Tips for Upgrading your factory-installed car audio system
If you really want to stay on the mild end of the scale and keep from altering your car too much — as well as protect against theft — you can keep the factory radio and add components such as amplifiers and subwoofers. Inversely, you could always change out your factory radio and keep your factory speakers intact.
I did this in one of my own vehicles, a 1997 VW Eurovan Camper that's a family-mobile. After talking it over with my installer, we decided I could get the sort of performance I needed in the vehicle (after all, my wife mostly drives it, and I can't really crank it up with the kids around) just by swapping out the radio. This also gave me the option to add satellite radio and an auxiliary input that allowed me to easily jack in an iPod. And I could always decide to upgrade the speakers and add an outboard amplifier later.
There are several options for upgrading your factory audio system. You should consider these first if you're primarily looking for better sound. The easiest and least expensive path to better sound is to swap the factory speakers for higher quality aftermarket ones. Many car audio manufacturers offer drop-in speakers that are specifically designed to fit factory provisions in a vehicle with a minimal amount of hassle and little to no modification. Often it's just a matter of taking out the factory speakers and dropping in new ones. This approach generally offers the most bang for your buck because many stock car audio systems use cheap and poor performing speakers, and even inexpensive aftermarket speakers can offer a dramatic difference in sound quality
When most people think of a car stereo, they think of the thing in the dash with buttons and a display. But such head units are just part of the system, although a major part. They generate an audio signal, let you select among various music formats, show what's playing, allow you to crank the volume, and sometimes include some signal processing functions, such as equalization, which tweaks the sound to better suit the car's interior space.
Then they send a signal on to the speakers in a system and sometimes to amplifiers in between to boost the signal. Truth is, many modern stock head units do this quite well, and they are getting harder and harder to extract from the dash. Some are oddly shaped or control other functions of the car, such as climate controls. So it isn't always practical — or even necessary — to replace the radio in some vehicles.
I did this in one of my own vehicles, a 1997 VW Eurovan Camper that's a family-mobile. After talking it over with my installer, we decided I could get the sort of performance I needed in the vehicle (after all, my wife mostly drives it, and I can't really crank it up with the kids around) just by swapping out the radio. This also gave me the option to add satellite radio and an auxiliary input that allowed me to easily jack in an iPod. And I could always decide to upgrade the speakers and add an outboard amplifier later.
There are several options for upgrading your factory audio system. You should consider these first if you're primarily looking for better sound. The easiest and least expensive path to better sound is to swap the factory speakers for higher quality aftermarket ones. Many car audio manufacturers offer drop-in speakers that are specifically designed to fit factory provisions in a vehicle with a minimal amount of hassle and little to no modification. Often it's just a matter of taking out the factory speakers and dropping in new ones. This approach generally offers the most bang for your buck because many stock car audio systems use cheap and poor performing speakers, and even inexpensive aftermarket speakers can offer a dramatic difference in sound quality
When most people think of a car stereo, they think of the thing in the dash with buttons and a display. But such head units are just part of the system, although a major part. They generate an audio signal, let you select among various music formats, show what's playing, allow you to crank the volume, and sometimes include some signal processing functions, such as equalization, which tweaks the sound to better suit the car's interior space.
Then they send a signal on to the speakers in a system and sometimes to amplifiers in between to boost the signal. Truth is, many modern stock head units do this quite well, and they are getting harder and harder to extract from the dash. Some are oddly shaped or control other functions of the car, such as climate controls. So it isn't always practical — or even necessary — to replace the radio in some vehicles.
