Showcasing the Best in the Mobile Enhancement Industry
One of the goals at BestCarAudio.com is to help consumers pick the best retailers to upgrade their vehicles. We explain what to look for in terms of installation practices and explain the features and benefits of products that will deliver fantastic performance. In this article, we’ll discuss how shops care for your vehicle while it’s in the installation bay. In many cases, Read more
I should stop looking at posts in car audio groups on social media. I’m not opposed to answering a few questions to help enthusiasts, but the constant barrage of untrue statements and misunderstandings about what matters in choosing a product like speakers is overwhelming. Let’s look at some typical speaker specifications made by companies that don’t understand speaker Read more
Most vehicle owners associate buying a remote car starter with cold weather. While most car start systems are indeed sold in the fall and winter, they’re just as useful when the weather is hot. Let’s look at a few reasons why spring is the perfect time of the year to upgrade your car, truck or SUV with a starter system. Warm in the Winter, Cool in the Summer Suppose you live Read more
Designing a subwoofer system for a car or SUV can be tricky. We’ve talked about the need for retailers to quantify a customer’s expectations while working within their budget. The shop designing the upgrade should also verify that the system will function reliably. Some components in this process include ensuring that there are enough subwoofers, a powerful enough amplifier and Read more
I bought my youngest son a small gardening trowel from the dollar store to use when he and I go metal detecting. The rod that connects the blade to the handle started to bend after being used six times. No, not six outings. Six attempts to dig small objects out of soft, damp dirt. As the lads on the Cleetus McFarland YouTube Channel say, "I’m an idiot!” Indeed, a stick would Read more
A few months back, I wrote a very detailed article that explained what happens when you push the output of an amplifier (or source unit) to the point that the signal clips. To be clear, and much to the dismay of many who think otherwise, there is NO DC component riding on the top of the waveform. What you see there is a large number of harmonics that produce the top of what is Read more
These days, it’s effectively impossible to replace the radio in many new cars and trucks. With display screens integrated into the dash and controls in the center console, there’s nowhere to mount a nice double-DIN multimedia receiver. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways to upgrade the audio system. A line output converter is the starting point, whether you’re adding a Read more
When it comes to mobile enhancement retailers, ENORMIS Mobile Specialties in Erie, Pennsylvania, is unlike any other shop we know of in the country. While most shops offer audio system upgrades and dabble in remote car starters, owner Lou Norman has fine-tuned his team’s expertise to the point that selling aftermarket radios, speakers, amplifiers and subwoofers is no longer Read more
I’ve been a magazine guy for more than 35 years. I used to read four car audio and six car magazines every month. Sometimes there would be a few RC car or bicycling mags thrown in, depending on the season and my mood. All of this was even before I got into the magazine industry as a writer and started my career in car audio marketing. Being overly technical in my approach to Read more
If you’re into the SPL (sound pressure level) side of the car audio industry, you should be acutely aware of the need to deliver every amp of current and the most possible voltage to your amplifiers. The more power you can feed an amp, the more power it’s likely to be able to send to your subwoofers. We also know that every connection to a battery should have a protection Read more
In the spring of 2018, I was fortunate enough to spend an afternoon hanging out with Bing Xu from Simplicity in Sound in Milpitas, California. Aside from talking shop about car audio stuff, he offered to let me listen to the sound system in his 2014 Mercedes-Benz E63 S wagon. It was amazing! The imaging was detailed, the tonal balance was excellent, and the integration was Read more
Car audio enthusiasts will run across the term Q, Q factor or Quality factor when discussing car audio speakers, subwoofer enclosures or parametric equalizer configuration. The Q factor describes the damping characteristics of a resonant system. For speakers, proper cone control requires carefully calculated damping. When talking about equalizers, the Q of a filter describes Read more
