The Wonderful Hobby of Car Audio

Amplifiers Sound Deadening Subwoofers Pictures

This site will broadly talk about the notion of car audio and how it works. My job is to inspire you to become familiar or atleast have some sort of knowledge after veiwing my site. So why should you view my site? Car audio is such an interesting topic because it takes alot of effort and pride to successfully complete a build. I, myself, have been in the car audio hobby since I purchased my first vehicle(which was at the age of 17). I will point out things that should not be done, stereotypes, incorrect enclosures, along with the correct approach to a successfull build. So all this time, I've been talking about a successful build, what is a successful build?

A successful build is a concept of connecting supportive ideas and the actual process. To each, his own. By all means, I am not saying this is HOW it should be done, and no other way around it, but I am giving a tuturial of how to construct a properly-built sound system. For one, numerous people misunderstand the concept of an enclosure. The subwoofer box is probably the #1 criteria in becoming successful. The standard boxes that are sold at flea markets, garage sales, mobile audio shops, will not cut it. In basic terms, they are garbage. These boxes are constructed for people, who are not familiar with the car audio hobby and have no clue how an enclosure has an effect on subwoofers. The standard enclosures are not built for subwoofers to play the low notes, which most rap, hip-hop, R&B, pop, jazz, and rock music carry. Although some individuals listen to country music and alternative, a custom enclosure would still be beneficial for many aspects. There are several online calculators that will determine the size of the box needed if you put in the detailed information of the driver. This tool will help you on constructing a ported enclosure for a specific driver.

There are two types of enclosures for subwoofers. In reality, there are far more advanced enclosures that are used for competitions such as T-line enclosures, horn, flared port, bandpass box, and phase boxes. The most common types of enclosures are sealed and ported. Sealed enclosures give off a better frequency set, meaning that they have crisp sound quality. Although ported enclosures doesn't keep up with the sound quality as sealed enclosures, their higher output in bass offsets that disadvantage. Building a proper ported enclosure will give you a much higher SPL (sound pressure level), meaning it is louder to the human ear. There are several calculators online that will calculate the correct size of the enclosure, along with its dimensions, if the individual gives the specifications on the driver that it being used. Yes, the type of subwoofer plays an important role in choosing which enclosure to deal with. A matter of fact, there are few subs that yield better results in sealed boxes than ported enclosures. At the same time, there are quite a few subwoofers that will require a T-line enclosure to greatly benefit it's mechanical limits. What's a T-line enclosure? It's an enclosure intended for subwoofers, in which cannot take lots of power. How do we define "lots of power"? This is another subject that we will cover in the Amplifier section to further understand the meaning of power.



A brief description of each enclosure can be located here

Let's move on to subwoofers. What do you need to know about subwoofers? Let's begin by saying name brand matters. In many cases of our century, name brands were expensive because of the name. In many other cases, name brands meant quality and quality meant expensive. In the car audio hobby, the brand of the subwoofer is crucial to the buyer because it lets the buyer know the reputation of the subwoofer. What we need to understand is that there are thousands of subwoofers in today's world. In addition, there are an outstanding number of manufacturers these days, but quite a few of them are reputable. What do i mean by this? I mean that there are only a certain amount of manufactureres who truly claim "QUALITY". Just to name 12 on the top of my head:

These are highly reputable companies and stand by their products 100%. I've used a number of these products and had great success.
  1. Kicker
  2. Cactus Sounds
  3. Digital Designs
  4. Resonant Engineering
  5. U.S. Amps
  6. Ark Audio
  7. Mcintosh
  8. TC Sounds
  9. SoundSplinter
  10. Fi Car Audio
  11. Audique
  12. Rockford Fosgate
I should also note that most of the above manufacturers are not mainstream companies such as the following listed below:

While most of the manufacturers I've lised are generally great products, there are several companies that an individual should stay away from, simply becuase they are bad products. I'm not talking about speficic products of the car audio industry, I am talking about general car audio manufacturers to stay away from. Boss,Legacy, pyramid, Blitz Audio, Blaupunkt,Audison, Audiovox, Planet Audio, Precision Audio,Volfenhag, Visonik, Performance Teknique, Nitro, and Lanzar are many of the brands who lack quality in making a decent product. So what makes these companies not so good? There can be several factors in which a company is considered "garbage." In my opinion, if a company does not honor warranty through their product, it states that something is missing during the transaction. Power ratings are overexaggerated by many of these companies, which is the primary reason why they don't stand by their products.

This site was created by Ali Zeidan for Project 1 for CS 101