[Johng316]

I'm in the market to seriously upgrade the stock system in my car.  Being a total noob in car audio stuff, I'm finding the same old marketing stuff in car audio as you find in home audio.  It's very hard to sort through the junk and find the price/performance gems.

On more than one occasion, I have been tempted to just get some Vifa or Scanspeak drivers and DIY my speakers.  But then you get into all the nasty crossover issues.

I'm also mystified by all the many amplifier choices out there.  I wish nOrh would produce a high quality, low cost car amp or four.

Michael:  ever thought of doing something in car audio?

For those of you out there who know:  What are the "nOrhs" of the car audio world?

John G

[nathanm]

AMEN my brother!!!  Car audio desperately needs a savior to pull at least part of this lumbering beast back to the realm of simplicity.  I don't care WHO does it, but it sure would be nice to have a car stereo that functions like a piece of hifi or pro sound gear and not something culled from the Star Trek props department.

The only choices I see are:

1. stock stereo

2. McIntosh MX406  ($2000 ouch, my heart!)

That's about it.

I think IRD could make a killer car unit, but they've got a full plate, as does Norh I'm sure. *sigh*

[Brad]

Looks like Nakamichi discontinued the Cd700.

The new Cd400 looks pretty nice.
The TP1200 looks nice, too, but you'd have to add the cd changer to it.

[bob82274]

I was looking through a car mag while waiting for a doctor earlier this year and saw a real nice Denon that I wouldn't mind having.  Only problems are it costs bout the same as the MacIntosh and its only available in Japan.

[Rob Babcock]

Don't sugar coat it Nathanm, tell us what you really think!

I agree with you for the most part.  My brother used to have a Sony head in his old Firebird that was so bright, on road trip you had to cover the face-plate with a jacket/towel so you could see the road!

I have seen a few Blaupunkts that were pretty clean looking and minimalist.  Ironically, those are the cheaper ones.  As you move up the price scale you get a progressively gaudier, tackier unit.

[rosconey]

one of my resto car mags has a new radio that has knobs, supposed to be designed off a old kenwood design car stereo. very plain looking, if i can find it this weekend i'll try to post the www. for it

[mbarnes]

Interesting. Believe it or not, we have done a lot of thinking about car stereo. No plans yet.

However, here are some thoughts:

The best possible car system would be a computer.  You could store your entire CD collection on a hard drive.  

If I were to do a Car stereo system, I would use the 3 inch drivers we will be using in our Multi-media system.  

These only need about .75 liters so they could be housed easily.  I would then put 3 inch in adapters for various cutouts for cars.  

The 3 inch TB speakers sound better than any of the system I have heard so far.  

I would then use the same subwoofer we use with the Multimedia subwoofer. It would go deeper in a car because of the cabin effect you get in a car.  We could get down to about 30 Hz -3dB.

I would want to have a system that was DVD or movie ready.  Using a computer, you could have a system that provided SRS. With SRS, you could decode any audio source from 2 to 7 channels.  

The most important thing is that it shouldn't be expensive.

[rosconey]

found it,
this looks like a winner
http://www.customautosound.com/secretaudio.php