights and I can add more to it down the track of I wanted

>implying the quality of the parts a signal flows through has no effect on the signal

kek.webm

Any suggestion for a unit? Im looking for the cheapest with an 3.5 mm. There is a lot of 20$ ones on amazon but all look like shit.

You probably just had your equalizer all fucked up

Looking for something that's not to gaudy for my grand prix shit box. Don't want to run an amp or anything and I do want my steering wheel controls to work. What does Veeky Forums recommend?

daily retarded trip

So a single ended design fed from a flyback sounds the same as a double ended PWM fed by a SMPS sounds the same to you? And they are both the same topology, and are just as easy to manufacture? And both measure even somewhat close to each other for slew rate, damping factor, phase rotation and other not-very-trivial measurements?

The loudspeaker upgrade will most certainly give you a perceived increase in fidelity, but the signal applied to the loudspeaker solenoid is as important as the loudspeaker itself.

Perhaps your next career move isn't audio, if you've taken one to begin with. And the hobbyshop boxes aren't a forward step. Any other designs with two or three HF devices with differing dispersion on the same network? Or are you done putting the parts bin playlist on shuffle and building the result?

Samefag, pee pee amplifier, TDA7297 is designed to put 10w/channel into CRT TV speakers from 120Hz-16KHz, unregulated power supply etc.

Nah, many manufacturers integrate some....interesting filter choices from the design stage. Passive filter networks like the output filters on the power amplifier all have a unique tone, and a unique rotation of phase. The value of the capacitor, the type of resistor, the value of the inductor used in the DC output crowbar, all of these things have a role to play in the tone of the output signal. It is not unusual to have the line level output with a very different tonality to the speaker level output in a head unit.

OEM units often have speaker protection filtering built into the DSP onboard. Toyota often have a large 5.5dB reduction at 65Hz with a Q of 1.8 that is used dynamically. The full 5.5dB reduction is introduced as the volume increases to protect the OEM loudspeakers from exceeding xmech. With upgraded loudspeakers that can handle the low frequency content, the filter is still applied, and will lose LF output.

Which radio is that?