audio replacement saga Part 01, speaker-shopping woes, classical music

[nusrat]

...morel maximo... jl audio... stereo integrity...

...I would absolutely look at DynAudio...

From my long-ago time following and selling high-end home-audio stuff, it amazes me to see how hard it is to find a place where you can go and listen to the better car products, even from the same makers of high-end home equipment. Even my local Best Buy's home-audio department demos McIntosh vacuum-tube electronics and Martin-Logan electrostatic speakers (both $$$$$$), but their car department is treated like it's your grandmother's attic -- obsolete or out-of-service, and rarely visited.

I live in the middle of the biggest market in the country, in Connecticut, roughly half-way between Boston and Philadelphia, and very close to NYC. Some of my findings so far:
-- DynAudio: the dealer nearest me (40 miles) will only sell them as part of an install. The next nearest (80 miles) will sell them as parts, but isn't set-up to demo them. The next nearest (175 miles) will sell as parts, but the only way he can demo is to bring in a customer's Porsche which has them.
-- MBQ: the only dealers within a couple of hundred miles are all Best Buy, where I already described a lousy experience at one of their bigger stores in the area.
-- Audison: tried their web-site on 2 different browsers, and the only dealers they list are all in SoCal, even though I've already been to one 30 minutes from me.

 

[riceandpho]

MBQ is long gone now, its not the same as back then.

best buy car audio is getting obsolete is true.

what about the shop owner's personal car? dont they do product test and demo.

try the Elettromedia-usa
for a list of audison and hertz dealer beside DJ.

but the stereo integrity is cheap enough to run.

google this person shop
Apicella Auto Sound
heard his name is nick and he does the high end stuff.

 

[Bumbo]

[MENTION=168278]nusrat[/MENTION]

I understand the struggle…

I remember when I was able to walk into a Best Buy, Circuit City, or similar home goods electronics stores and walk into the car audio department with literally everything on display, available to demo, and in actually pretty respectable shape in terms of presentation and importance. Not really the case anymore.

Few years back I was starting to shop for home theater speakers and came across the Audio Architect in San Diego… It’s by appointment only, but he has a showroom. One of my better experiences and where I fell in love with DynAudio and Monitor Audio. Cheapest pair of bookshelves start at about $1k, but I was lucky enough to have his demo DynAudios flagship floor standers which cost about 200k for the pair. I must say, it’s one of the most impressive speaker experiences I ever had the privilege of experiencing.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Audio-Architect/250303368780921

If you want me to be honest with you… I don’t really go out of my way to shop for anything Tier 1 for car audio. It’s not worth it to me from the standpoint that it’s probably one of the most challenging environments to setup and tune speakers correctly. It’s almost impossible to really unlock the potential. You pretty much need to own a Lexus LS or S500 benz to start with a good quiet environment to even take advantage of what the Tier 1 stuff has to offer.

These days I only shop high end for home audio, and I often times mix in pro audio year because of its quality and standards for balanced interconnects. I’ll buy DynAudio for home, but for car, I only shop for value tiers which are generally in the mid to mid-high price points from regular obtainable brands.

Long story short… don’t over think it, buy decent stuff, spend the extra resources on the rest of the system not just the speakers, and spend whatever you saved in tuning because that’s literally one of the items that give you the biggest impact.

 

[nusrat]

try the Elettromedia-usa for a list of audison and hertz dealer beside DJ.

"Been there, done that." BUT...

google this person shop
Apicella Auto Sound
heard his name is nick and he does the high end stuff.

...that was a great tip! His site has very little info, but I'll call him to ask about product-lines and show-able units. But more importantly, one of the ggl hits on him brought up a page about a list of "50 Best Installers" and "50 Best Retailers". And those pages list several other people in my region who were new to me.

"But wait, there's more!": those pages tipped me to an online industry mag called "Mobile Electronics magazine", which looks like it'll be useful. And the "50 Best" articles were in a site called "CEoutlook, a "blog that scours the car audio/video/navigation industry for news each day". And when I went to the home-page, there were articles titled "Two Audiophile Car Audio Brands You May Have Missed","Elettromedia Partners With Crutchfield", "finalists for MECP Technician of the Year contest", and "Most Wanted Infotainment Brands". So this site might be a gold-mine.

Thanks again, [MENTION=5149]riceandpho[/MENTION]!

 

[riceandpho]

"Been there, done that." BUT...

...that was a great tip! His site has very little info, but I'll call him to ask about product-lines and show-able units. But more importantly, one of the ggl hits on him brought up a page about a list of "50 Best Installers" and "50 Best Retailers". And those pages list several other people in my region who were new to me.

"But wait, there's more!": those pages tipped me to an online industry mag called "Mobile Electronics magazine", which looks like it'll be useful. And the "50 Best" articles were in a site called "CEoutlook, a "blog that scours the car audio/video/navigation industry for news each day". And when I went to the home-page, there were articles titled "Two Audiophile Car Audio Brands You May Have Missed","Elettromedia Partners With Crutchfield", "finalists for MECP Technician of the Year contest", and "Most Wanted Infotainment Brands". So this site might be a gold-mine.

Thanks again, [MENTION=5149]riceandpho[/MENTION]!

my old setup was focal, decide to upgrade and treat myself again, so i try the hertz, lets say its another different sound, more smoother to my ears.
but they are good brands, i just run the higher end of things.

 

[nusrat]

I understand the struggle…

I'm glad to hear it's not just me.

...I don’t really go out of my way to shop for anything Tier 1 for car audio... It’s almost impossible to really unlock the potential...

