Showcasing the Best in the Mobile Enhancement Industry
If you want your car stereo to sound good and play loudly, purchasing good speakers to keep up with your subwoofers is very important. It’s easy to produce a lot of bass in a car or truck nowadays. Subwoofers with impressive output abilities are available from many brands, and high-power amplifiers are more affordable than ever. With that said, if you want to hear vocals and Read more
Can you learn much about a speaker set by looking at a feature list and spec sheet? In the case of the Rockford Fosgate T3652-S 6.5-inch audiophile component speakers, the answer is a resounding yes. From the sizeable 1.5-inch voice coil and integrated induction management to the liquid crystal polymer woofer cone and intelligent mounting hardware for the tweeter, we’ve already Read more
Unless you have formal education in how alternating current waveforms interact with capacitors and inductors, it’s not illogical to assume that passive crossovers waste power from your car audio amplifier. These passive devices reduce the amplifier’s power production rather than converting it into heat. Let’s bust this myth about passive crossovers wasting amplifier power. How Read more
I often see people on Facebook Marketplace, eBay, Craigslist or Kijiji (in Canada) selling the passive crossover networks that came with their car audio component speaker sets. In most cases, these people have likely opted for an active system installation that uses a DSP and four dedicated amplifier channels to power their speaker system. An issue that many do-it-yourself car Read more
While few of us want a wall of subwoofers in our daily driver, there’s no denying that a stereo system with solid bass reproduction is a lot of fun. We’ve looked at the importance of proper equalization when it comes to subwoofer systems in the past. So, what about the bass boost control that’s found on almost all car audio subwoofer amplifiers? Does it improve system Read more
The most important part of creating a high-end car audio system is having a high-quality, properly calibrated digital signal processor as part of the system. Of course, you could choose the best or most expensive speakers and have them installed in extravagant panels or pods. Still, the factory stereo in an entry-level SUV might sound more realistic without proper system Read more
Since I first reviewed an ARC Audio amplifier back in 2004, I knew there was something different about this company. It only took a few reviews to recognize the pattern, and frankly, I’ve been spoiled by every opportunity to audition one of their amps ever since. Call it clarity, transparency or neutrality; all of ARC Audio’s amps have offered as invisible a sonic signature as Read more
Unless you’ve never visited the BestCarAudio.com magazine site, you’re probably familiar with the need for a high-quality digital signal processor in any modern car audio system. Proper level setting, bandwidth limitations, arrival time adjustment and equalization are paramount to creating an audio system that sounds realistic in a car, truck or SUV. It’s also essential for Read more
Audison is well known in the car audio industry for its bit series of car audio signal processors. From the introduction of the fabled bit ONE back in 2008 to the impressive Prima series multichannel amps and the fantastic bit ONE HD Virtuoso, Audison has been at the forefront of these performance-improving technologies for as long as any brand and longer than most. If you’ve Read more
When it comes to car audio bass upgrades, two options are popular: sealed and ported subwoofer enclosures. The proper names for these enclosures are acoustic suspension and bass reflex, respectively. Each has its benefits and drawbacks in reproducing low-frequency audio information in your vehicle. In this article, we’ll explain how a bass reflex enclosure works and share a few Read more
If you grew up with car audio systems in the ’80s and early ’90s, you know how rare it was to see an amplifier with more than four channels. In the last decade, amplifiers with more than four channels have become popular solutions to simplify the installation of elaborate active audio systems. The car audio fanatics at Rockford Fosgate created the five-channel Punch-Series Read more
I recently had a discussion with several industry peers on Facebook about the correlation between audio component measurements and how that translates into subjective listening evaluations. Respectfully, I’m always astonished by the number of people who think distortion measurements don’t directly correlate to perceived product quality. The Science of Car Audio Component Read more
