| For
the Love of Music
If
you love music as much as I do, you'll know that some of the best
music-listening experiences you can have is while driving around in your
car. With no one standing by to tell you to turn it down and only
the wind in your hair as you cruise down the highway. Sometimes
with no destination in mind. Just doing it to get away and listen
to some music. I made no exception when I designed the system for
my car stereo. I had to have a good, clean and powerful system yet
I didn't have a ton of cash to blow. So went with mid-line stuff
from local stereo shops. Total expense on my
system was about about $800.
Only the Basics
My
system begins with an Alpine 7839 CD in-dash deck. This deck is
awesome. I got an incredible deal on it and it has all the
features I'd ever need plus some that I don't - like a remote control -
but really cool nonetheless. One of the features that I really
like is the distinct source EQ setting memory, which remembers how you
set your EQ for either CD or radio and plays the right one
accordingly. Of course I leave my bass and treble controls at zero
for the smoothest and most uncolored response for both CD and
radio. 1 dB too much or too little in a car makes a world of
difference. It's also got a DSP processor called BBE which
is suppose to correct phase anomalies. All I know is it makes the
music sound literally alive. It improves the sound dramatically so
I leave it on all the time. I can also program the radio stations
I listen to most to display their actual name like The End or
X-96. Up to about 50 CD's can be programmed with their titles as
well. Then the most important feature of all is the detachable
faceplate which comes off every time I get out of my car leaving just a
black spot where the stereo used to be.
The Amplifier
From the
deck, I bypass all internal amplifiers because basically they all suck
and run a single pair of gold plated RCA cables to a 4-channel Pioneer
GX9848 amplifier mounted in the trunk. The 2-channel stereo line
runs to a pair of y-connectors supplying the signal to all four channels
within my amplifier. The amplifier is rated to deliver 50 watts x
4 at 4 ohms or 75 watts x 4 at 2 ohms. And yes, this is real
watts. This amplifier was Pioneer's top of the line amp 4 years
ago and if anything, they've under-rated its power output
capabilities. Not like some cheap-o amps you can buy from almost
anywhere now-a-days that claim 500 watts yet have a 5 amp fuse plugged
into the back of them. C'mon people, do the math. It just
doesn't figure. So the Pioneer has a built-in variable crossover
12 dB/octave from 40-120 Hz on either the high or low pass side.
I've got my lows crossed over at around 80 Hz and my mid/highs crossed
over at 120 Hz.
The Rear Mids and
Highs
From the
two high-pass channels of my amp, I run a stereo set of 2-way plates
that I custom built that fit perfectly in the rear deck of my Nissan
Maxima. The plates consist of a 5-1/4" Pyle midbass and a
Polydax Titanium dome tweeter. The crossover after the amp is a 2-
way passive 12 dB/octave butterworth design fixed at 3.8 KHz which I
also deigned and built with air-core inductors and electrolytic
capacitors from Parts Express. They sound totally awesome.
The treble is amazing even though most of the sound is reflected off the
rear windshield, my rear soundstage just sounds phenomenal.
The Front Coaxials
Then
those same two channels that drive my 2-ways plates, also drive a pair
of 6-1/2" coaxial Blaupunkts mounted in the front doors. This
fills in my front soundstage with just as much power as my rear yet
since the drivers are mounted so low, the total summed soundstage sits
just barely behind my ears. I have no way of independently adjusting the
soundstage either farther to the back or farther to the front with the
fader on my deck, because I'm only using a single pair of RCA's and two
channels to drive all of my highs. But I see no need to ever
adjust the any kind of fader because the music for now sits right where
I like it.
The Subwoofers
Now the
other two channels from the amp are bridged to deliver 150 watts into a
single 4 ohm load. I've got a pair of Aura 12"
subwoofers each sitting in a custom box that I built that fires both
subs directly into the cabin of the car through the rear seat.
Lucky for me, my rear seats fold down exposing the two drivers and
allowing them pump out loads of bass with nothing to inhibit their
performance. The box is a dual chamber sealed enclosure with 1.35
cubic feet per driver. The 3 dB down point (f3) of the enclosure
alone is somewhere around 45 Hz. Yet with cabin gain I get a
remarkable amount of low frequency extension. I haven't done any
tests, but now that I think about it, I may whip out the meter and do
some readings. I am able to hit 118 dB playing some crazy bass
CD's. I prefer listening to normal music though, like The Smiths,
The Beautiful South, The Ocean Blue, among others and frankly these
bands don't write songs that just have bass. So tons and tons of
bass wasn't what I was looking for in my system. Just something to
fill in the low end. And these subs do that wonderfully.
Do-It-Yourself
That
explains in a nutshell the system I have in my car. It's really
not top-of-the-line, but it sounds great and gives me plenty of musical
enjoyment when I'm one the road. Besides that, I installed every
piece of equipment myself, so I can proudly say that I fully understand
how every component in my system works and can even fix it if I have a
problem. Most likely I'll never do any upgrades to the
system. The car is old and beat, and will fall apart before the
stereo does. If and when I get a new car, I'll definitely be
putting in some new and better gear. Until then...
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