Showcasing the Best in the Mobile Enhancement Industry
It’s hard to believe how far pickup trucks have come. The RAM Rebel is a mid-level vehicle, and yet on the inside it comes with keyless ignition, a 7-inch touchscreen, a dampened tailgate, an eight-way power driver’s seat and a rear power-sliding window. The interior looks great, with “Rebel” cues everywhere, including the seats. The seat fabric tastefully mimics the tire tread Read more
If you have been to any mobile enhancement industry events like CES or KnowledgeFest or attended a car audio competition like Aggieland, Steel Valley Regionals or the Spring Break Nationals, the name Brian Mitchell and cars like his 2014 Cadillac ELR should be familiar. Brian has been an Autosound competitor for decades and several years ago became Western Regional Sales Read more
The product development team at ARC Audio has been hard at work developing a new collection of digital signal processors called the Pro-Series. This new family of processors includes the flagship stand-alone PS8-PRO, the PS8-50 DSP-equipped eight-channel amplifier rated at 50 watts per channel and the IPS8.8 DSP upgrade module for the new two-, four- and six-channel ARC Series 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
When it comes to the “Hot Hatch” moniker, no other manufacturer has the clout of the famous Volkswagen GTI. Few vehicles offer the combination of practicality and fun that the GTI does. Throw a kayak in the rear on Sunday, load up your sample inventory for work on Monday. Moreover, you get the razor-sharp handling and German engineering VW is known for.The GTI swaps the 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
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
