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- South Carolina
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- 12 MZ5 13 CX-5
PART 1 - Source
Before anything else, learn about the computer term "GIGO". Garbage In, Garbage Out. What that means is, no matter how good your hardware is, if the software is trash, then the whole thing is trash. Any system is only as good as the weakest link, and if you're starting with the weak link of having garbage source material, then anything else you so you're wasting time, effort, and money.
What do I mean when I say "software" and "source material"? Why, the actual music you want to listen to, of course! The easiest, cheapest, most basic thing you can do to make your stereo better is this: Stop Streaming! Stop using Bluetooth! Stop using MP3!
Let's go over why you should never use this if you want a good sounding stereo.
1. Streaming: Bandwidth is *expensive*. Like, super expensive. So, to deliver you the most music for the least amount of money, nearly all streaming services compress the heck out of the music. And this compression is not lossless at all, it's very lossy. With bandwidth being so expensive, ever wonder how services like Pandora and Spotify can give you so much music for free? Because what they are serving up is compressed to hell and back and sounds like trash because of it! An example of a streaming service that doesn't do compression is Tidal, and guess what? It's not free! You must pay for that! Personally, I own over 500 albums, so I'm not paying for something I already have twice. So, I'm not a subscriber.
2. Bluetooth: Bluetooth was invented to let computers seamlessly and wirelessly talk to mice and printers and whatnot. Then someone figured out that hey, we can use this to make phone calls, too! Which led to the next step, of hey, let’s put our music over it, too! Yeah, well, that sucks. We're right back to the whole bandwidth thing again. But this time it's not bandwidth over the Internet, this is Bluetooth bandwidth. And guess what? The bandwidth just isn't there. For most Bluetooth appliances, even ones that support aptx, you're looking at a maximum theoretical throughput of 356kbps. For some very rare Sony stereos, they've managed to bump this up to 990kpbs. (But you almost assuredly don't own the hardware that can do this!). So, 356k, that's good right? WRONG. First, that's a theoretical maximum, you will often drop to 256k, maybe even lower. And second, you know what the actual sustained throughput of a plain old CD is? 1,411.2kbps. Big difference there, and anyone can see that when you go from 1,411.2k to 356k, something gets lost in translation. And boy howdy does it ever!
3. MP3. Oof. The utter pain when I'm trying to listen to that noise. MP3 was made back in the days of $500 40 MEG, yes MEG hard drives, 14.4kbps dial up modems, and Windows 2.0. Yes, not kidding Windows 2.0. Windows 3.1, let alone Windows 95 wasn't even around when MP3 came into being! It's just that old! I can't think of another piece of software that persists and persists so long after its usefulness has died out. Heck, even Microsoft ditched Word DOC files for DOCX! And how does MP3 work? It purposefully takes chunks out of your sound. Think of it this way: you have Van Gogh's Starry Night hanging on the wall, but you want to physically make it smaller. So how do you do that? You stand 20 yards away with a shotgun and shoot random holes through it! Oh sure, for 20 yards, it still looks like Starry Night, but just take a few steps in, and you can see what a mess you have on your hands! But at least you have less paint and canvas to deal with now, amirite? For the love of God, let MP3 die. It should have died 20 years ago. People don't even have iPod's anymore, so just let it go already.
So, if you can't use streaming, Bluetooth, or MP3, what do you use? Well, you can keep streaming if you want to but pony up, and get a subscription to Tidal, Deezer HD, Amazon Music HD, or whatever else lossless service fits your bill. And don't stream via Bluetooth, because for reasons stated, that's useless. Simply plug the darn device in with a USB cord. Heck, the USB will charge your device while it's playing anyway. Win-Win. Problem solved there.
If you're like me, and don't want to pay twice for music you've been collecting for the last 35+ years? Rip everything to FLAC or WAV and stick it on a thumb drive and put the thumb drive in your stereo. Personally, I prefer FLAC, because the files are slightly smaller, and you can get Album Art and whatnot embedded into the file. But not every device recognizes FLAC (know that all the good ones do, though), so if yours can't use FLAC, WAV is the answer there. WAV is CD. Literally the same file. And the FLAC compression is completely lossless.
