Do you care about car audio?

Even the finest car stereo does not compete with a good home system.
Playing loudly enough to appreciate a high end car stereo is at the least distracting if not isolating.  Both are dangerous.
Drove over 6000 miles in 16 days and did not listen to the Porsche/Bose stereo at all. Glad I did not spring for the Burmester.

Absolutely false. Your experience is that of “boom boom sizzle” which is much of what car audio is about.  But there are some that aspire to quality, not quantity. See my post above about the Buick GN.  I assure you it would beat the vast majority of high end home systems you have heard in your lifetime.

Upgrade car audio? Heavens no. Most car systems have gotten pretty good in the past 15-20 years. And I don’t need subwoofers in the trunk because I only listen to jazz. I’m good!

Up right bass about 33Hz, piano about 28Hz, jazz has got that bass, bass, bass. 

I drive a Toyota Camry. It is NOT a German or English built car. It is thin skinned. After I fixed that.. and spent a whopping 500.00 or so including the dampening mat. I was pretty happy. I went to pro drivers and enclosed the backsides on all the drivers. I added a 10" IB sub. I added all the cable candy and HEAVY copper with a cap bank..

Looks factory in the trunk. like it came with it.. Sub in all. The trunk space lost, (one cubic foot) the box can be turned, in 10 seconds.. Pretty cool really.. Amps, caps and controllers are in the factory pockets on either side the trunk behind the wheel wells... No space lost..

It has good sound and the road noise is about 1/2 what it was.. SO the SQ inside while driving is a lot better..

YEA they're a PITA... Chauffeur and a Roller please..

Regards

It's sad to see some answerers here (by no means all) who otherwise regard themselves as audiophiles proclaiming systems the car came with are high quality. The incredible amount of DSP used that F's up & homogenizes the sound FAR more then a quality system w/o it is always just sad.  The first time I heard the Burmester system in a Panamera not even moving, drove the point home.  All the optional settings (some double digit no.) only made it worse. If you picked the dead neutral one, it was grey, uninvolving & somewhat more detailed then inexpensive crap but nothing impressive by any standard. The ML system in a Lexus was better (after they completely engineered it a couple of years after first reintroducing it) but nothing like as good as say, the Focal utopia car audio installed with quality amplifiers (theirs or someone elses as good) Someone earlier mentioned the Milbert which is the ne plus ultra.  I heard the B&W Diamond tweeters in a BMW & they were discernibly better then the ML but the DSP always throws a blanket over the music that would be gone w/o it.  The Revel was revelatory in its detail & dynamics (for a DSPed system in particular) but ripped your ears of with those aluminum tweeters. Taming it in the systems described always results in sophisticated (at best) blandness.