Home audio drivers vs. car audio drivers

Slappy,

Car audio isn't designed for anything that resembles flat frequency response. All listening is nearfield. The amps used in car audio are, for the most part, junk compared to home audio amps. There is perhaps 50 cubic foot of volume in the automobile environment versus a couple of thousand cubic feet in a modest home audio room. Engineering challenges for car audio include road vibration, temperature and humidity extremes and the ability to survive clipping to name a few. And, talk about terrible electrical supply. Air conditioning, turn signals, fuel injection, headlights and countless other electrical stuff is going on all the time. This electrical environment makes a homes circuits look incredibly stable in comparrison.

Car audio actually has way more hype and BS, if you can believe it (!) than home audio. More of it is crap than the equivalent home audio stuff. I've built stuff using car audio 2-way separates before - they were ok, but really nothing outstanding for the $ and effort involved. Like high-end home audio, most of the truly good/exotic/well done car stuff is about custom one-off type of things, including installation and modification. Not many truly good sounding cars just use off-the-shelf stuff that you can buy at Tweeter. In fact some of the high-end car stuff I have seen/heard used high-end home drivers (e.g. Focal, horn drivers, etc.) instead of the car stuff.

most of it is designed around marketing and BS and ruggedness. (tons of it gets returned so making it stand up to abuse is one of the high priorities, esp. for woofers... e.g. able to handle being plugged into a wall socket (AC) with that connected to speaker driver, and nonsense like that.)

I think a lot of (young guys?) folks go through a car-audio phase. Many outgrow it. Or at least settle to something good but sane.

-Ed

Ignorance is bliss,I'm told. But I know from personal experience, back around '96-'97 Soundstream made an amp that was designed by Krell and to their standards. I took the amp apart once to see if it was up to high standards of home audio and beleive me, it was built to a pretty darn high standard, Looked to beat out the mid-fi equiptment we have on hand today. It would run all day on a one ohm load. I ran two channels of it bridged into a 2 ohm load for almost 2 years and never had a problem or any over heating. It was one a thousand made. But still, your statement is way off.

Their were other companies that built some high quality car audio, also.

Of course $1800 for a car audio amp, or any amp is a bunch of money. But to make the statement that 12 volt amps are junk, is not a smart statement. But, if you buy from Tweeter or other appliance stores you most likely will get junk car audio equiptment.

I can't imagine 'car audio' has all gone to the dogs since I messed with it.

Btw, in the late 80's Bob Carver and one of the hi-end mags did some comparisons of amps (12v vs. 110v) with a pr. of Maggie's and the 12 volt amps didn't do too badly. Held their own in some respects. I remember back in the mid-late 90's Wes Philips had a 'car audio' column in Stereophile every 3 months . I doubt they would have given 'car audio' an editotial spot if it wasn't worth a darn or if it wwas junk.

Fs, Qts, and impedance.

When you put a bass speaker in a rigid enclosed area you experience 12dB of gain per octave you drop below where the longest dimension equals half a wave length. So to get flat bass inside a car you need the sub woofer to roll-off at a high frequency.

Power = V^2/Z. In a car you're starting with 12VDC vs. 100-240VAC in a house; so it's easier to make power when you're driving a lower impedance load.

Slappy, www.audioxpress.com did a DIY for Infinity 462.5CFP and Boston Acoustics FX5 car coax. Article was 5/03 and shows freq. responses. They modded the Infinity and improved sound to the best of the lot.