PART 2 – Head Unit
You get what you pay for. If you see a cheap stereo component that does literally everything under the sun, (and seems to even make coffee for you for your morning drive!), but you've never heard of the brand, and never seen it sold in a regular store, then it's most assuredly trash. There are pretty much 5 high quality in-dash car stereo brands left that you should consider: Alpine, JVC, Kenwood, Pioneer, and Sony. There are a couple of other decent brands that are there like Clarion, but they are far smaller than they used to be, and kind of hard to source. Clarion is good stuff, but they almost exclusively do OEM stereos nowadays.
Trust me, I too love the idea behind the no-name Chinesium "Pure Android" stereos. The alure is there! So much so, I tried 3 different ones before I simply gave up and bought a Kenwood Excelon. But have you ever tried to use a $30 Wish.com or Alibaba Android tablet? Because that's literally what those infernal things are! They go by a bunch of different names like Eonon, Erisin, Atoto, Joying, Pumpkin, Seicaine, etc, but they are all the same crap, coming off of the same crap assembly line, made by the same crap company: Shenzhen Klyde. There is ZERO attention paid to QA/QC by Shenzhen Klyde. So, if you roll the dice, buy one of those pieces of trash, you may luck out and get one that works. But probably not! So why bother? Just get something you know is going to work the first time.
PART 3 – Speakers
Factory speakers are bad, and they seem to be getting worse every year. Auto manufactures are forced to comply with government fuel economy regulations, and shaving off ounces, shaves off pounds. And shaving off pounds gets better gas mileage. All you need to do is take one look at the absolutely, positively puny magnets on a factory speaker to understand what I’m talking about. Even a modest upgrade to a set of very cheap $50 Rockford Fosgate, Kenwood, Kicker, or Dayton Audio door speakers will make an absolute world of difference in your sound quality. Obviously, the sky’s the limit when it comes to speakers, and Sinfoni, Dynaudio, Linear Power, Helix, and Focal Utopia are outside the scope of this conversation.
Part 4 – Sound Deadening
To be fair, this isn’t necessary, but it does help. And whatever you do goes a long way. You already have the door cards off to place new speakers, so this is the perfect time to throw some Dynamat etc. in there! The hard work of taking the door apart is already done, and it’s surprisingly affordable!
Part 5 – Amplification
Like sound deadening, this also isn’t necessary, but it helps. The more power you juice your speakers with, the more dynamic headroom you have. What is dynamic headroom? Well, look at it like a fire hose putting out a house fire. A garden hose (low watts) just isn’t going to cut it. You need big volumes of water to get that fire out! But, what about if you just want to water your flowers instead of putting out a fire? Well, simply dial back the pressure down to a trickle! You’re still good to go! Most people don’t realize this, but even an amplifier capable of 10,000 watts will only output about 9 or 10 watts when listening at a reasonable volume. Yup, it’s true! But when you want that punch in the gut from the kick drum, you have the power on tap to be able to do it! A reasonable low-cost amp power level is something like a 50x4. Not a lot of money, but a serious upgrade in power over what a head unit can put out, which is generally about 18 watts per channel max, despite what the box may tell you.
Also, when looking at amp specs if you see something that’s advertising 3,000 watts! For $68, they’re almost certainly lying to you. I highly suggest you check out some YouTube “Amp Dyno” videos so you can figure out who the liars of the amplifier world are, and who are the reputable companies. (Hint, Pyramid, Boss, and Power Acoustik are garbage)
Part 6 – Wrap Up
So who am I? I’ve been installing car stereos since 1987. I also run one of the largest and oldest car stereo Facebook pages that is devoted to old school American made stuff. (No, I’m not BigDWiz, but I have met him and had dinner with him!). And talking about the cheap Chinesium car stereos, I was the guy who originally figured out how to make the Eonon units play nice with the 04-05 Mazda3’s steering wheel controls, and I also was one of the first to figure out how to make those units play nice with the factory Bose amplifier. Eonon was so impressed with my work, I shot their installation instruction video for distribution on the Eonon YouTube page. And yeah, even though I know those Chinese units inside, outside, upside down, and I know how to make them work to the best of their ability, I still think they are trash to be avoided.
