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Car Audio System Upgrade Advice


Frederic

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22 hours ago, DiamondDallas said:

Can Someone recommend any Person or Shop who can do upholestry of car for cheap. Seat covers , door panels.My friend wants to change the interior color of is corolla 2009. Also please advice if Pioneer 250watt speaker with xplode 500watt amp and 800w pioneer subwoofer is good idea for the same car.

With regards to the Audio question: your sound will only sound as good as the weakest link. Do not expect any kind of speaker, subwoofer, or amp to do a proper job if wiring is too thin or cheap, or if you skipped on other things. My two cents on this one:

1) Invest in a decent headunit (Sony, Kenwood, Clarion, Pioneer) that has RCA outputs. DO NOT buy these crappy converters that convert speaker output into RCA....

2) In upgrade phase one, buy some decent stereo speakers for the front and connect them to your head-unit. Your sound will already be 5 times better than the cheap Toyota crap speakers. Make sure all connections are properly soldered and not twisted like most shops in Sharjah will do.

3) Upgrade phase two: Buy a 2 channel amplifier and 2 more speakers for the back, OR buy a 4 Channel amplifier and connect also the front speakers. Install everything the way it should be done with proper grounding, power cables, fuses, and put new speaker cables all the way through if possible. Fine tune your amp and learn to set it correctly. A good rule is setting your headunit to 80%, putting the amp sensitivity to lowest possible and slowly start increasing until you hear some distortion, Then dial it back again a bit. Learn to fine-tune your settings such as Lowpass, Highpass, and EQ which you can set according to the speaker capability (regular speakers can be filtered to everything above 80hz). Give it some time and lots of listening to all preferred genres.

4) Upgrade phase three: Buy yourself an additional amp with sub or active system where sub and amp are in one tube or box. Only buy a sub if you really need it, because it takes up space and after having many subwoofers in the past, i came to realize that you can perfectly go without if you listen on "normal" volumes. If you have space for 10" rear speaker then they can deliver pretty good bass. 

I have seen so many friends and colleagues in the past that would go through these steps in one weekend and go for a full fledged audio setup in which they have either no clue what was installed and they ended up paying too much, or they blew up their amps or speakers after 3-4 months because they simply do not understand the basic audio rules.  

Can you blow up a 1000 Watts subwoofer with a 100 Watts amp ? YES you can; when you send a distorted signal from the headunit or amp to the speaker, this alternating sine wave becomes DC voltage that burns your speaker coil in an instant. 

Can you put a 1000W amp on a 100Watts speaker without issues ? YES you can, it is all a matter of setting the sensitivity setting correctly and learning to listen how your speaker reacts and plays. Beware, Subwoofer distortion is difficult to hear...

Edited by Frederic
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Well said and documented @Frederic, 1 like is not at all enough for such detailed and crisp explanation.

In the morning, I was busy and though @DiamondDallas merge two different questions in one post so I assume no point in explaining all things in details and let him research bit on Crutchfield first and then we can slowly build upon.

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3 minutes ago, Gaurav said:

Well said and documented @Frederic, 1 like is not at all enough for such detailed and crisp explanation.

In the morning, I was busy and though @DiamondDallas merge two different questions in one post so I assume no point in explaining all things in details and let him research bit on Crutchfield first and then we can slowly build upon.

Definitely with you on Crutchfield. Fantastic knowledge base !

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"Go as far as you can see; once you get there, you'll be able to see further."

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I totally agree on every point you said to upgrade one thing at a time so that you can understand how that change improved the sound quality.

Barry helped me a lot in doing proper wiring with oxygen-free cables and soldering instead of twisting that eliminate a lot of low-end hissing and music cut off while doing sideys.

 

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@Frederic wow that's an excellent explanation on the music system. I normally go for a basic pioneer or Sony explod single Cd player with aux and USB port and add a sub woofer and a 2 way amp for the sub woofer all connected by a monster cables and capsule near the battery terminals that helps me get a decent sound on my vehicle.

