Showcasing the Best in the Mobile Enhancement Industry
After a recent vehicle introduction, discussions about vehicles with 48-volt electrical systems are at an all-time high. Changing standards in vehicles is nothing new. Most cars manufactured before the mid-1950s came with 6-volt batteries. As the need for power and speed from various automobile components has increased, we’re about to witness a change to 48-volt systems. Let’s Read more
Over the past few years, I’ve been fortunate to review the T4652-S and T3652-S Power Series component sets from Rockford Fosgate. The company’s thorough understanding of how speakers work led them to include technologies that allowed these speakers to outperform so-called audiophile products from some of the top boutique brands. I have a set of the more affordable Power Series Read more
Welcome to our third Question of the Month article. This time, let’s look at the answer to “What speakers should I use for a specific music type?” The theory that speaker selection is related to a specific kind of music is nothing new. While there are some considerations in system calibration, a good speaker is a good speaker. Allow us to explain. The Mechanics of Music Music Read more
In our never-ending efforts to create great content, we devised a plan a while back to share listening tips for specific tracks with our readers. Our plan at the time was to explain what to listen for in different songs to evaluate the performance and capabilities of an audio system. After some research and experiments, we’ve come up with a twist on this plan that we think Read more
Professional technicians have several options available to analyze audio signals. We can use an oscilloscope to look at the amplitude of a signal in the time domain. We can use a real-time audio analyzer to look at signals in the frequency domain. Thanks to the power of modern computers, we can combine both measurements to create a spectrogram to look at audio amplitude and Read more
Every genre of car audio enthusiast looks at amplifier performance differently. The SQ guys worry about distortion and noise. The bass heads focus on power. The keyboard commandos and know-it-alls talk about slew rate or something equally irrelevant. Despite all this, an audio system's frequency response matters the most regarding the perception of quality. The folks at KICKER Read more
We’ve recently seen a resurfacing of keyboard commandos who claim that the ability to hear the differences between the amplifiers is hogwash. Those who have been around the car audio scene for a while often bring up Richard Clark’s famous $10,000 Amplifier Challenge to support their hypothesis that all amplifiers sound the same. If true, why do companies offer different Read more
The parent company of BestCarAudio.com Magazine offers social media management services to car audio shops. As part of that service, we see the sorts of questions consumers ask on Facebook and Instagram. We’ve realized that consumers could use a little help to be more focused and save themselves and the store staff time. Let’s kick this off by talking about remote starter Read more
In this second Phase Shift article, we thought we’d take a moment to talk about driving. While upgrading our stereo systems is fun and typically the focus of our discussions here, we often overlook the importance of driving safely. Even at 35 miles per hour, a minor collision can cause a lot of damage and, in severe cases, injuries. We want all our readers to be happy, healthy Read more
