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Who knows anything about car stereos? [Archive] - RonFez.net Messageboard

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PapaBear
06-01-2007, 08:56 PM
I'm not into elaborate sound systems in my car. I basically listen to R&F and sometimes music. Here's my problem. A while back, I installed a low end 180 Watt head unit. It's perfect for me. Last weekend though, I decided to rock out to some loud music. I blew up my rear factory speakers (6.5 inch). I need to replace them. Again... Nothing fancy. I just need them to hold up to the 180 Watt head unit.

Here are the two I'm choosing between...

JVC 200 Watt 2 way speakers for 38 bucks, or Sony 250 Watt 4 way speakers for 50 bucks. To be honest, I already bought the Sony's. Googling some forums, I see a lot of people say it's not worth the extra money to go with 4 ways (note... my only other speakers are the factory intalled door speakers. I don't use, or want a sub woofer). Should I return the Sony's to save the 18 bucks, or keep them and possibly get a little better sound?

JPMNICK
06-01-2007, 09:00 PM
I would keep them. for 18 bucks it is worth the money

plus the extra wattage will ensure you do not blow them out again.

PapaBear
06-01-2007, 09:08 PM
I would keep them. for 18 bucks it is worth the money

plus the extra wattage will ensure you do not blow them out again.
Thanks for the validation. Now... someone change this thread to an official car stereo questions thread, so it doesn't get wasted. Speaking of wasted... I'm about to start.

Fezticle98
06-01-2007, 10:01 PM
Does it help knowing that the difference is only $12?

I have a pair of Pioneer 2-ways and a pair of Sony Xplod 3-ways. I don't notice a difference in sound quality between the two, both are fine.

Reynolds
06-01-2007, 11:55 PM
I personally like the sound of JVC's better, nothing you buy from a known name brand should get blown by a head unit.

patsopinion
06-02-2007, 12:44 AM
i love this site (http://www.crutchfield.com/S-tpH2PIQAhL5/)


a few years ago i went down to the cowpalace in sf
they were selling car stereos and subs, everything for like 40 bucks or less
top of the line shit
i knew it all came from chop shops but i didnt care
i have an alarm system so it couldnt happen to me
if your in the area i highly suggest it
like 5 bucks to get in and all the stolen shit at kick ass prices

sailor
06-02-2007, 12:59 AM
I would keep them. for 18 bucks it is worth the money

Does it help knowing that the difference is only $12?

:lol:

topless_mike
06-07-2007, 04:25 AM
a 180 watt head is 4x45.

if your speakers are 250wt each, you are underpowering them.
thats worse than giving them too much juice.

topless_mike
06-07-2007, 04:27 AM
you have to match up all of your "powers"

and, your head unit is 180wt, but what is the "rms" on it? thats what is most important.

Bob Impact
06-07-2007, 05:08 AM
YEEEESSSSSS!!!! After 6 years on the board and 10 years in this business this thread finally has come up! This is going to be looooong post.

I would keep them. for 18 bucks it is worth the money

plus the extra wattage will ensure you do not blow them out again.
Contrary to popular belief this is actually not true, in fact the exact opposite is true. Underpowering a speaker is actually more damaging to it than overpowering it. There are several reasons for this but the most easily understood goes like this: Your deck, although it says 45x4 actually gives you around 12-18watts of output per channel RMS.

you have to match up all of your "powers"

and, your head unit is 180wt, but what is the "rms" on it? thats what is most important.
Right! The RMS (Root Mean Square) power rating of a deck tells you essentially (although not exactly) what it will do all day long as far as power output. Basically there are two ways to develop power, clean power takes a lot of storage capacitors, step up transformers, and other expensive parts to work effectively. On the other hand, you can increase the power rating of a deck by making the section of the volume past 2/3rds or so full of distortion and superpowerful. It lets you put 45x4 on the box without actually delivering it. To be fair, 90% of deck manufacturers do this with very few exceptions (Alpine being the only one I can think of off hand). Any time you are up there in volume you're delivering distortion to that speaker, which contributes in many ways to blowing it. We can go into the mechanics of exactly HOW a speakers blows if anyone wants, but i'll give a short version later in this power.

While RMS is important for the deck and is a useful tool in matching speakers, it's more important when you're looking at large systems. In your case, both speakers would work and I would assume have a fairly substantial operating range (probably from 12-75w, RMS). I would listen to both and pick the speaker that sounds better to you.

