Posts Tagged home audio systems

It’s A Car Stereo!

Pretty self-explanatory isn’t it? It’s a stereo system in a car, you say. Whoa, hold your horses, it’s not that simple. Although some people like to put home stereos in their cars and vans (out of dire need for some sounds), sometimes it just doesn’t work. Yeah, maybe before it could’ve worked just fine, all you needed was radio and a cassette player (or 8 tracks, for the inner dinosaur in you) so sure, lug those big box speakers into the back seat and you’ll be blaring down the highway. But nowadays there are things like cd players and mp3 players and your popup LCD panels and all that techie knickknack you’d think they’d like to build a home theater system right smack on the console of your van. If you don’t know anything about these things but would like to have some sounds in your car anyway, here are some things to know about a car stereo.

As mentioned above, at first units and speakers from home audio systems and professional markets were just simply installed into vehicles. However, they were not well suited to the extremes of temperature and vibration which are a normal part of the environment of an automobile. Car stereo enthusiasts were not satisfied with the sound quality of regular car sound systems, and with the advent of the CD player, they really had to start modifying some of these home stereos in order to work well in a car environment and voila!, now we have the modern car stereo.

If you have a new car, first hand bought, say from about 90 to present, chances are you already have a “factory” car stereo in your car. It means the car manufacturer already included a car stereo system in your car, unless specified in the car model but most often this is the case. Some car manufacturers make their own car stereos, like BMW which includes a pretty decent car stereo package head unit and speakers. It is a standard which comes with all their cars (which isn’t surprising considering that BMW is included in the league of “luxury car manufacturers”). Or like Mercedes Benz or Volkswagen, they use car stereo systems from a German audio manufacturer called Blaupunkt.

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Tips On Choosing A Car Audio System

audio_upgrade_kit1Car audio has moved a long way from the old standard AM/FM Radio/Tape Deck combo. Today, in-vehicle multimedia systems include DVD video, television and navigation systems with local hotspot news. Common to all systems is the sound quality.

The quality of sound in a car audio system depends upon a number of factors – the type and quality of the media player system, the type of speakers used, the acoustics of the vehicle and interference from other devices.

Type and Quality of Media Player System

Before we look at the different types of in-vehicle media players it pays to have a basic understanding of audio quality. When deciding what type of audio system to install, and also when comparing one make and model to another, there are two key specifications to consider:

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