Showcasing the Best in the Mobile Enhancement Industry
Though factory-installed audio systems have greatly improved over the last few decades, they can’t hold a candle to even a modest aftermarket car stereo system unless you’ve got a premium vehicle. This statement is especially true in terms of subwoofers and bass performance. Most factory-installed subwoofer systems are better described as woofers. It’s rare that they play loud Read more
Expert installation technicians in the car audio industry are fortunate to have several options to simulate speaker and subwoofer response in different applications. Whether it’s modeling a bass reflex enclosure for a pair of 12-inch subwoofers or ensuring that an A-pillar speaker pod is large enough for a 4-inch midrange, computer simulations are crucial to delivering car Read more
Matthew Crouch of Shelbyville, Kentucky, owns the ultra-clean 1991 Toyota Hilux you see above. Matthew is one of the installers at Xtreme Autosound & Marine in Louisville. I called the store and spoke with owner Tony Zagata and jack-of-all-trades Michael Humphrey, who helps with sales, installations and social media. I learned that Matthew is a huge Toyota fan, and his dad Read more
Every now and then, I get into hot water for recommending, or more commonly, for not suggesting, a particular brand of car audio equipment. The same has happened over the years with retailers near me. However, I can say with confidence that in every case, there’s a solid reason why I stand behind and recommend specific solutions and why others aren’t even remotely on my radar Read more
Dozens of articles here on BestCarAudio.com explain the concept of audio component distortion. More specifically, harmonic and intermodulation distortion represent the addition of unwanted information to an audio signal because of non-linearities in an electronic circuit or mechanical system like a speaker. Ask anyone who’s heard a genuinely high-end sound system and they’ll Read more
Dual voice coil subwoofers exist to provide installers with three options to connect the driver to an amplifier. The coils can be wired in series or parallel to double or half the impedance of a single coil. Alternatively, each coil can be connected to separate amplifier channels to add power from non-bridgeable configurations. A question that often arises is, what happens if Read more
Have you ever measured or tested something and not fully believed the results? A while back, I wrote an article that looked at the different options for wiring a pair of dual voice coil subwoofers to a single amplifier. The options are to wire the voice coils in each subwoofer in series the woofers in parallel, or wire the coils in parallel and the subwoofers in series.The Read more
I purchased a pair of MTX 6.5-inch woofers around 1992 or 1993, and they were installed in my 1991 Mazda 323 hatchback as midbass and rear-fill drivers. Later, they migrated to a set of “home speakers” with an Audax tweeter, though I don’t think I spent much time listening to them after I finished building them. Unfortunately, those speaker enclosures were thrown out after they Read more
A demo vehicle is one of the best tools available to demonstrate the audio and convenience upgrade options for a car or truck. The team at KarTele Mobile Electronics in Waterbury, Connecticut, purchased this 2022 Jeep Grand Cherokee with plans to outfit it with a premium audio system, a radar detector, window tint and paint protection to show off the solutions they offer to Read more
