Into car audio? (1 Viewer)

I'm 54 and still into car audio........... have been since I discovered amps for cars back in 1977......... a Rockford Fosgate and it has been car audio heaven ever since. The first thing I do to any new vehicle is add a good system and I've been through a bunch of them.

Car audio has certainly helped my understanding and upped my demands for what I do with my Home audio system. For instance, I've always loved a pounding sub in my vehicles and therefore I demanded similar in my home!
I currently have a Ford F-150 with the folllwing:
Clarion HU with remote eq
Fosgate 4X50 feeding Diamond Audio Hex plates
Fosgate 500@2 feeding a 12" JL W3.

Yes I like it clean, clear and loud......... Rock on Pink Floyd.
Anybody else around here into car audio????

I am and I'm not, I kind of drift in and out of it I guess. I keep the same old soundstream amps around until I feel like installing them in whicheer vehicle I'm driving. Guess I'm on the low point now, next year this time I'll be all into it

I used to be into car audio quite a bit in HS and College, but that went by the wayside as I got older. I still enjoy a nice sounding system, but I am happy with the factory installs now that usually when I am driving around the kids are in the car. When I am by myself, however, I often think what it would be like to get back into it again.

I'm just starting to get into it again now. I got really frustrated in HS and college because I usually had decent gear but a crappy or expensive install. I didnt have the knowledge, tools, patience or place to work on car audio, now I do, so I do the install myself. I am just starting my first system since college though. I put a nice alpine head unit in my dodge ram. Next up are 6.5" components up front. Some coaxes for rear fill, a 4 channel amp (likely briged to the components up front though) and a small sub.

here are some pics I took of my install that I did last night. I actually took one down already becasue you could see the license plate number of the another car in the picture. Have a look though.

http://www.hometheaterfanatic.com/install%20stereo.htm

I swing in and out of car audio when i get a new vehicle. Usually I get tweak my system to the point where I'm totally satisfied with it and then move onto other pursuits.
I'll be 23 in December but I agree Rock on Pink Floyd. nothing like having one mp3 cd with 10 different Floyd albums on it.

I'm into good sound wherever possible. The only thing I don't like about car audio is the try before you buy aspect of things. All you usually have to go by is reviews or word of mouth since Circuit City doesn't carry brands like CDT, IDQ, ED, etc...

Right now I'm crusin with an Alpine HU, Focal components/coaxials, an RF 551X 4-ch amp, and an Elemental Designs 12A that is sitting in my basement. I'm getting an apt soon and the amp I wanted for it (RF 1501bd) will set me back too much. I'll be subless for a while, but I am satisifed with the clarity and warmth from the Focals.

I hope once I get a real job I can plunk down the cash for that McIntosh setup I've been drooling over for years now.

http://66.216.98.167/mcprod/products...shCarAudio.jsp

Scott,
Even if you could audition the gear you're interested in, it'll sound so much different in your car than in a showroom. Also, different cars have different acoustics so that could change things quite a bit too.
For this reason and others, I tend to buy my gear from Crutchfield due to their awesome return policy.

Dave yea great point, I was thinking the same thing since every car cabin is pretty much a pressure chamber for sound. Components though are good to audition. Some can sound waaaay too harsh for my ears. Another thumbs up to Crutchfield, they have the absolute best customer service I've ever dealt with. You do pay a premium for it though, the amp I want goes for $465 new on eBay but a cool $999 on CF, and I'd have to pay tax.

the companies I prefer for car audio aren't in most catalogs or available on-line for the most part. I've been in car audio as an enthusiast and professional since the 80s.
I've competed in IASCA, worked in both sales, and as an installer, and I very much enjoy the finer end of the hobby. What turns me off is all of these kids with theis Boss and Pyramid amps, and Audiobahn subs that sound like the remants of what I had for dinner paying me a return visit the next morning, cranked up sitting at a stop light with their systems turned up far beyond the point of clipping and distortion to where their puny 60A alternators are screaming for a coup de grace shot to their proverbial head to put them out of their misery.
I like Krell and MartinLogan and Mark Levinson at home. I prefer similar tastes in my cars. My IASCA vehicle used Lestek for the alternator, and Orion, Cerwin-Vega, Audiocontrol, and Alpine (this was back around 1992 before Orion, PPI, Fosgate, and many other good companies went to crap when they sold out and moved overseas from their US home)

