The Reason (Not) To Upgrade Your Car Audio System

While for most of home audio people really know well that the car is the worst place for audio, thus listening music in car is unavoidable. The situation for my daily driving activity is about at least 2 hours minimum per day. Compare how much I spending time while listening music at home it quite similar. But when I am stuck in traffic jam, it can double the time. So, you will never want to accompany in the traffic with a bad audio system on car don't you?

This condition makes lot of money for the one shoot seller, especially if you don't know what should you doing with the car audio itself. Perhaps the fact they force you to upgrade total audio system from top to toe, in fact that you don't really need them. It is very common in this business that you will get spectacular number of gear that you can proud of, but they are useless actually. Unless if you have your own moto: the more is merrier, than I agree with the seller as well.

Then the first thing I can suggest for someone want to upgrade their car audio is what do you feel with current audio system? The most eye catching in car audio system is the head unit at first. You can call it a tape player, CD player, Head Unit, or anything else. It is in front of the dash and I am often found people at the car show, when they are looking to the interior of the new car, they are looking the head unit first rather than the seat quality, the steering position, or the dash board style. Are you satisfy already with that HU?

Then, another question to you is the in-car facility related to audio & visual already meet your need? The head unit nowadays can play DVD, CD audio, Radio, Bluetooth, and USB files. Some of them also support GPS for navigation system, but can't compare to google maps in term of updated & accuracy. There is a lot of useless feature if you ask me, but not for the advance sound adjustment features if you aim for the best sound possible from OEM HU.

One thing should be consider when replacing to the new HU is sometime can be problematic in cosmetic and others in-car features. Most common problems is steering wheel control and parking sensor connection failed. Make sure the seller can guarantee all feature are working properly when you planning to upgrade it.

The second thing, is how does the sound? I believe they are sucks! But how sucks? I take 2 car for comparison to make my point to become more clear. The first car is new Pajero 2016 with full multi-media head unit and the second car is the old Toyota 2005 mini van with standard head unit that only play tape cassette, radio and additional CD changer is an option.

For Pajero, the OEM head unit is from JVC. On how hard I spending time try to adjust the sound, it never become more better. The CD audio, radio, Bluetooth, are produce low quality sound. The overall sound are compressed, dry, not focused, not harmonics, far from hi-fidelity. Sadly, I prefer not to listen them. I just enjoying this new car. The reason to upgrade the head units is now acceptable in this case.

Surprisingly for the old Toyota mini van, the sound is more natural, dynamics and clear than the Pajero. The OEM head units mini van is from Fujitsu. Sound adjustment features are also very minimum. Only adjustment for bass, treble, balance and fader. But I can live all day with this kind of sound. Do I still need an upgrade?

With two example car above, I can simulate you what to do by those cases. On the Pajero, I suspect the sound quality from the head unit is bad. Upgrading it to increase the sound quality is a good choice. You should consider all features attach to the car just like I describe previously are working properly. If not, the others method is using separate audio processor feed from the output of the OEM head unit to the speakers. This simple solution keep the car just like the original, while the sound could be better by tailored with the advance setting in the processor itself.

Different with the mini van, I satisfy with sound from the OEM head units and speakers. I don't need any others features or upgrade. But in term of the good sound, I still not satisfy with the high frequency. I believe the sound stage could be improve a lot with better speakers. In this case, upgrading the front speaker is the best option. Please remember that the upgraded speakers sometimes not required you to purchase additional power amplifier. The sensitivity rating should be at least the same with the OEM speakers. I found that using 2 way speakers from Morel Tempo, or change only the tweeter to the Vifa XT-25 could be the better choice.

After those steps are complete, now let the new system breaking in for a week or more. Then determine what miss with it yet? Safe it for the next upgrade. I believe you will adding the sub-woofer for the next step. After all, It is so much fun with all those steps. You will learn something with the progress you've been passed rather than put all your money to total upgrade in the car audio system.

I should mentioned that I just found a great acoustic music. It is Peter White from the album: Glow. He play guitar really nice and the recording quality are also superb!

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