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- Thread starter Rcn11thacr
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hispls
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CarAudio.com Veteran
Welcome aboard. First think worth knowing is that a lot of brands that were good in the mid 90s are gone, and many of the names have been sold and have had hit or miss (mostly miss) quality over the past couple decades. DO NOT just decide to buy into a brand because they were good back when Mark Wahlberg was a boy band!
Next, head units have come a very long way and are very reasonably priced. Start shopping there. Alpine, Kenwood/JVC, Pioneer, and Sony are all trustworthy. JVC seems to be just Kenwood with less or older features. The processing power that SQ cars in the early 90's used to run 110V AC inverters and Rane home audio EQs to achieve can be found in head units in the low to mid 300$ range along with time alignment, active crossover, 5V pre-outs, and all sorts of flexibility. If you really want to nerd out there's a few head units with a comma in the price tag that are truly premium quality audio equipment which justify their cost in what outboard processing of that quality would cost you.
Perhaps the biggest driving force of car audio is that power is cheap! Class D and particularly full range class D have benefited from semiconductor technology advances. You can get modern amps that use a fraction of the current input, run cooler, sound better and in some very small footprints. There has even been a big push into Full Bridge designs which aren't quite as abuse tolerant or clean sounding, but you can get legit 8000W with a 2 year warranty for 600$ and a little bit in about the same size package of Kicker ZR1000 or Orion "The Beast".
With cheap power came a move into less efficient subs that can handle loads of power and are capable of big excursion. Worthy of mentioning is the "Adire Audio" brand. They use a split gap (XBL^2) motor which sacrifices some efficiency for very low distortion. If you want good sounding that can get loud those are a good place to start shopping. Otherwise there's still several 500W sub options that are built to sound nice and still some 250-300W ones. But power as cheap as it is, most design revolves around sacrificing efficiency and prioritizing operation in a small space and very good low extension.
Also along the line of cheap power, lithium batteries are doing wonders for higher power builds, and we've had some decent advances in high output alternators. """Stiffening caps""" have been proven to be snake oil, but there are "ultracapacitors" which can be useful but are probably not the most practical solution for most builds.
For box building if you can lay fiberglass you can lay down carbon fiber. IF you plan to glass up a box, might shop over to US Composites and see if they have any closeout deals on carbon fiber mat and epoxy resin. I've done a few projects with CF and it's infinitely nicer than fiberglass to work with and can look pretty nice with just brushing on the resin then another resin coat when it's still tacky. Oh, and there are some very nice ready-made flared ports of all diameters that can be bought which will really improve your life trying to tune an odd shaped box of uncertain volume.
Lastly, Crutchfield is still extremely good for customer service/support and they have a fairly decent selection of products. It is well worth using their site at least to just plug in your make model car to see what fits and what odds and ends you need for replacing your factory stuff. They usually throw in dash kit and wiring harness when you buy head units from them and their prices are pretty competitive on RCA cable, distro blocks, fuses, and such.
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