Well, if you’re driving around without music then you may have lived through one of the most boring experiences in everyday life. Music and cars are like french fries and champagne. They go well hand in hand. Take one from the other and down your adrenaline goes.
Luckily, the car music experience today isn’t as shabby as it was 20 years ago. The AM/FM radios of yesteryears amped by those cute CD players were taken over by a bunch of WiFi-ready setups. And while 8-track cassette tapes were the head units before, today’s cars have evolved and adjusted to the Digital Age.
Even with all the technology, you can still have a not so palatable music experience when driving your car. That’s the funny thing about it. But truly, that’s a mortal sin when you’re an audiophile. You don’t settle for a second-rate experience. It’s just not within your vocabulary. So what are you to do? What are the things you can tweak to make your car sound so adorable?
1. Let the right speakers do the job
Right off the bat, you need great speakers. This shouldn’t be a surprise for you. Speakers are the backbone of a good sound system. ; Without good speakers, putting out hi-fi music is out of the question.
So what’s the job of the speaker? Well, your speaker gets key sound information and then projects it as sound waves. It does this mechanically of course. In a sense, it does a lot of work but it isn’t too intelligent. It can’t manipulate the data that goes to it. How well the sounds are projected is dependent on how good the speaker is.
One mistake many people make is thinking that expensive is always better. And what’s better has to be always expensive. There’s a reason you may think that but it’s not always true at all times.
Actually, you can get a good car speaker at an affordable price. The point is you need to do your due diligence to seek out great product offerings that come with a less pricey price tag.
As you are wont to find, you need to be a little technical about it. There are key takeaways like sensitivity and power-handling. But the goal is the same, finding the best speaker for your vehicle. When it comes to the audio system of your car, getting a reliable speaker is paramount.
2. Up your head unit
Ever heard of a patient being brain-dead? Well, the thing with brain-dead patients is that every other part of their body is still functional except their brain. So their heart is still functioning and all and it’s just their brain that’s not functional.
Those patients are usually declared dead after a while. What’s the point? The head unit of your car is the brain of the sound system. When it’s dysfunctional, there’s no way forward. So not paying attention to its quality is allowing your sound system to go south.
The good thing about head units is that over the years they have improved. There are now many head units that can do amazing things.
For instance, there are head units that have a DVD player. With this, you can have your mini-cinema right in your car. There is also the Bluetooth upgrade. With this, you can connect your phone to it easily.
But the key thing to know if you want to be in the 21st century is internet connectivity. If your head unit shies away from USB use or isn’t WiFi-ready then your relationship with your car may start to go sour. That’s especially true when the love of your life sits beside you and you can’t even play her tune. Head on here to expand your head unit’s internet-capability options.
3. You need an amplifier
Last on our list is the amplifier. What’s the job of the amplifier by the way? Simply put, the speaker’s job is to make the sounds; the amplifier’s job is to make the speaker sound.
Like mentioned before, your speaker is mechanical. But the amplifier is an electronic device. ; It is vital that for you to have great sound in your car, the speaker and the amplifier must match. The key to that is impedance.
Speakers usually have an impedance (electrical resistance of the components) of 4 to 8 ohms. Amplifiers for their part have an impedance of 6 to 12 ohms. Checking these specs will allow you to know which is compatible with which.
There you have it, the major players in your car’s sound system in sequence. By looking into these parts you should give your car a drastic overhaul. Goodbye, boring road trips. Now, you can definitely have a blast listening to your favorite songs.