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
It is said that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, and sometimes this point cannot be argued. We really loved the Honda CR-V Hybrid for being a quality SUV offering just the right amount of size, space and fuel economy. Everything has been engineered with Honda purpose for ease of use and reliability. Boasting 37 mpg overall without the need to plug it in, it should be 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
If you’re old enough, you might remember that car radios, specifically CD receivers through the late ’80s and ’90s, were full of what seemed like crazy features. Double-DIN multimedia receivers, like we’re accustomed to today, barely existed back then, and we didn’t even have Bluetooth. Radio manufacturers like Sony, Alpine, Clarion, Kenwood, Pioneer, Panasonic, Eclipse, Read more
It’s hard to believe that we published our first list of songs for real bassheads in 2018. In this context, we aren’t talking about music that booms but tracks that rumble and shake well into the inaudible range. What’s the difference? Boom is easy; rumble is work. These tracks are outright difficult for many systems to reproduce. Let’s check out 12 more basshead songs that 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
