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Car Audio Players - All You Need To Know Before You Buy!

Updated on June 6, 2011

A Quick Guide to Shopping for Car Audio

When you’re asking people for advice regarding the best car audio for your money, there are two problems there… first, there’s a lot of brand loyalty going around. That’s all well and good, to an extent. The guy that only buys JVC car audio is usually going to get his hands on some great equipment, but these company biases can often serve as more of an obstacle. The fact is that everyone from Panasonic to Pioneer makes good products, and weak products. The second problem is that the person you’re asking knows how they like to listen to music, but they don’t know how you like to listen to music.

You might want to think about leaving space for shopping etc...!!

So before you buy car audio accessories or some new speakers, just make sure you’re getting your money’s worth. Here, we’ve collected opinions, car audio reviews, advice and ratings from around the internet in the hopes of giving you a solid, car audio guide to help you find the best car audio accessories and products around without spending more than you should.

Selecting the Best Car Audio System

Asking if this or that system provides the best car audio around is kind of tricky. One system may be “the best” for one driver, while another may want something entirely different. If you like bumping fat- er, excuse me, ‘phat’ hip hop beats out of your car, you’re going to have different needs than someone who likes cruising to Frank Sinatra. Our advice is to do a lot of research, do a lot of shopping around, and know what you want before putting any money down.

Getting Great Sound Quality

If you want great sound quality from your car audio player, it really doesn’t have a lot to do with having huge car audio speakers, but having good speakers. The best audio quality is, not surprisingly, about quality, not size.

Now, even though we rag on “brand loyalty” a little above, Kenwood Car Audio really will provide you with some of the best amplifiers around, like the eXcelon KAC-X40. Again, though, you might find something you like better, so keep shopping around.

Beyond the amplifier, you’ll also need speakers, woofers and sub-woofers. Again, size is not the issue, quality is. Those gigantic ghetto blaster speakers you see people cluttering up their trunks with are great if you want to make sure everyone in a five mile radius can enjoy your music, but if you’d like to keep your eardrums for use later in life, you’ll want something a little more modest. A 12 inch subwoofer should be more than enough for anyone not hosting block parties out of their cars.

When looking for car audio CD players, all you really need is, well, something that plays CDs. Whatever the manufacturer boasts, the fact is that a CD player is a CD player, and that’s pretty much all there is to it. The difference in sound quality from one player to the next is pretty marginal. That said, you should still be careful with your purchase, as there’s a lot to be said for convenience and durability. A perfect no-skip CD player really is worth its weight in gold. Just don’t be suckered in by a bunch of fancy, useless bells and whistles. Any good-condition no-skip CD player from a discount car audio shop is good enough.

Multimedia

It’s really a great age we live in where you can watch DVDs in the comfort of your car. Car audio and video may seem like a frivolity… if you don’t have kids…

When looking for car audio DVD players, you still want to prioritize no-skip, of course, and preferably, you want a CD/DVD player for easier car audio installation.

When it comes to the viewing screen, don’t try to show off too much. Having a 32 inch plasma in your car is impressive, but it’s a heck of a distraction when you’re on the road. If you don’t have kids who’ll be watching movies in the backseat, the safest option is actually going to be one of those retractable screens that pops in and out of the dashboard. Besides being safer, it’s also really cool and futuristic.

Car Audio Security

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot you can do to protect your car audio system from theft. This has been true since the car audio cassette tape days, when thieves would smash a car window, yank out the stereo, and make a run for it.

What you can do is make sure you have an effective vehicle security system. A car alarm should be more than enough to scare a thief off before he can make off with your system.

Beyond that, car audio products are typically produced with serial numbers. These days, if some crook tries to sell your stolen property off at a used audio shop, they can check the serial number and see if anyone’s reported it stolen, and return it to the rightful owner.

MP3 Players

In this day and age, how many people still have a bunch of CDs laying around, anyways? More and more music buffs are simply collecting all of their music on iTunes, with half of our CDs being burnt playlists because all we have in the car is a CD player.

You don’t even need a fancy setup for this. You can get something like the Yifang EM192F All in One MP3 Player. This product comes highly recommended, packing both MP3 and WMA format via a memory stick. The music is actually transmitted through your car’s audio system by way of an FM modulator, so the music is played right on your radio.

Go with what you want

In the end, all we can really do is make suggestions. How you get into the music you like is entirely a personal decision, and you shouldn’t allow a few user reviews to influence it too much. Some people still love the crackle and fuzz of vinyl records, and we all know at least one person who refuses to give up their cassette tape collection.

In the end, it’s not even about getting crystal clear sound quality, it’s about getting the sound quality you like best. It’s a very personal thing. If you like listening to the Wu Tang Clan through huge woofers or putting Rush on an 8 Track, there’s nothing wrong with that. You wouldn’t let us tell you what music to buy, so take the above advice as merely “recommendations”.

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