20180301_174155.jpg

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Found this one which also clarifies a bit on headunit watt power vs stand-alone amp power:

https://www.crutchfield.com/S-dwXRxOwPi1T/learn/reviews/20030722/power-power_comparison.html

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A very simple rule of finding out the real wattage of an amp or headunit: look at the fuse size that is installed and use the very simple ohms law calculation:

Watts (P) = (V) voltage x (A) Amps 

(A) Amps = Watts(P) / (V) Voltage 

Small example: a head unit with a built - in 10 amps fuse cannot deliver more than 130 Watts in total ( 10 amps x 13 volts) So most probably it is 4 x 30 W RMS. 

Most Watt ratings on speakers and amps are massively overrated. Always look for RMS values and never rely on PMPO values (peak music power output). In my first car I had a 2x85 Watts Rockford Fosgate 60x2 Amp that powered a 200 Watts RMS Sub in mono. It blew my socks off and came to know that high end audio underrates their values while the cheapo stuff massively overrates it. 

So above formula tells us: a 400 watt amplifier can easily draw 30 amps. If you see that it comes with a 15 amps fuse preinstalled than you know you’re being ripped off 😉

 

Edited by Frederic
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So what does 30 A x 3 means, Mr. Einstein.......?

That's my AMP manual page 16/72

 https://www.pioneerelectronics.com/StaticFiles/Manuals/Car/GM-D9605_OwnersManual062716.pdf

image.png

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2 hours ago, Frederic said:

With regards to the Audio question: your sound will only sound as good as the weakest link. Do not expect any kind of speaker, subwoofer, or amp to do a proper job if wiring is too thin or cheap, or if you skipped on other things. My two cents on this one:

1) Invest in a decent headunit (Sony, Kenwood, Clarion, Pioneer) that has RCA outputs. DO NOT buy these crappy converters that convert speaker output into RCA....

2) In upgrade phase one, buy some decent stereo speakers for the front and connect them to your head-unit. Your sound will already be 5 times better than the cheap Toyota crap speakers. Make sure all connections are properly soldered and not twisted like most shops in Sharjah will do.

3) Upgrade phase two: Buy a 2 channel amplifier and 2 more speakers for the back, OR buy a 4 Channel amplifier and connect also the front speakers. Install everything the way it should be done with proper grounding, power cables, fuses, and put new speaker cables all the way through if possible. Fine tune your amp and learn to set it correctly. A good rule is setting your headunit to 80%, putting the amp sensitivity to lowest possible and slowly start increasing until you hear some distortion, Then dial it back again a bit. Learn to fine-tune your settings such as Lowpass, Highpass, and EQ which you can set according to the speaker capability (regular speakers can be filtered to everything above 80hz). Give it some time and lots of listening to all preferred genres.

4) Upgrade phase three: Buy yourself an additional amp with sub or active system where sub and amp are in one tube or box. Only buy a sub if you really need it, because it takes up space and after having many subwoofers in the past, i came to realize that you can perfectly go without if you listen on "normal" volumes. If you have space for 10" rear speaker then they can deliver pretty good bass. 

I have seen so many friends and colleagues in the past that would go through these steps in one weekend and go for a full fledged audio setup in which they have either no clue what was installed and they ended up paying too much, or they blew up their amps or speakers after 3-4 months because they simply do not understand the basic audio rules.  

Can you blow up a 1000 Watts subwoofer with a 100 Watts amp ? YES you can; when you send a distorted signal from the headunit or amp to the speaker, this alternating sine wave becomes DC voltage that burns your speaker coil in an instant. 

Can you put a 1000W amp on a 100Watts speaker without issues ? YES you can, it is all a matter of setting the sensitivity setting correctly and learning to listen how your speaker reacts and plays. Beware, Subwoofer distortion is difficult to hear...

Thank you for a great advice. Please also advice on those LCD ANDROID head unit sold in many shops are they good. Again thanks for sharing your experience.

Edited by DiamondDallas
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