|
First of all, thanks for sharing your observations.
Any stereo you put in a car will ultimately be "decent" and nothing more. The quest for audio perfection in a home system is one thing--I have pursued that for years and found it very rewarding. Cars are another matter. No matter what you do, you have the following limitations that would cause any true audiophile to throw up their hands: road noise, wind noise, engine noise, vibration, improper speaker placement in relation to the listener...those are simply insurmountable no matter what you do or how much money you spend. Yes, you can minimize noise and vibration with various dampeners, but there will always be some bleed and the speaker placement is fixed.
I have several problems with the premise of this thread.
1. Hiss is bad
2. You need to blast your system to determine audio quality
3. Listening in a parked car is indicative of stereo performance
4. The number shown on the volume display indicates the actual power or decibel level
1. Hiss is present in almost all recordings because of the analog nature of musical instruments and recording devices. When you hear no hiss in music, it is due to the use of digital noise reduction. These algorithms remove any content present at high frequencies that your ears perceive as hiss. The problem is that the noise reduction algorithms can't distinguish actual music content of these high frequencies, e.g., cymbals, overtones in female voices, percussion, etc., from unwanted hiss. In other words, you are losing valuable information that is audible from real instruments. As an audiophile, you should be horrified by this. It makes the music less realistic, thinner, and more "synthetic" sounding. Hiss is our friend, especially in older music that was recorded to analog tape.
2. The quality of your system can easily be determined without blasting it to the max. Simply listen critically to the tones, tone changes as a function of time, and stereophonic performance or imaging. How convincing is the music reproduction? All you will do by blasting it at earsplitting levels is damage your ears (which are very sensitive devices that cannot be fixed once the cilia or other delicate parts are damaged) and eventually your stereo system.
3. To get a real idea of how a car stereo performs, you need to listen while you're driving. For obvious reasons.
4. Remember that seen in Spinal Tap when the dude insists his amp is louder than anyone else's because it goes up to "11" instead of just "10"? The reason this is so funny is because it is obviously bullsh*t. Numbers on amps and receivers these days are simply a marketing gimick designed to appeal to complete morons. In my home system I use a tube amp rated at 80 watts per channel, but if you listened to it, you'd swear it was more powerful than transistor amps rated at more than a couple hundred watts per channel. Point is, the design of the amp and the quality of the parts used is the critical factor, not the number appearing on your display. The volume knob (yes it's a knob with no remote control and no LED display) on my VAC amp has no numbers, just little dots at 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 1, 2, 3 and 4 o'clock.
As for the quality of the stock system, I think it's sufficient. The tweeters make a big difference. I certainly don't see the need to dump money into a flashier aftermarket system. These days, they all use cheap east asian parts and there is poor attention to detail in the design and grounding of each circuit which is essential in quality audio gear. The factors I mentioned as insurmountable in a car system will be the limiting facts no matter what. So if I was to do anything to improve the audio, it would be to use dynamat or other dampening products in the doors, flooring and other parts of the car's chassis.
|