also, to the OP- don't take your car to best buy- especially if you are going to have a complete install done. most of what best buy sells is junk anyway.

 

I must say Glyn knows his audio. I find it difficult to source good product in Hollywood. How he does it on the southern tip of Gods first attempt at civilization is commendable.

Class D amps. A wonderful way for manufacturer's to save money. In order to use cheap transistors as amplifiers, you cannot let them operate in a linear mode. They must be operated as switches. To do this a comparator mixes the audio signal with an ultrasonic triangle wave. After amplification, a filter removes the ultrasonic component and sends the music to the speakers. This is like taking water, adding Kool-Aid, sending it through a pump, then removing the Kool-Aid before you drink the water. It tastes like water but it still makes your tongue purple.

For best car audio? Hire Jule Kilcher (Jewel) to sit on your lap and sing.

 

Yes Moviela - Damn switching amplifiers - incorrectly termed "digital" amplifiers by the car audio fraternity are indeed crap. If you look inside half of these things & low end AVRs etc they are using integrated STK's - How cheap & nasty can you get. Velodyne uses class D STK's in their subs - that's where they belong. Nothing wrong with Velodyne - they are great - especially servo models.

We are indeed lucky in South Africa - All the major high end audio brands are well represented here. This market is audio mad. When Arnie Nudell started Infinity all those years back, long before Dr Sidney Harman got his fingers on the brand - He sold more Infinity IRS (International Reference Standard) speaker systems to South Africa than any other market. At that time the most expensive speaker system in the world. Gale Sanders of Martin Logan was equally amazed in recent times at the number of ML Statements that were sold here. My dear friend Heinz Zaczek - owner of Absolute Sound South Africa, that died a year back, was the importer of all these brands along with Thorens, Clearaudio, Rowland Research, Magneplanar, Audio Research, Vienna Acoustics, Bryston, Pass, Theta, Audioquest etc ad infinitum. In the old days of the company he brought in products like GAS (remember Great American Sound in the heyday of the high end), Theshold (Nelson Pass), Genuine & original Mark Levinson (before the Madrigal days) Original Nakamichi etc. Norman Foglar of Foglar Sound was Mr B&W South Africa & I had the pleasure of meeting the late John Bowers & Dr Remy Thorens & other icons of the industry. My favourite person is still Jim Winey of Magneplanar, what a wonderful & modest man - not consigned to a wheelchair in those days - that happened after his dreadful fall.

Dickie & Truntz of B&W ended up living in South Africa. Dickie - who designed the Nautilus now has his own plant here producing "Vivid" loudspeakers. I have a set on test at present - I listen to these things & say to myself "this can't be made in South Africa" they are so good - but I guess why not!

Audio was my hobby outside the oil industry - I was a sleeping director on the board of "Absolute Sound" for many, many years. Salary 1 Rand a year. Only once in my life did I really believe I could afford to own an exotic motor car - always wanted an Aston Martin - but audio won the day.

Much as I love Audio Research electronics - Even their Class D multichannel amp sucks & they know it.

Jule Kilcher She can sit on my lap

 

lol whats up with the life story here...

 

If you listen closely, you can almost hear "Glory Days" by Springsteen in the background. Depending on the quality of your amps, of course.

 

you can have the most esoteric name brands in your car and still have so so audio without proper tuning. i think it goes something like 30% gear, 30% placement and 40% tuning.

 

40% tuning what in a ****ty car with awful acoustics? More likely 80% get lucky with a car that's not as bad as most.

 

The third oboe is a little brash

 

Ah! Mav - At least you have decent subs.

 

given the extreme harshness of the environment, there has to be a point where one is satisfied unless money is of no object. but then again the title of this thread is the best speaker set up possible.

glyn,

didn't the crx have really good acoustics? i thought having a coupe will be at least be some what close.

 

the whine of the super charger or the screech from the turbo's, at least imho :-)

That said searching for a good auto sound system is a never ending task as the environment always dominates. IE too much background noise and not enough space for decent speaker enclosures.

Accordingly I've set my auto audio quality level acceptance threshold pretty low - as for the home theatre, fairly pleased with Windows 7 MCE + Polk RMDS-1 + 45" Sharp LCD.

 

Never having measured one I really don't know but timdf pretty much has it right. The noise levels alone in a CRX pretty much kill any chance of reasonable acoustics. Cars are a hostile environment for audio so don't expect too much & don't waste too much money. It really is not worth it. One of the worst things you can do is fit poor subs that achieve monotone booming bass that saturates the car's interior & resonates like hell. It's like putting a cathedral pipe organ in a ****house, outhouse, crapper whatever.

 

Mine's set up for autox, so you're right about the noise, but ones that have been properly dampened are pretty decent sounding boards. Of course, then you ruin the best part about a crx with additional weight.

That reminds me - I have to get mine ready for the CRX Niagra Falls meet in two weeks; 250-300 CRXes in one locale is a pretty impressive sight.

 

Niagra is indeed impessive - Like it from the Canadian side. That is a hell of a lot of CRX's - how does your CRX handle with that short wheelbase?

We must get you to Victoria Falls - now thats really impressive !!!!!

 

Yes, the Canuck side is much nicer than the US side, for many reasons. It's worth it just to use the terms looney and tooney.

F'in a you're right about Victoria Falls - want to do a combo safari/Falls trip at some point - figure what, 3 weeks would be enough? I almost applied to the Wit when I was looking at grad school years ago; would have been interesting.

CRXes are squat, tight little cornerers - pretty decent for a tight autox event, not so good on a track where the lack of torque is embarrassing.

 

3 weeks would be fine & it's super cheap since Mugabe has ruined the country. BTW I've been to Niagra from the US side & done "maid of the mist" & all that but I've got old school friends living in Burlington - just up the road on the way to Toronto that I stay with from time to time.

 

Hi there!
Very little, if all, any ideas... Has anybody done any upgrades to this model
I know this is not the easyest car to make any modifications, specially if You have bose or HK soundsystem like I have. Is this wrong topic to search pictures/ideas of any instals?

thanks