As an aside, both brands you mentioned are not exactly thought of very highly in the business, mainly due to their lack of reliability. Sony makes great home and computer stuff, and their Mobile ES stuff is nice too, but the Xplod and straight Sony branded equipment is not so nice, same for JVC.

Chigworthy
06-07-2007, 05:41 AM
a few years ago i went down to the cowpalace in sf


Shhhhhhhh. Don't let everyone else know that the big arena in Frisco is called the Cow Palace. We look bad enough as it is.

PapaBear
06-07-2007, 12:14 PM
a 180 watt head is 4x45.

if your speakers are 250wt each, you are underpowering them.
thats worse than giving them too much juice.
They sound great.

JPMNICK
06-07-2007, 12:22 PM
YEEEESSSSSS!!!! After 6 years on the board and 10 years in this business this thread finally has come up! This is going to be looooong post.


Contrary to popular belief this is actually not true, in fact the exact opposite is true. Underpowering a speaker is actually more damaging to it than overpowering it. There are several reasons for this but the most easily understood goes like this: Your deck, although it says 45x4 actually gives you around 12-18watts of output per channel RMS.



right but isn't a 250 watt speaker really at best arund 120, and usally much lower? Thats why I thought the head unit would be an OK match with the speakers, esp. since they are not JL speakers or anything along those lines.

I did not realize that underpoweing a speaker could do so much damage though, so that is def great to know. what is the damage that is done from underpowering, damage to the magnet?

Bob Impact
06-07-2007, 01:31 PM
right but isn't a 250 watt speaker really at best arund 120, and usally much lower? Thats why I thought the head unit would be an OK match with the speakers, esp. since they are not JL speakers or anything along those lines.

I did not realize that underpoweing a speaker could do so much damage though, so that is def great to know. what is the damage that is done from underpowering, damage to the magnet?

Theres two major types of damage, the distortion clipping of the voice coil I discussed earlier and thermal damage, which can happen by over or underpowering. When over powered a speaker takes thermal damage by being run over it's thermal power rating (it can handle 500W, you're giving it 1000W) or underpowering it and not allowing it enough cooling. Most speakers have a cooling features that are almost entirely air driven, when you don't feed enough power to move the cone efficiently the speaker can overheat and fuse the voice coil to the magnet.

JPMNICK
06-07-2007, 01:47 PM
Theres two major types of damage, the distortion clipping of the voice coil I discussed earlier and thermal damage, which can happen by over or underpowering. When over powered a speaker takes thermal damage by being run over it's thermal power rating (it can handle 500W, you're giving it 1000W) or underpowering it and not allowing it enough cooling. Most speakers have a cooling features that are almost entirely air driven, when you don't feed enough power to move the cone efficiently the speaker can overheat and fuse the voice coil to the magnet.

would the same thing happen if you had enough power going to it, but only listened at low volumes?

Bob Impact
06-07-2007, 03:28 PM
would the same thing happen if you had enough power going to it, but only listened at low volumes?

No, or it would be so difficult to get the conditions perfect to make it happen that it wouldn't.

Marc with a c
06-07-2007, 03:32 PM
one time mr belding asked AC to install a new cd player in his new car, and jesse's step brother from new york took out lisa in the car and she ended up crashing it. then eric convinced the shop teacher to take the entire car apart and zack and ac thought they were in some serious hot water, but eric had a change of heart and became nice after his sister gave him a shiner and put the car back toghether and installed the cd player.

lleeder
06-07-2007, 03:47 PM
one time mr belding asked AC to install a new cd player in his new car, and jesse's step brother from new york took out lisa in the car and she ended up crashing it. then eric convinced the shop teacher to take the entire car apart and zack and ac thought they were in some serious hot water, but eric had a change of heart and became nice after his sister gave him a shiner and put the car back toghether and installed the cd player.

only if he were here now to lend a helping hand

Don Stugots
06-07-2007, 03:48 PM
i try posting on my while driving to work but it hasnt worked yet. Justjon is a liar.

lleeder
06-07-2007, 03:49 PM
i try posting on my while driving to work but it hasnt worked yet. Justjon is a lair.

What supervillians hang out in him?

Mike Teacher
06-07-2007, 03:56 PM
Right! The RMS (Root Mean Square) power rating of a deck tells you essentially (although not exactly) what it will do all day long as far as power output. Basically there are two ways to develop power, clean power takes a lot of storage capacitors, step up transformers, and other expensive parts to work effectively.

