Showcasing the Best in the Mobile Enhancement Industry
Among the many tools that mobile enhancement technicians use, one of the most valuable is ProDemand from Mitchell1. If you’ve spent any time in the automotive service industry, you’ll recognize the classic brown-and-yellow Mitchell service books. The information in these paperbacks is now available to automotive and electronics technicians through a web interface. Let’s look at Read more
If you go shopping for a new radio for your car or truck, the Product Specialist may use the term DIN or double-DIN to describe the size of the radio. DIN is short for Deutsches Institut für Normung, which translates to mean German Institute for Standardization.The goal in the creation of this standard was to develop a radio chassis size that would be common across a wide Read more
To close out our series of educational articles on amplifier specifications, we are going to talk about operating voltage limits and, by association, the protection circuits built into a car audio amplifier. In the good old days of electrical systems that were composed of an alternator, battery, switches and a couple of relays, delivering a relatively constant voltage to a car Read more
If you are thinking about having your local mobile enhancement retailer add a subwoofer amplifier to your car or truck, you may want to ask them about the remote level or bass boost control options that are available. Being able to adjust the amount of bass your system produces from the driver’s seat allows you to fine-tune the system for the music you are listening to or your Read more
We are at our second-to-last article in our car audio amplifier specification series and this time, we are going to talk about Class AB amplifier crossover distortion. This distortion has nothing to do with the high- or low-pass filters built into your amplifier; it’s a problem with the very concept of the Class B amplifier topology. Don’t fret — we’ll explain what causes it Read more
Upgrading the headlight bulbs in your car or truck can dramatically improve your safety and the safety of other drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. Your local mobile enhancement retailer may offer high-quality HID or LED bulb upgrade kits in a variety of color temperature options. These colors typically vary from 3,000 to 12,000 K. The question is, what do these color ratings Read more
It’s time to look at the input stage of how a modern car audio amplifier works. The input stage is responsible for interfacing with your radio and provides features like the gain control, crossovers, bass boost, remote level control and signal summing that your installer will use to make your stereo system sound great and function reliably. While we don’t need to get into the Read more
If you compare car audio products from the last decade or so to those of the early years, you’ll quickly notice that amplifiers, speakers and subwoofers often aren’t as big as they used to be. Take the new Jeep Wrangler JL chassis as an example. While it used to use 6.5-inch woofers in the dash and the overheard soundbar, it now uses 4-inch speakers in these locations. We can’t Read more
The car audio industry, just like any other technical field, is full of words and phrases that are specific to the equipment we use and the work we do. Because we are often communicating with our peers, suppliers and occasionally technical support staff, we get very used to using these terms. For a consumer walking in the front door, it’s unreasonable to expect them to know or Read more
