Doobie-Doo wrote:
Hi all!

I'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to car audio. Scratch that. I'm a HUGE
newbie when it comes to car audio, so I think I need a little help here so's
I don't get ripped off.


Admitting you have a problem is the first step towards solving it.

I just recently bought a used car, and the factory stereo sucks big time. I
just want to put in a decent system. A CD and MP3 player with some decent
speakers. I've been reading some websites trying to learn about car audio
systems, but they don't really help you understand what would be the best
for you. I just want a clean sounding system. I don't think I need any
subs or amps. I was just thinking a nice deck and some new speakers (2 way?
3 way?). Any recommendations?


The best for you is going to be what you are happy with. Dont listen to
what ANYONE says about "buy this", or "get that". Go with what you (a)
feel comfortable with, and (b) what sounds good to you.

Now, the best advice I can give along these lines is this:

First, spend some time in the listening room at your local stereo store.
Take a few CD's, and listen to music until you find a set of speakers
you're comfortable with (make sure you're listening to speakers that fit
your car). Take your sweet time. If the sales people start to push, walk
out. If you buy a set of speakers in under an hour, you will likely have
made a poor choice. And check with various car audio shops. Give
everyone a try from Wal-Mart and Best Buy on down to the mom & pop
shops. Don't focus on price either. If you have to pay a few extra bucks
for good speakers, do it - those are the speakers you will have to
listen to every damn day for as long as you own your car. If you prefer
speakers that are actually less expensive, then great! I have often
found that less expensive speakers from certain brands sound just as
good or better than the much more expensive speakers from another brand.

With speakers, it's about the sound. But with headunits, they all sound
the same. They all have "high power" output, they all have pretty much
the same DSP and eq features nowadays. What you're looking for in a
headunit is features. If MP3 is important, make sure you can get one
that will read the ID3 tags and display the info. With 220 songs, it can
get tedious looking for the right one, so it also helps if they have
large displays and can read directories. Finally, make sure they will
read the CD's you burn to. Some will advertise that they are compatible
with CD-R's,b ut they won't work on the el-cheapo Fry's specials (the
blue ones). More importantly, make sure you are paying for features you
aren't using. I still have my Alpine CDA7985, which has BBE (which
sounds horrible when you have a good system), high pass and low pass
outputs built in (which are inflexible compared to the ability of my DEI
three way four channel crossover), RDS (which is great for the three
statiosn that actually display RDS data, assuming I care what the
stations call letters are - RDS is much underused in the US), CD Changer
control / AI-Net control (never used any of this). As you can see, it's
really easy to pay for features you never use, which means you wasted
your money.

Most of all, shop around and take your time on your decision.

--
Lizard

teamROCS #007 / Technical Director / Founding Member *res derelicta*
http://www.teamrocs.com/
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