How good is the sound in cars really?

[DanielT]

That is an "advantage": A dear friend totally enjoyed constructing wood 'stuff' but he was not a "detail" person.
And that is why I used to sucker him into few of my DIY car Sub projects. He'd build fugly but BSH stuff:
Functionality over Aesthetics or pure "Form Fits Function" kinda buddy.
My thinking was that you really DO want unattractive customs builds; so as prevent someone lusting after what they see inside the cabin.

He he

That sounds reasonable. I've never had a car stereo that thieves have longed for but I understand those who have.

Those JBLs I will have in a subwoofer for home HiFin, a test. Sub with outward facing motor then to sit on the couch and watch a JBL engine ass. I do not know if it appeals to me so much. Can always place it in some other way, put over a piece of fabric or what do I know.

But the taste is like the ass. It is split, so one may be annoyed at what home HiFi looks like, another is not.

 

[sigbergaudio]

I believe your understanding is flawed. The received wisdom is not "car stereo will reveal most minute shortcomings" but, rather, "car stereo, cheap earbuds, and bluetooth speakers are how most people listen to music, so we better check our work on those."

This.

 

[pseudoid]

But let me insist; have you ever heard of such a thing? Did it reach you in any form? And I stress; before DSP. Did anyone here ever heard of the idea that the car stereo will reveal most minute shortcomings of your music?

Trolling or genuine: No matter.
Trying to look at your posit in an objective... [errrr....] perspective, I would venture to state that within the car environment, you are basically utilizing various other sources of 'noise' (aka cabin-injected sounds: via wind, tire, suspension, etc.) to cancel out many of the musical content you are trying to brew w/i the cabin.
I would venture to guess that such possible cancellations may actually make the cabin a 'bandpass' filter by cutting out more of the lower AND the higher octaves, rather than the mid-frequencies.
Maybe such cancellations can help you/me/Adam to evaluate whether the voices are particularly still punching thru environmental noise-clutter.
Cheers!

 

[Kevbaz]

I had friends when I was at University over 20 years ago that competed in car audio competitions. Both high SPL class and reference class. Both their systems sounded fantastic, admittedly I was drawn to the high SPL systems
It was funny seeing them using cheater amps with low power ratings, but driving them on very low impedance loads (subs in parallel) to increase amp output.

 

[pseudoid]

It was funny

...to hear some of these creations that would rattle a whole bunch of different ways when you were outside of those old SPL competion wars.

But nowadays, OBDII would barf you out an error code, because car audio is no longer an easy-swap dealio.
That is not just limited to the fact that the steering wheel audio controls, or that the antenna feed is different, or the cheezy OEM amps are just plain weird things that are hidden in weird places. Now you have to contend with that 2-DIN space has been promoted to handle many more tasks than just audio. Argh... that hobby is a gonner pretty much.

 

[Kevbaz]

...to hear some of these creations that would rattle a whole bunch of different ways when you were outside of those old SPL competion wars.

But nowadays, OBDII would barf you out an error code, because car audio is no longer an easy-swap dealio.
That is not just limited to the fact that the steering wheel audio controls, or that the antenna feed is different, or the cheezy OEM amps are just plain weird things that are hidden in weird places. Now you have to contend with that 2-DIN space has been promoted to handle many more tasks than just audio. Argh... that hobby is a gonner pretty much.

Agreed my last car audio was in a mini clubman, not worth the risk hacking away at a modern car

 

[Head_Unit]

ALL seats in a car.

Who gives a $%^&-it's ME driving the vehicle, I do not give a damn about my passengers at all. Because really, when do your passengers care about the minutiae of imaging or whatever? Never. If you have passengers, music is background except maybe some rare occasions when you want to crank something, in which case volume is the think.

I'm not attacking your post let me be clear. It just set me off because I once asked BMWs head of sound why "the ultimate driving machine" wouldn't optimize the sound for the DRIVER. His answer was it's more of a challenge to optimize it for all-but as pointed out that's inevitably a compromise. The attitude behind the answer, and some other discussion in the meeting, did explain to me why ever BMW I've ever listened to-dozens, since I used to test drive-sounded at best mediocre and usually like total thin crap. (Mercedes by contrast were always pleasant; Honda/Acura generally also decent).

 

[lewdish]

I often times dont understand a lot of the nuances of car audio, a lot of it sounds like really subjective stuff and doesnt seem like theres been a lot done to define the objectivity of the automotive cabin space. My understanding is that give the lack of power coming from 12V they need to make everything as efficient as possible but if you ask me audio components today are plenty efficient~ I've never been in any car that I think sounds particularly "good", but ive been in cars that sound "good" for a car but not like great by any stretch. Subjectively speaking I havent heard any car audio systems that have any real "fidelity, staging, or imaging" either.

Allegedly Tesla's have a pretty good in car audio systems but sitting in my friends Tesla it really sounds pretty average, most aftermarket builds ive heard also all use cheapo stuff from like bestbuy or something installed and dont really sound great either~ I'd like to hear how the Dirac Automotive cabin correction sounds on cars like Volvo, I think theres potential but I havent seen anyone publish significant hard data on what makes a good in car audio, esp in regards to like the Spatial audio age.

The placement of car audio speakers: Speakers tend to be placed really low and not aimed at ears, I imagine most folks don't care about dispersion or directivity either in this market (which is strange imo given all the speakers arent in ideal locations and people are all sitting in non ideal places). You also see OEMs w/ like 10-20 speakers, i'd imagine it also creates a really cluttered audio presentation.

Theres also the thing w/ subs: I get why you'd want a sub in a car, but it doesn't make sense to put in a high output sub thats louder than every other speaker in the car.
Technically speaking you're in a pressurized cabin of maybe no more than 300 cubic ft, which is a very small room meaning that bass output should be pretty consistent and loud already.

 

[pseudoid]

His answer was it's more of a challenge to optimize it for all-but as pointed out that's inevitably a compromise.

Let us look at it it from the point of BOTH the speakers AND the listener; like it was the prophet/mountain duality about who comes to whom...
Except that it just don't work that way.
Let me try to explain from a simpler perspective: you have two (speakers) and I guess you only have two ears (=one person's head).
(Later we can expand/extend the discussion to multi-speaker and multi heads/listeners...)
If we agree that the accurate stereo imaging is a product of (ignore boundary effects for the moment) relative position of BOTH speakers from the "head" (both left-to-right but not complicate with effects of front-to-rear distances between speakers and head).
Since -- in the case of the confines of an vehicle -- you cannot really change the fact that the head (=driver) is always way off center (left-to-right) and much much more near one of the speakers (or the other, that is country dependent).
In this case, neither the prophet (=head) nor the mountain (car speakers) are moveable objects, hence talking about "imaging" inside a vehicle becomes a dubious conversation.
Doesn't mean people will not swoon over 24 speakers that are crammed into a miniscule volume and say it is the "best sound" they've ever heard!
Who am I to argue.