Most of us get in the car, turn on the stereo, and don’t really give it a second thought, but if you actually stop and check, you’ll probably find that your car audio system doesn’t actually sound as good as your think it does.
There are a number of contributing factors to this, but the biggest one has to be that you hardly ever hear the output from your car audio system in a quiet environment.
You will almost always hear it with a background of traffic or the noise of the motorway beneath your wheels or other people in the car with you. These extra noises damped how much of the audio system’s output you take in and as such it tends to sound absolutely fine until you stop and check.
There are numerous fancy and expensive ways to test and diagnose an audio system, but we’re not interested in those, the test we’re going to use is really simple.
Pick out your favourite CD and then go and sit in the car when it’s quiet, make sure the doors and windows are closed, now put the CD on and make sure it is loud enough so that you can hear it in a lot of detail.
Don’t make this uncomfortably loud, but if you have it up loud enough you will be able to hear the different layers of the music. This is what we want to use for testing as your ears will be able to tell us a lot about the system.
If you find that the track has a lot of noise on it or lacks clarity in certain places or with specific sounds, then try adjusting the treble and see if this helps. If it does, then you can leave this setting adjusted, or this is one of the things to look for in a new stereo.
The sound should be able to be increased to the maximum setting the system offers without it distorting.
Now testing this can be quite uncomfortable so it is recommended that you open the windows and ideally stand outside the car as well as only checking the higher volumes for a short period of time.
If you hear crackling or any kind of general distortion then you are looking at one of two problems, either the amplification in the existing system is not sufficient, or the speakers are not powerful enough.
Both of these can be handled with simple upgrades.
If you do identify any of these problems, then you can get them easily remedied, having the specific parts or the entire car audio system upgraded is a simple task for the professionals.
In fact, custom car audio installations across Australia have never been more in demand, so why settle for the poor quality of audio, when upgrading is so simple to do.
