My Car Radio Is Louder Than Yours

The credit crisis KILLED the rim industry and the after market audio industry. Both of them are ailing now - not to mention auto makers are putting better quality audio and wheels on their cars now. Best ghetto blaster you can simply add to a car is an amplified KICKER L7. If you have the space: 2 Kicker L7's. works best in an SUV cause the cabin magnifies the sound.

With the introduction of integrated audio and climate systems this little hobby's days are numbered. There are a few aftermarket radio adapters which allow DIN chassis to be installed but for most cars this is not an option. Speakers and Amps can still be replaced. I've built a number of complicated, expensive, and very loud systems for people, myself included. To each his own as to the practicality of it.

Turn that crap down and get off my lawn about sums it up.

I've never cared for truly loud audio, ie, a system that's capable of doing over 50-100W max peak as it's often not necessary in most situations. That said, if in an especially noisy car, then a bit more power to handle what you are listening to, especially if its bass heavy techno, then more power will allow your system to handle the extra heavy bass, which uses much more power than most mid or treble frequencies, as too little power at high volumes will create distortion within the amp, and the speakers may not be able to properly reproduce those frequencies accurately. That said, most aftermarket systems built in recent years do fine with 18-20W, to as much as 25W nominal, 50W max through all 4 speakers and do so cleanly. That's all I have in my setup, as far as I know as I have a JVC head unit I bought back in May to replace an older aftermarket Alpine HU that replaced the factory HU before I even bought the car, but still retained its factory speakers. The HU is I think 20W nominal, 50W max x4. I have satellite tweeters in the sail panels up front, mated to 6x8 full range ovals in the doors and I think 6.5, though some sources say, 5.25" full range rounds in the rear doors, and a small, spare tire mounted Pioneer sub, with port base tube) for the low frequencies and it sounds fantastic. It's clean, provides decent bass oomph, especially if the bass recorded is deep, and rich, such as the Stax track, Time is Tight by Booker T and the MG's, from the late 60's at moderately loud volume, and it remains pretty clean with little resonant buzzing going on. And it's loud enough to overcome the noisy environment in my car when on a noisy freeway surface at speed. With DSP, I have great imaging, as can be produced in an automobile that is and when just sitting there listening, lots of detail is present and no, I don't compress my music within an inch of its life. Yes, it's MP3, but at 320mbs compression via a thumb drive, and yes, the music sounds a bit dynamically compressed, it still sounds quite good.