Before anything else, learn about the computer term "GIGO". Garbage In, Garbage Out. What that means is, no matter how good your hardware is, if the software is trash, then the whole thing is trash. Any system is only as good as the weakest link, and if you're starting with the weak link of having garbage source material, then anything else you so you're wasting time, effort, and money.
What do I mean when I say "software" and "source material"? Why, the actual music you want to listen to, of course! The easiest, cheapest, most basic thing you can do to make your stereo better is this: Stop Streaming! Stop using Bluetooth! Stop using MP3!
Let's go over why you should never use this if you want a good sounding stereo.
1. Streaming: Bandwidth is *expensive*. Like, super expensive. So, to deliver you the most music for the least amount of money, nearly all streaming services compress the heck out of the music. And this compression is not lossless at all, it's very lossy. With bandwidth being so expensive, ever wonder how services like Pandora and Spotify can give you so much music for free? Because what they are serving up is compressed to hell and back and sounds like trash because of it! An example of a streaming service that doesn't do compression is Tidal, and guess what? It's not free! You must pay for that! Personally, I own over 500 albums, so I'm not paying for something I already have twice. So, I'm not a subscriber.
2. Bluetooth: Bluetooth was invented to let computers seamlessly and wirelessly talk to mice and printers and whatnot. Then someone figured out that hey, we can use this to make phone calls, too! Which led to the next step, of hey, let’s put our music over it, too! Yeah, well, that sucks. We're right back to the whole bandwidth thing again. But this time it's not bandwidth over the Internet, this is Bluetooth bandwidth. And guess what? The bandwidth just isn't there. For most Bluetooth appliances, even ones that support aptx, you're looking at a maximum theoretical throughput of 356kbps. For some very rare Sony stereos, they've managed to bump this up to 990kpbs. (But you almost assuredly don't own the hardware that can do this!). So, 356k, that's good right? WRONG. First, that's a theoretical maximum, you will often drop to 256k, maybe even lower. And second, you know what the actual sustained throughput of a plain old CD is? 1,411.2kbps. Big difference there, and anyone can see that when you go from 1,411.2k to 356k, something gets lost in translation. And boy howdy does it ever!
3. MP3. Oof. The utter pain when I'm trying to listen to that noise. MP3 was made back in the days of $500 40 MEG, yes MEG hard drives, 14.4kbps dial up modems, and Windows 2.0. Yes, not kidding Windows 2.0. Windows 3.1, let alone Windows 95 wasn't even around when MP3 came into being! It's just that old! I can't think of another piece of software that persists and persists so long after its usefulness has died out. Heck, even Microsoft ditched Word DOC files for DOCX! And how does MP3 work? It purposefully takes chunks out of your sound. Think of it this way: you have Van Gogh's Starry Night hanging on the wall, but you want to physically make it smaller. So how do you do that? You stand 20 yards away with a shotgun and shoot random holes through it! Oh sure, for 20 yards, it still looks like Starry Night, but just take a few steps in, and you can see what a mess you have on your hands! But at least you have less paint and canvas to deal with now, amirite? For the love of God, let MP3 die. It should have died 20 years ago. People don't even have iPod's anymore, so just let it go already.
So, if you can't use streaming, Bluetooth, or MP3, what do you use? Well, you can keep streaming if you want to but pony up, and get a subscription to Tidal, Deezer HD, Amazon Music HD, or whatever else lossless service fits your bill. And don't stream via Bluetooth, because for reasons stated, that's useless. Simply plug the darn device in with a USB cord. Heck, the USB will charge your device while it's playing anyway. Win-Win. Problem solved there.
If you're like me, and don't want to pay twice for music you've been collecting for the last 35+ years? Rip everything to FLAC or WAV and stick it on a thumb drive and put the thumb drive in your stereo. Personally, I prefer FLAC, because the files are slightly smaller, and you can get Album Art and whatnot embedded into the file. But not every device recognizes FLAC (know that all the good ones do, though), so if yours can't use FLAC, WAV is the answer there. WAV is CD. Literally the same file. And the FLAC compression is completely lossless.
