The Auto
Sounding Board
Here’s something you may not have considered. The sound system in your car has long been an OEM afterthought. GM or Ford just puts in a radio and some cheap, light speakers and lets everything go after that. To get better sound you then must shop aftermarket at a Big Box store or go to a custom install shop. While it is true that base level systems in a van, econobox or low level truck do share these characteristics, it is not a universality. Further using an aftermarket system does not generally improve sound quality. It often makes things more expensive but worse sounding.
Why? Well do you think the employees at Best Buy or WeBeSound have electrical engineering or acoustical science degrees? Of course not. Also, many forget that one of the major products at a custom installation shop is installation labor. So, in general, what you get is more costly equipment and installation labor for anything more than a simple bolt and screw install. Generally speaking the fellows that do the work do not have experience and training in sound and acoustics. The better ones are great hole-saw and fiberglass jockeys but to assume that you’ll automatically get good, or even better sound, is anything but a sure thing. The days where new technology like cd players were the largest part of aftermarket are long gone.
I’ve tested about 700 OEM autosound systems, several hundred aftermarket speaker systems and a couple hundred competitive aftermarket sound systems since I became professionally involved in car sound and the one thing that practically every aftermarket system does better than OEM autosound gives you is louder 40-60 Hz bass. But is that good sound? Well only if you disregard what’s actually on the record. The majority of them are just built to “pound,” not to reproduce the sound that is contained in the recording.
All the engineering in autosound whether OEM or aftermarket gets done in laboratories and facilities around the world at electronic equipment and loudspeaker manufacturers and suppliers. And by suppliers I mean companies like Alpine who serve both OEM and aftermarket. When GM and Ford divested themselves of Delphi and Visteon the majority of acoustical and electronic engineering went with those companies as they became suppliers. And suppliers get to bargain for aspects that the aftermarket just doesn’t get to bid on.
One of the major improvements in OEM sound in the past 25 years has been the development of premium branded autosound systems. In the early 80s Bose invented the premium OEM system and the rest of the sound universe followed suit. For example well known OEM suppliers include names like Harman, Alpine, F10, Pioneer, Blaupunkt, B&O and even Boston Acoustics. And not all of the systems are branded. For example I’ve leased a car that had a premium sound system that carried no brand supplied by Pioneer.
And, for the most part, these systems sound better than all but a handful of aftermarket systems that may have had $!0 to $20k of acoustical and engineering design and installation labor. And I mean a few hands-full. Special cars built by trained folks. But, for the most part aftermarket systems are aimed to please boom-boom-boom fans, not people who are interested in good sounding music reproduction.
Of course, there is also a variation in quality of OEM systems. Many are remarkably good sounding. A few are better sounding than all but the best Home Theater systems. There aren’t that many turkeys. And OEM generally offers features that sometimes get neglected by aftermarket products such as organically “stealthy” installation, easy to read displays and easy to operate controls. There’s another quality that may also be useful in the future – you won’t have to un-install hundreds of dollars of your custom aftermarket gear when you decide to ditch the car. In the future I’ll discuss things you’ll want to consider in evaluating the sound system in your car. After all many of us spend an hour or two everyday in the car getting back and forth to work.