Do you put as much effort into your Car Audio?

Back in the day (late80's and early 90's), I had a top of the line Kenwood cd changer with tuner pack, 2 pairs of ADS separate speakers (5 1/4 inch mids and dome tweeters), 2 15 inch Cerwin Vega subwoofers, 2 JL Audio 10 inch woofers, a 75wpc 4 channel Soundstream amp for the ADS separates, 2 Soundstream 100wpc 2 channel amps wired in mono for the subwoofers, and a 50wpc Soundstream amp wired in mono for the center fill. I also had a Kenwood 10 band graphic eq built into the dash as well as a Audio Control eq in the trunk to tune the speakers. I used all Phoenix Gold (was high end) interconnects and speaker wire. I also had a deep cycle marine battery in the trunk in conjunction with a 1 farad capacitor for storing energy and a dual charging system with high output alternator.

All this was shoehorned into a 1984 Nissan Sentra. I won many trophy's at various events as well as a 1,000.00 store credit for winning Tweeter HiFI car audio loudness war. All this came to a cruel end on the night of December 25, 1991 when the car was stolen out of my driveway. My car was found a month later in a housing project in another part of the state, stripped to the bone. They even took my gas cap and used air cleaner element.

Since then, I have focused on my home system. I had over 6 grand invested in the car system and lost everything. I did all of the work myself.

Good music and sound is important to me in my car as it is at home. It has to be pretty good in the car. Therefore, it is necessary sometimes to upgrade the equipment in the car. A good low noise head unit, crossovers, amplification and speakers, with the correct cabling is a must. For my car, I use Mogami speaker cables and Canare interconnect cables. Very nice for auto use. Morel, Dynaudio, Focal speakers also. Contrary to what some may say, there are some very nice car systems out there. It takes just as much effort to do it well in the car as it does at home. I find that many home audiophiles are really prejudices against auto systems, much the same as low to mid fi stereo/home theater people are against audiophile equipment. They just can't see the justification for expending large somes of money on stereo systems. I find the same to be true for people related to cars and other things. Everything to me is a science and takes much education and knowledge. Nothing really is simple. I love my drives up/down the coast to visit wine country and my friends and I have to have decent sound when doing so.

enjoy

Not as much effor, but a LOT of effort nonetheless. That effort comes in the way of paying for a nice car with a nice OEM system. In making my purchasing decision, I put a lot of weight on how the system sounded and the noise level of the cabin when the car is operating.

That's terrible, Stereo5. What a loss. And I thought I was upset when my in-dash stereo was stolen 6 times (the same car).

For my Z06, I pulled out the crappy Bose audio system and added :

Dynaudio 7" component tweeter/midranges with upgraded crossovers in the doors.
Kenwood 8120 Stereo/DVD/GPS head unit with IPOD direct connection to all 5000 music files in Apple Lossless AIFF.
Alpine D600 digital amp
JLAudio sub in the rear
Dynomat sound deadening on the entire door panels.

Pinpoint imaging, tight bass, and great resolution - not a ghetto blaster system.
Did the entire install myself and only took about a week.
Probably the best stereo sound I have heard in any car!