Showcasing the Best in the Mobile Enhancement Industry
What is a custom car audio subwoofer enclosure? Does it need to be wrapped in leather or vinyl? Should it be made with fiberglass? Does it need acrylic windows? Is LED lighting a necessity? The short answer is no to all of these questions. Let’s delve into what makes a subwoofer enclosure custom and why it’s the best way to upgrade the bass in your car audio system. Subwoofer Read more
Car audio upgrades are much more complex than setting up speakers in your living room. They are, unless all you have in the system is a set of coaxial speakers in your doors. Your installer has to consider crossover slopes and alignments if you have front and rear speakers and a subwoofer. They must also understand how the settings interact at the crossover frequency. Let’s Read more
Let’s take a look at amplifier, speaker and subwoofer quality. This time, it won’t be a series of lab measurements that evaluate distortion, frequency response or power. It won’t even include listening evaluations or comments on shiny products. Many years ago, Rockford Fosgate ran a magazine advertisement showing a picture of a Punch 75 HD amplifier and Bruce. Bruce is Read more
There’s a common belief that an audio system with more subwoofers will produce more bass. This statement can be 100% true or completely false. Why might it be false? A subwoofer’s output depends heavily on enclosure design. Let’s look at two examples where the output of one subwoofer is more than two. The Most Bass for Your Dollar If you spend any time searching the countless Read more
Brian Mitchell’s name should be familiar if you’ve looked at results of any significant sound quality auto sound competition in the last 15 years. Whether using his Zombie Apocalypse Chevy Cruze or the amazing Cadillac ELR, he’s racked up hundreds (yes, hundreds) of first-place and best-in-class finishes across the country. Brian has two jobs: By day, he’s a sales manager Read more
Choosing the best digital signal processor for a car audio system requires balancing features and design choices with your amplifier and speaker configuration. The product development team at ARC Audio knows more than a thing or two about designing and calibrating DSP units, as their products have consistently proven to be a vital part of the best-sounding car audio systems on Read more
We recently published an article that explains how differential inputs on car audio amplifiers and signal processors work. Just after that was published, we were talking with Brad Ott, executive vice president of operations at ARC Audio. He has an extensive background in circuit design and was the company’s product development manager for many years. Brad offered to send us Read more
The other day I saw an interesting question on social media where someone asked if they should match their car audio amplifier to their speakers. I know they were asking about power ratings, but I think that’s the wrong way to go about the process. I realized again that many enthusiasts don’t fully understand how to quantify audio component quality. So let’s dive into the Read more
Several years ago, iDatalink, the company known for its class-leading remote car starter interfaces, launched an amplifier integration solution called the Maestro AR. The AR (which is short for amplifier replacement) was designed to interpret the CAN bus commands intended for a factory amplifier into something a third-party digital signal processor can understand. While Read more
