It's true, I haven't heard of a home system put together to pound the house down, or claims of bending the windows under the SPL of the home system.//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/eek.gif.771b7a90cf45cabdc554ff1121c21c4a.gif Yet it is an element of car audio.
Remember car audio isn't just about competition. In fact a number of competition cars I've heard I wouldn't want to listen to for a prolongued period, purely because they've been tuned to perform perfectly at x frequency for track 5 of 'whatever' disc, because that's the way it'll be judged.
SQ to me is about reproducing music as close as possible to the way it would be performed 'accoustically' or at least live. It's about recreating a stage which is high and infront of you, with the tones of all instruments faithfully recreated and with positioning within the stage where different instruments and the vocalists can be recognised. However, it's also about adding certain colouring to increase the enjoyability depending upon your individual tastes - which is where choices of equipment come in as so important. I'm using an ODR HU, because of the colour it has when translating the optical signal into a digital music signal. I've a McIntosh amp running the mids and tweets because they can reproduce the tonality exceptionally faithfully but also have a warmth to their sound that I like. The speakers are Hybrid Audio Legatia L631V2 purely because they have an excellent reproduction with very minimal 'additions' to the sound, especially when the cost is considered. In fact I have put together a whole system because I've heard the component elsewhere achieve what I want to hear.
Finally, and most importantly, SQ is more about studying and using the science of how we listen and recognise sounds (Acoustics, Psychoacoustics and the like) to position and aim the speakers and produce sound at the right levels and timings to create the desired effect. This doesn't need expensive equipment, in fact there's a system competing in the UK very successfully which doesn't use the popular and expensive makes but still sounds exceptional. That's down entirely to the optimal use of installation skills, looking at location, direction, baffle materials, the speakers' required air volumes, installation materials and finally processing (crossovers, time alignment, phase alignment and to a much smaller extent equalisation).