And I haven't really been thinking about it in terms of "best in class". I just started out with a problem of, "I can't stand to listen to the way that soprano sounds on speaker 'xyz' in the store for even two minutes", and then asking advice of forum members, moving on to the next thing, broadening the search. At this point I'm really keeping my goal very limited, in my perspective: find a speaker that can play a soprano and not make me want to turn it off because of the distortion. I'm not even thinking about imaging, separation, low/high frequency capability, volume, etc. If the soprano sounds distorted on a speaker in the store, I'm not willing to risk trying that speaker in the 4Runner.

And I have to say, when I found a store (just one, so far) with professionally-presented Hertz & Focal & Audison & Pioneer, there was definitely a big improvement, although I was surprised that the soprano sounded best on the Pioneer. However, I still have to go back to hear the Focal again, because that one didn't have available inputs for playing the soprano.

...don’t over think it, buy decent stuff...

Thanks for your insights. I'm curious: what do you include in "Tier 1"? I don't even know yet what were the specific models of Hertz / Audison / Focal which I heard, but I know that those brands have models ranging from under $400 up to several thousand dollars per pair.

 

[riceandpho]

if dj can give you the hertz hsk 165 at a good price since its discontinued, i would try that one out. for focal, i would do flax series and above, the access is a good start, but when you get that itch that you should of went the better route.

also kenwood got that 7inch component set.
Kenwood Excelon KFC-XP184C


i only saw those on the youtube channel fivestarcarstereo
they are in florida, but the install is nice, the way they do the wires with the amp rack is so nice.

 

[nusrat]

Why shouldn't I use home-audio speakers?

(I mean, just the drivers and their x-overs, obviously, not mounted in their original enclosures.)
Home speakers, which are already set-up for listening tests in stores, would be much easier to find than a lot of the auto-specific speakers. And if I found a model with an acceptably-low level of distortion in vocal recordings, and if it were a sufficiently popular model, I could find some second-hand units and cannibalize their parts. If it were a 3-way, I might re-purpose only the tweeter and mid-range, and use the woofer right in it's original cabinet.

Is there some fundamental electrical incompatibility? The biggest one I anticipate would be that they might require much more power, since they were designed to project into a much larger space, and also because they're usually 8-ohm (occasionally 6-ohm). For similar reasons, they might need to be driven to home-typical volume in order to sound good. But I could test that by listening to the still-intact speaker inside my 4Runner.
I realize the speakers would sound different when moved to the 4runner, but I believe the mid-range and treble, if coupled very rigidly to a non-resonant mount, wouldn't manifest any distortion that wasn't already discernible when originally auditioned in the factory enclosure.

I'm aware that there are environmental conditions which mobile speakers are constructed to withstand. But I might be willing to replace the made-for-indoor drivers more often, depending on their cost.

 

[Whiskey & Wrenches]

I think trying to put home speakers in a car is going to be a great big headache and not get you where you want to be.

Home speakers run at a higher impedance than car speakers, which will create a higher load on your amplifier (if it's rated to run at 6 ohms or higher, some aren't and will overheat and clip).

Car speakers have cones and surrounds that are manufactured to withstand heat and vibrations not to mention they are engineered to work in smaller spaces.

As far as the midrange is concerned, you are also going to have to try and match the enclosure volume to the vehicle or it will not sound the same.

I think you'd be a lot better off working with car speakers, amps and using eq and crossovers as neccessary to tailor the sound to your vehicle.

Unless you sound deaden the hell out of your 4runner you will never hear the differences in sound on the road that you hear in a store.

 

[Bumbo]

I'm glad to hear it's not just me.
And I haven't really been thinking about it in terms of "best in class". I just started out with a problem of, "I can't stand to listen to the way that soprano sounds on speaker 'xyz' in the store for even two minutes", and then asking advice of forum members, moving on to the next thing, broadening the search. At this point I'm really keeping my goal very limited, in my perspective: find a speaker that can play a soprano and not make me want to turn it off because of the distortion. I'm not even thinking about imaging, separation, low/high frequency capability, volume, etc. If the soprano sounds distorted on a speaker in the store, I'm not willing to risk trying that speaker in the 4Runner.

And I have to say, when I found a store (just one, so far) with professionally-presented Hertz & Focal & Audison & Pioneer, there was definitely a big improvement, although I was surprised that the soprano sounded best on the Pioneer. However, I still have to go back to hear the Focal again, because that one didn't have available inputs for playing the soprano.

Thanks for your insights. I'm curious: what do you include in "Tier 1"? I don't even know yet what were the specific models of Hertz / Audison / Focal which I heard, but I know that those brands have models ranging from under $400 up to several thousand dollars per pair.

When I say Tier 1 I am excluding brands, but talking more on price points...

Spend $400, 500, 600, 700, $800 per pair of speakers... as you keep climbing the ladder you only start getting small incremental improvements for a lot more money. Law of diminishing returns and in the car audio game, I think its pretty significant.

My example was to highlight instead of spend 1k on a pair of speakers, spend $250-400, and spend the rest on other things that matter like amplification, EQ / PEQ, RTA mic, sound deadening, and the rest of the system where you might get more value.

As a guy who is writing this to you sitting in front of a pair of DynAudio studio monitors... I probably won't buy more than a $120-200 pair of Pioneer speakers in my 4Runner because for the money they sounds good to my ears and take my 80-90% of the way there without the price tag.

Doesn't matter what you are shipping for, bikes, speakers, tech, its that last 10-20% that cost an exponential amount more.

Most of my opinion stems from the truck not being an idea listening environment... my truck is also a bit noisy... roof rack (wind noise), mud terrains... i'm fighting an uphill battle on the audio front.

I also look at this as something I am willing to loose, either by accident or sale. I won't go though the trouble of removing it or insuring it. Also difficult to resell or move to a different truck. Once I install it, id consider it part of the truck.