What do audiophiles do in their cars?

In my Yugo I dare not turn on the transistor radio that I carry with me (none in the car): I need to listen constantly and carefully to see if anything else falls off while I'm driving along, as well as for more strange sounds from the engine block.

I used to manage one of the highest end car audio store in Los Angeles (Santa Monica, to be exact). We used to do custom sub enclosures, custom enclosures for mids and tweets in doors, custom amp racks, etc, etc.

For cars, we had some really good sounding systems. But let me emphasize, FOR CARS. No matter how good they sounded, even the best did not get close to the kind of sound that can be achieved in the home.

No real imaging, no soundstage, too much low level details lost in the ambient noise (even the quietist cars have about a 65 db ambient noise level, homes are under 40 db).

So, I couldn’t really care less how good my car system is. I don’t do any serious listening in my car anyway.

Stream Tidal via Android with USB Pro driver through an Audio Quest Cobalt Dragonfly on my factory system

Lots of people want to know what aftermarket speakers and amp I've installed

I'll A/B compare songs from Sirius XM and Tidal with the Dragonfly and Tidal without the Dragonfly - big improvement in sound quality that surprises my friends and family

The Dragonfly is the secret sauce and differentiator, the Cobalt version with USB Pro driver does full MQA

@simonmoon ,
"No real imaging, no soundstage, too much low level details lost in the ambient noise (even the quietist cars have about a 65 db ambient noise level, homes are under 40 db)."


I tend to put stuff on a USB stick to playback when I’m driving (and keep reminding myself not to swap USBs whilst the system is still powered up!).

In-car entertainment has come a long way from the tape/radio only systems of the 80s. I’m not exactly a big fan of electric cars (lack of space/overcomplexity) but they are definitely quiet and that gives the system every chance to shine.

The sound is more or less as the quote above describes but it does have enough resolution to demonstrate that the sound quality of the 1995-97 Beatles Anthology series was pretty good and that the 2009 monos are generally preferable to the stereos.

Plus it’s handy to have various controls such as the volume/track skip situated on or near the steering wheel. Needless to say, the skip forwards was used quite a bit when listening to Anthology 2 & 3.

Funnily enough one of the best systems I ever heard was in an Alfasud way back in the 1980s. It was a cassette based system but somehow it was able to create a wonderful stereo image spread in front of the cabin that I’ve never heard matched since.
Not even by the Alpine/Rockford Fosgate/ subwoofer systems my brothers used to have in their cars.

Looking back it’s another sign of how much some folks love their vehicles when I think of how much time and effort they used to put into their car systems and how little into their home ones.

noise cancelling headphones is the way to go