Showcasing the Best in the Mobile Enhancement Industry
It’s with great sadness that we share the news that car audio industry legend Larry Frederick passed away on March 2, 2023. Larry is best known for his work at Phoenix Gold, where he was the director of product development. Larry shared his experience and talent with Alpine USA, Elettromedia, Diamond Audio and Cerwin-Vega! Mobile. Most recently, Larry was president of Cicada Read more
Every now and then, I get into hot water for recommending, or more commonly, for not suggesting, a particular brand of car audio equipment. The same has happened over the years with retailers near me. However, I can say with confidence that in every case, there’s a solid reason why I stand behind and recommend specific solutions and why others aren’t even remotely on my radar Read more
Dozens of articles here on BestCarAudio.com explain the concept of audio component distortion. More specifically, harmonic and intermodulation distortion represent the addition of unwanted information to an audio signal because of non-linearities in an electronic circuit or mechanical system like a speaker. Ask anyone who’s heard a genuinely high-end sound system and they’ll Read more
Dual voice coil subwoofers exist to provide installers with three options to connect the driver to an amplifier. The coils can be wired in series or parallel to double or half the impedance of a single coil. Alternatively, each coil can be connected to separate amplifier channels to add power from non-bridgeable configurations. A question that often arises is, what happens if Read more
Have you ever measured or tested something and not fully believed the results? A while back, I wrote an article that looked at the different options for wiring a pair of dual voice coil subwoofers to a single amplifier. The options are to wire the voice coils in each subwoofer in series the woofers in parallel, or wire the coils in parallel and the subwoofers in series.The Read more
I purchased a pair of MTX 6.5-inch woofers around 1992 or 1993, and they were installed in my 1991 Mazda 323 hatchback as midbass and rear-fill drivers. Later, they migrated to a set of “home speakers” with an Audax tweeter, though I don’t think I spent much time listening to them after I finished building them. Unfortunately, those speaker enclosures were thrown out after they Read more
Efficiency is defined as the ratio of the power or work consumed by a system compared to the work done by that system. In the car audio industry, we typically talk about efficiency in the context of amplifiers. The best amplifiers consume only a little more power than they provide to a speaker or subwoofer. Low-quality solutions consume extra power and convert that into heat. I Read more
Car audio questions on social media blow my mind. Do these speakers sound good? Does this amp make enough power? What radio is the best? Where should I install my tweeters? I see these questions asked in Facebook groups and on Reddit dozens of times a day. In 99% of the cases, my instinct is to suggest that the person asking the question go to a car stereo shop to get an expert Read more
When it comes to ensuring that your car audio amplifier is making the most power possible, nothing is more important than properly sized, high-quality power wire. Can an amplifier produce 2,000 watts of power if fed with 4 AWG wire? What factors affect the size and quality of wire needed for an audio system? There’s a lot of confusion around wiring, so let’s look at some Read more