The next car I plan to do will consist of the following:
Eclipse CD8053 with eclipse commander
Audiocontrol line EQT equalizers (4)
Audiocontrol 6XS crossover
Sinfoni AMPLItude 120.4x amplifier
(120 watts RMS x 4 @ 4 Ohms)
Zapco C2K-9.0XD amplifier
(600 watts RMS x 2 @ 2 Ohms)
DynAudio System 360 3-way front stage
DynAudio System 220MKII rear fill
(2) Onyx LSM12v.2 12" subwoofers
270A alternator with regulator set to 14.4V
1/0AWG power distribution
dynamat damped entirely

the system should come out nicely when it's all said and done.

My upcoming plans are CDT components and Elemental Designs. Frome someone who sounds like they've been around the block in car audio, how does that sound (keep in mind this is a budget system).

that sounds like a nice start.
what are you considering for amplification?

PS, in regards to Floyd, I used to use DSotM as my demo CD.
that heartbeat at the beginning is fantastic.
I jsut picked up a mint condition MFSL Dark Side of the Moon 24K gold CD. Man.. what an amazing CD that is.
If you like Floyd, that MFSL CD is a must.
It's sitting next to my MFSL Wish You Were Here now.

Well, I already own a 50X4/120X2 RMS 4 channel amp, so that will have to do for now. Its a Pioneer GM-X series. For the sub, I'm thinking one of the JBLs.

I'm 34 now and was bit by the bug back in 1992. A buddy of mine (who used to be an installer in Birmingham Alabama) had a nice amp and some huge 6x9's in the back of his Cavalier and he was playing Tone Loc. I hadn't heard bass like that before. Then he explained to me what subwoofers were and so on and so forth. From that day on every car I've owned has had some sort of jammin' system. If I can't feel my music I'm not satisfied.

I started out just wanting SPL but now I'm doing another system that should have decent SPL but want it to be very clean (good SQ). My family just doesn't understand why I do it.

I dont think my family understands ANY of my hobbies, so I dont let it bother me.

Mine doesn't understand my obsession with it, but my mother did appreciate the home theater I bought for her last Christmas (HTiaB solution for her 31" TV. hell of an improvement )
Also, my mother happened to be with me on a trip out of town that brought me by a MartinLogan dealer. She got to hear the Odesseys I want on the Krell ampliiers I plan to also get, and was thoroughly impressed.
She seems to like my KEF 104/2s as well.. so I guess its not all bad.
Everybody has their passions I guess. Live and let live.

Dark Side of The Moon on 24K Gold is certainy a CD of choice.........I had one of the regular aluminum CDs of that classic and it had a lot of noise in it and I was ever so happy when it was released on gold. That must have been about 15-16 years ago if not more.......... It is still one of my reference discs also.........and has a permanent place in my 12 disc changer........

The new SACD sounds really nice(even on the redbook layer). Noticeably better than my old copy from circa 1997. Of course, the 5.1 track sounds amazing but can't really use that in the car
As for reference CDs, I use a bit of Steely Dan, most notably Aja or Gaucho. Great sounding discs and they make for great demo discs.

I think Aja is the only CD of theirs I don't have from the 70s and 80s. heh
I do have them all on vinyl though.

SACD is nice I suppose, but I wish they'd use a format like that for a higher resolution 2.0 instead of 5.1
music, especially music created two or three decades ago, is meant for 2.0 and 2.0 only. I guess I'm just a putist like that.
I love a good "stereo" system. As an installer, I don't do 5.1 video systems in cars. I think it's ridiculous. I stick to good two channel setups as much as I can. For music at home it's 2.0 or 2.1 as well with the KEF Reference 104/2s (and one day, my Krell KSA-250 and MartinLogan Odesseys hehe)

I have listened to some classical and baroque music in 6.1 that sounds fairly nice that way.. but I suppose only in the sense that it's more room-filling, and gives a sense of an opera hall or an orchestral venue with the first-order reflections from the rear channels and such, and in most cases, there aren't individual instruments pinpointed in the recording like there are with vocalists or, say, Tori Amos and a piano..

Sean,
Every SACD and DVD-A that I have features a 2 channel mix in the new high res format along with a 5.1 mix in the high res format. They anticipated that musical purists would want a 2 channel mix and it looks like they were right