=

The only RMS stuff I know is about amps for driving guitar bass and PA but is there anything greater then audio tech talk? Ohms baby Ohms. Slosh those electrons.

And Bob, et al; is there another field filled with more lies, half-truths and distortions? I doubt it. Stereophile Magazine and the rest, wow the experts cant even agree on what sounds 'good' or bad' and seems no one can even agree on whats 'good' or 'bad' sounding in the first place. One thing I did learn was how subjective listening is.

JPMNICK
06-07-2007, 04:06 PM
Right! The RMS (Root Mean Square) power rating of a deck tells you essentially (although not exactly) what it will do all day long as far as power output. Basically there are two ways to develop power, clean power takes a lot of storage capacitors, step up transformers, and other expensive parts to work effectively.

=

The only RMS stuff I know is about amps for driving guitar bass and PA but is there anything greater then audio tech talk? Ohms baby Ohms. Slosh those electrons.

And Bob, et al; is there another field filled with more lies, half-truths and distortions? I doubt it. Stereophile Magazine and the rest, wow the experts cant even agree on what sounds 'good' or bad' and seems no one can even agree on whats 'good' or 'bad' sounding in the first place. One thing I did learn was how subjective listening is.

Mike you hit the nail on the head. the audiophile arugments are about as dumb as foodies arguing about the best sauces. The wax on all day about different amps and speakers. truth is that both examples above are subjective, and range even within a person on different days. Atmospheric pressure and humidity are often overlooked, but can produce minute changes in sound wave behavior. In the end, some of these people dump tens of thousands into home and car stereo's, and I would venture to guess 95% of them really have no clue what is going on, they just have the money to spend.

Bob Impact
06-07-2007, 04:20 PM
Mike you hit the nail on the head. the audiophile arugments are about as dumb as foodies arguing about the best sauces. The wax on all day about different amps and speakers. truth is that both examples above are subjective, and range even within a person on different days. Atmospheric pressure and humidity are often overlooked, but can produce minute changes in sound wave behavior. In the end, some of these people dump tens of thousands into home and car stereo's, and I would venture to guess 95% of them really have no clue what is going on, they just have the money to spend.

Imagine my life, we can't control speaker locations. It's a nightmare sometimes.

Two things about audiophiles:

My favorite old joke: What's the difference between an audiophile and a non-audiophile?
A non audiophile will occasionally buy something.

Secondly, they ran a test a while back where they had audiophiles listen to home amps blind. All the amps were solid state and had the same power rating but were different "classes," low, middle and high. The only time anyone could hear a difference was when switching between the low and high end, and it was at about the same rate as flipping a coin.

Bob Impact
06-07-2007, 04:21 PM
Right! The RMS (Root Mean Square) power rating of a deck tells you essentially (although not exactly) what it will do all day long as far as power output. Basically there are two ways to develop power, clean power takes a lot of storage capacitors, step up transformers, and other expensive parts to work effectively.

=

The only RMS stuff I know is about amps for driving guitar bass and PA but is there anything greater then audio tech talk? Ohms baby Ohms. Slosh those electrons.

And Bob, et al; is there another field filled with more lies, half-truths and distortions? I doubt it. Stereophile Magazine and the rest, wow the experts cant even agree on what sounds 'good' or bad' and seems no one can even agree on whats 'good' or 'bad' sounding in the first place. One thing I did learn was how subjective listening is.
No, filthy liars all over this field. And, can I just say: SLEW RATE!

Gvac
06-07-2007, 04:24 PM
I could not be any hornier than I am right now.

Bob Impact
06-07-2007, 04:25 PM
I could not be any hornier than I am right now.

You misposted, this was supposed to go in the Hot Guys Pic Game thread.

Don Stugots
06-07-2007, 04:27 PM
You misposted, this was supposed to go in the Hot Guys Pic Game thread.

the pic of turtle right? WAWAWA.

JPMNICK
06-07-2007, 05:05 PM
Imagine my life, we can't control speaker locations. It's a nightmare sometimes.

Two things about audiophiles:

My favorite old joke: What's the difference between an audiophile and a non-audiophile?
A non audiophile will occasionally buy something.

