Showcasing the Best in the Mobile Enhancement Industry
If there’s one thing that’s challenging for car audio manufacturers and retailers, it’s explaining the sonic benefits of higher-quality products. Based on our research, many consumers correlate the word “better” with more power production from an amplifier, more power handling from a speaker, or more features from a source unit. While these statements are often accurate, they 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
Speakers are, by a long way, the most influential component in any audio system when defining performance or quality. Low-quality speakers, or those without specific technologies, can’t match the clarity levels of premium solutions. In addition, many music enthusiasts want their car audio systems to play louder than what’s possible with factory-installed equipment. After all, Read more
Many new cars, trucks and SUVs come with small speakers in the dash that accompany a larger woofer in the door. These small speakers, often called “middlers,” are tasked with handling frequencies from a few hundred hertz to the upper limits of human hearing. For over a decade, we’ve seen car audio system upgrades replacing the door and dash speakers with a component set that Read more
Pickup truck sales per year have more than tripled in the last three decades. With millions of these vehicles on the road, it’s no wonder that the popularity of shallow-mount subwoofers has increased dramatically. Hertz has recently introduced 10- and 12-inch shallow subwoofers in their top-of-the-line Mille series. These subwoofers are rated to handle 500 watts of power 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
A short while back, we published an article headlined “What Does it Mean When a Subwoofer Claims to Work in a Small Enclosure?” One of our readers, Eric T., asked some great questions on our Facebook page, and we told him we’d be happy to answer them.The original article explained the physics of what happens when you try to stuff a subwoofer in an enclosure that’s too Read more
Who wouldn’t want to buy the loudest, most efficient speaker possible to upgrade their car audio system? A speaker that does a better job converting electrical energy into sound reduces the load on the vehicle’s electrical system, right? Well, efficiency is just a single parameter in the myriad values that describe how a speaker works. Let’s take a super-techy look at how Read more
A while back, we looked at how some car audio speakers and subwoofers change in performance after they’ve been broken in. We analyzed how the Thiele/Small parameters of a sample subwoofer changed after being played for many hours. What we didn’t clarify adequately in that article was whether or not speakers had to be broken in before use. Parts of a Speaker or Subwoofer Let’s Read more