PART 2 – Head Unit
You get what you pay for. If you see a cheap stereo component that does literally everything under the sun, (and seems to even make coffee for you for your morning drive!), but you've never heard of the brand, and never seen it sold in a regular store, then it's most assuredly trash. There are pretty much 5 high quality in-dash car stereo brands left that you should consider: Alpine, JVC, Kenwood, Pioneer, and Sony. There are a couple of other decent brands that are there like Clarion, but they are far smaller than they used to be, and kind of hard to source. Clarion is good stuff, but they almost exclusively do OEM stereos nowadays.
Trust me, I too love the idea behind the no-name Chinesium "Pure Android" stereos. The alure is there! So much so, I tried 3 different ones before I simply gave up and bought a Kenwood Excelon. But have you ever tried to use a $30 Wish.com or Alibaba Android tablet? Because that's literally what those infernal things are! They go by a bunch of different names like Eonon, Erisin, Atoto, Joying, Pumpkin, Seicaine, etc, but they are all the same crap, coming off of the same crap assembly line, made by the same crap company: Shenzhen Klyde. There is ZERO attention paid to QA/QC by Shenzhen Klyde. So, if you roll the dice, buy one of those pieces of trash, you may luck out and get one that works. But probably not! So why bother? Just get something you know is going to work the first time.
PART 3 – Speakers
Factory speakers are bad, and they seem to be getting worse every year. Auto manufactures are forced to comply with government fuel economy regulations, and shaving off ounces, shaves off pounds. And shaving off pounds gets better gas mileage. All you need to do is take one look at the absolutely, positively puny magnets on a factory speaker to understand what I’m talking about. Even a modest upgrade to a set of very cheap $50 Rockford Fosgate, Kenwood, Kicker, or Dayton Audio door speakers will make an absolute world of difference in your sound quality. Obviously, the sky’s the limit when it comes to speakers, and Sinfoni, Dynaudio, Linear Power, Helix, and Focal Utopia are outside the scope of this conversation.
Part 4 – Sound Deadening
To be fair, this isn’t necessary, but it does help. And whatever you do goes a long way. You already have the door cards off to place new speakers, so this is the perfect time to throw some Dynamat etc. in there! The hard work of taking the door apart is already done, and it’s surprisingly affordable!
Part 5 – Amplification
Like sound deadening, this also isn’t necessary, but it helps. The more power you juice your speakers with, the more dynamic headroom you have. What is dynamic headroom? Well, look at it like a fire hose putting out a house fire. A garden hose (low watts) just isn’t going to cut it. You need big volumes of water to get that fire out! But, what about if you just want to water your flowers instead of putting out a fire? Well, simply dial back the pressure down to a trickle! You’re still good to go! Most people don’t realize this, but even an amplifier capable of 10,000 watts will only output about 9 or 10 watts when listening at a reasonable volume. Yup, it’s true! But when you want that punch in the gut from the kick drum, you have the power on tap to be able to do it! A reasonable low-cost amp power level is something like a 50x4. Not a lot of money, but a serious upgrade in power over what a head unit can put out, which is generally about 18 watts per channel max, despite what the box may tell you.
Also, when looking at amp specs if you see something that’s advertising 3,000 watts! For $68, they’re almost certainly lying to you. I highly suggest you check out some YouTube “Amp Dyno” videos so you can figure out who the liars of the amplifier world are, and who are the reputable companies. (Hint, Pyramid, Boss, and Power Acoustik are garbage)
Part 6 – Wrap Up
So who am I? I’ve been installing car stereos since 1987. I also run one of the largest and oldest car stereo Facebook pages that is devoted to old school American made stuff. (No, I’m not BigDWiz, but I have met him and had dinner with him!). And talking about the cheap Chinesium car stereos, I was the guy who originally figured out how to make the Eonon units play nice with the 04-05 Mazda3’s steering wheel controls, and I also was one of the first to figure out how to make those units play nice with the factory Bose amplifier. Eonon was so impressed with my work, I shot their installation instruction video for distribution on the Eonon YouTube page. And yeah, even though I know those Chinese units inside, outside, upside down, and I know how to make them work to the best of their ability, I still think they are trash to be avoided.