Secondly, they ran a test a while back where they had audiophiles listen to home amps blind. All the amps were solid state and had the same power rating but were different "classes," low, middle and high. The only time anyone could hear a difference was when switching between the low and high end, and it was at about the same rate as flipping a coin.


exactly, it is so damn hard to discern any differences in most cases. Most people can tell the difference between stock car speakers made of basically cardboard and a decent pair of aftermarket speakers. but then we get into the guys who spend 1000 bucks on new audio cables to replace the 500 dollar cables the had before. i guess some people just need money to spend on things.

i always wondered if someone like Chuck Palunchink (wrote fight club) ghost wrote a novel, and then published it under a different name, if it would ever reach anyone. it kind of follows the audio conversation because so many people upgrade components because of name brands. I wonder how many great authors are out there no one knows about.

Bob, they also did something liek this a few weeks back with headphones and high bit rate and low bitrate MP3's. did see that?

topless_mike
06-08-2007, 11:47 AM
scientifically there might be differences, but for the pathetic human ear, its really hard to notice the difference.

as a bass player, i couldnt tell you the difference in sound between a tube amp and a solid state. i like s/s more because tubes are expensive.

Bob Impact
06-08-2007, 05:25 PM
scientifically there might be differences, but for the pathetic human ear, its really hard to notice the difference.

as a bass player, i couldnt tell you the difference in sound between a tube amp and a solid state. i like s/s more because tubes are expensive.
I completely disagree, a tube amp sounds WAAAAAAAAY better, and warmer than Solid State. ESPECIALLY for the bass.

Gvac
06-08-2007, 05:55 PM
scientifically there might be differences, but for the pathetic human ear, its really hard to notice the difference.

as a bass player, i couldnt tell you the difference in sound between a tube amp and a solid state. i like s/s more because tubes are expensive.

Maybe that's the case with bass amps Mike, but I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that tube amps are WAY WAY WAY better than solid state for guitar.

I'm no fancy technical guy; I plug my guitar in and play with no effects. A solid state sounds like I'm playing through a transistor radio whereas a tube makes it sound like I've got the greatest surround sound system on the planet.

PapaBear
06-08-2007, 09:21 PM
From what Impact has said, I may ruin my new speakers, because they are now underpowered (though they sound great). Since they only cost 50 bucks (not that I'm rolling in cash), should I just let them get ruined and replace them someday with better matched speakers, or should I get some sort of low end amplifier? Will I spend more money buying what I need to save the speakers?

JPMNICK
06-08-2007, 09:41 PM
From what Impact has said, I may ruin my new speakers, because they are now underpowered (though they sound great). Since they only cost 50 bucks (not that I'm rolling in cash), should I just let them get ruined and replace them someday with better matched speakers, or should I get some sort of low end amplifier? Will I spend more money buying what I need to save the speakers?

just leave them, you will be fine. once in a while blast it!

even if they shit out, they will last a few years, way better than getting and installing an amp.

PapaBear
06-08-2007, 09:44 PM
just leave them, you will be fine. once in a while blast it!

even if they shit out, they will last a few years, way better than getting and installing an amp.
Cool. They'll probably last longer than my car!

Bob Impact
06-09-2007, 04:34 AM
just leave them, you will be fine. once in a while blast it!

even if they shit out, they will last a few years, way better than getting and installing an amp.

Exactly. As long as you aren't consistently visiting the top 1/3 of the volume you'll be fine, an amp will make them last longer and sound better but it's a substantial investment after wiring and labor. If you're ever in CT come listen to my car stereo, it's what my guys call "the decider." If you're undecided about going with a high end stereo once you listen to that one, you pretty much decide. :wink:

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c244/bobimpact/Tweeter/1.jpg
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c244/bobimpact/Tweeter/2.jpg
http://s28.photobucket.com/albums/c244/bobimpact/Tweeter/11.jpg
http://s28.photobucket.com/albums/c244/bobimpact/Tweeter/8.jpg
http://s28.photobucket.com/albums/c244/bobimpact/Tweeter/12.jpg
http://s28.photobucket.com/albums/c244/bobimpact/Tweeter/4.jpg

For the folks who know car stereo gear here's the equipment list:
Deck: Alpine IVAW-200, PXA-H701 Surround Sound Processor
Front Stage: JL Audio ZR 650CSI Bi-amped by a JL300/4
Rear Stage: JL Audio ZR 650CSI Bi-amped by a JL300/4
Sub: JL 10W6V2 Amped on a JL 500/1

And for Gvac and Fat_Sunny, yes, that is a Who is John Galt license plate frame. :wink: