Car audio has long been a hobby for many people as well as an addictive pastime! (as much as computers in some case!) but the thing is that it can intimidate most people, Originally I posted this on the PCA bbs as a reply but figured it would be good to elaborate upon it so here i present car audio 101! Please remember there are more brands and choices avaliable then what i list here, but the biggest thing to remember is to let your ears be the judge!

1. I assume you want a good quality deck, not some cheap of shizen, so, Rule of thumb when it comes to car audio is that you get what you pay for, bar none!

Remember, this is going to be something you are going to use everyday, so look at it as an investment, a medium to high level deck can range anywhere from 300-600$ When buying a deck look for expandability, look for RCA preouts, ranging from 2-8 volts (the higher the volts, the cleaner the signal) The preouts are used for your amps, generally you will have a front, rear and sub output, in some cases a cd changer input, and on the better decks, you will have an Aux imput, where you can hook up an MP3 player, etc ( I used to hook up the camcorder and watch recorded footage, it sounded great!

Look at features of the deck also, detachable face, full faceplate, Display (Phjorgs Swimming Dolphins, my Cool blue spectrum anyaliser!)in some models you even have the ability to hook up a cell phone

Another thing to remember is DIN sizes, these are the sizes of dash openings, your average deck is 1 DIN, most GM's such as Phjorg's Olds and my Firebird Are 1.5 DIN andin some cases you may have a double din! a 1.5 din you can use a deck as well as an equalizer. I opted to go for a custom faceplate so my deck sits in the center of my cnsole surrounded by chrome Plexi to match the face of my deck!

Some decks I would reccommend would be, Panasonic, Pioneer, Kenwood, Clarion, Alpine, and Nakamichi.

Also, remember your audio system is only as good as it's weakest link. You may have excellent signal quality from a nice deck, but cannot be pushed to it's full potential due to crap ass speakers! Wich brings us to the next question, Component or Coaxial replacement speakers.

Component speakers generally consist of 3 pieces, a midbass speaker generally either 5 1/4 or 6 1/2 inches, a tweeter, and a crossover to seperate and send the signals to their appropriate places. Sometimes you may even see 3 piece speaker systems where either an 8" or 6.5" speaker is configured for bass, and the others are for midbass and highs. Bass is generally regarded as the lower frequiences, such as drums, or lows, Midbass handles the mid frequiencies liek the gituars and to an extent the voices, and the tweeters for the highs deal with the upper level vocals, symbols, etc. These speakers are generally placed into the kick panels of your vehicle to get a better soundstage, ideally, you'd like the sound to come from infront of you, a good Midbass config will make it feel as if the bass is coming from infront of you, when in reality it is from behind you! Once again, if you want to go this route and do a kickpanel install you can get custom kickpanels for your vehicle from Q LOGIC or, you can roll up your sleeves, break out the fiberglass and make your own!

Once again, yo uget what you pay for, when it comes to speakers and it is not uncommon to spend 250-600$ on a great set of components, DEI (studio series) CD tech, Diamand, MB Quart, and Focal all make some pretty serious proudcts! But as always try to audition the components and let your ears do the judging!

Coaxials are designed to be a direct replacement for your stock speakers, they will fit in your stock speaker locations, and generally can sound alot better then what you have, especially if you have an older vehicle. While not as effective as components, Coaxial speakers can still sound great, some companies to look into are Infinity, JL...

Now you may be liking your sweet setup, crusin through town with the windows rolled down, fine ladies giving you glances, but then some pimp daddy in a black firebird or Oldsmobile blows by you and all you hear is BOOM BOOM BOOM! it rattles your teeth, tightens your chest, and makes the Ladies cry OOOOOOHHHHH!!!! It's BASS BABY!

Amps

say you take the component route, While decks May say they're rated at say 50 watts per channel, in reality, it's more like 20 watts RMS (route Mean Squared) What that means generally is the amps true output POWER rating, Some less reputible companies will quote Dynamic pwer at like 14.4 volts and you see an amp that says 1400000 watts for like 100$ thats a load of bull all those things are good for are paperweights or minature grilles!! Most companies will rate their amps at 12 - 14.4 volts (a vehicles output range of DC power) with an RMS power rating, at different Ohm levels. Ohm levels is what the amps Impeadance is. generally you can have 2 channels (left and right) at X ammount of watts at 4 ohms. Generally most components are 4 ohms.

Now when we move into subs things get a little different. You can drop the impeadance to 2 ohms, and you can theoretically double the output power, but the amp will get hot due to the added resistance. Class A/B amps generally proudce a very clean signal with a very minimal ammount of THD (total harmonic distortion) the may not put out the raw power of class D amps but what you get from them is clean sound. Now for Subs you can get away with a cheaper Class D amp. The THD will be higher, but doesnt mater as much because for subs you want to play nice and LOW around 20 - 120 HZ, you let the components carry the rest!

Now when you are setting up your amp you will generally have to deal with crossovers and gains. Crossovers generally limit the frequence range the amp will amplify, and the Gains amplify the input signal but beware, crankng the gains will get the subs to fly, but at the risk of damaging them if cranked too high, gains are used to fine tune, if you have a clean rcaimput between 5-8 volts you should barely have to touch the gains.

If your deck only has say v lot preouts, do not fear! you can purchase items known as Line drivers, Phoneix gold makes a quality unit that boost the output to 8 volts, but remember to use caution and make sure you find out your amp's rated input voltage!

Some good Amps are PPI, MTX, Rockford Fosgate, JBL (class D's) DEI, Phoenix gold.. Amps will definitely range in price, once again from like 200$- 800$

Now were talkin about putting some thump into the system and really extending it's range. Subs are big, heavy and... move alot of air! First thing to look at is how many you need for your application, and what size. they range in size from 8 inches to 18 inches. for instance i am a mild bit of nut, so i have 2 12's. Generally the bigger the sub the higher the SPL (sound pressure level) but the lower the SQ (sound Quality) mind you with the advances in auto sound technology they have came a long way a 15" crystal CMP can probably outplay a 12" JL 12W6 in SQ.

Also you have to look at the type of enclosure you are going to use, weather it be ported, sealed or bandpass. Sealed is the easiest and proudces good results, but you can gain more boom by going ported or bandpass but generally require more fabrication work.

Subs that I reccommend, JL audio, Crystal mobilesound, Infinity, Memphis, Cerwin Vega, Orion HCCA's Image dynamics

Now you have all this cool stuff, it's time to wire it all up. DO NOT SKIMP ON THE WIRING! for speakers 16-18 gauge is good, for subs 12-14 gauge is good generally. the RCA interconnects (cables that go from preouts to the amps) should be gold plated. hell save the hassle and get Phoenix gold zeropoints or monster cable! for power to the amps depending on the juice your main power cable should be 4-8 gauge fused no more than 15" from the battery. Note to self fuse is good! fuse prevents welding! also try to keep your ground wire under 2 feet to keep the signal good. Remember to use a CLEAN ground! generally you can purchase a distrubution block where your main power wire is then safely split into multiple smaller gauge wires to power amps, etc

Remember, there is still alot more to the car audio game, but hopefully i have left you with enough to get a decent start, Perhaps if you enjoyed this enough I will spawn a sequel! In the mean time feel free to check out this page to see my install.