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I don't know of a 4" woofer in existence (stock size up front) that will give you good bass in an infinite baffle enclosure - ie a HUGE box that is the 9000 dash. Even if it had a box, a 4" woofer will have very high resonance frequency of 80-150 Hz, below which all bass rolls off rapidly, no to mention there isn't enough cone area or excursion to produce much sound pressure below 100 Hz. Now that's settled... Several options come to mind. You could cut into the doors, possibly fitting up to 6.5" speakers, which would dramatically improve bass up front. You could put a front subwoofer somewhere, perhaps under the front seats or even in the glovebox, possibly in the center console firing to the side. It's just how adventurous you want to get, essentially.
As for $300 vs $500 deck, that depends on which two you are comparing. Within the same manufacturer, say for instance Alpine, the difference is going to be not much in terms of overall performance, if any. Features are what raise the price, although some manufacturers, particularly Alpine, tend to still have 'flagship' decks that cost $600+ which ARE usually a step above in performance and features. Not worth it in my opinion, unless you get a killer discount through Ebay or demo model or something like that. $300 I think is a really nice price point for car CD players these days, you get a lot for the money, and typically spending $200 more dollars is not going to get you better sound, just more features.
As for the 300w RMS (Kyle was referring to the subwoofer), that's not quite true. It depends how much bass you want. I had 300w RMS (RMS means continuous power, by the way) going to my subwoofer for a few years. It was loud, it had plenty of reserve power, it was WAY more than I needed. My car was measured at 137 dB at one of our company's SPL competitions. The threshhold of pain is about 130 dB. I have since downgraded to 100w RMS, which is still at least 130 dB and plenty to make you go deaf. Now I understand that more power gives you better dynamic range, less chance for compression of the signal, less distortion when you max out the volume, yada yada. The reality is that bass in an automobile is significantly boosted in the bottom two octaves, as much as 20 dB at the lowest frequency, 20 Hz. This is the equivalent of giving your subwoofer 20 times more power (assuming it could take that much more), and it's free!
This is why you don't need two 12" or two 15" or an 18" woofer to get decent bass in a car. Heck, even one 8" or 10" can be pretty damn loud.
As for the 24 bit converters, I disagree with Kyle on this point. I don't agree that they are necessary, and frankly I was a little put off by his calling me a liar in his earlier post, which is why I didn't reply. This is an automotive environment, and I don't even consider my hearing good enough to tell the difference between 16 bit and 24 bit in a controlled home environment. So, I'm definitely not going to tell them apart while I am driving down the road at 70 mph with all the wind and road noise. Oh, to address your question, a D/A converter is a digital to analog converter. Music on a CD is in digital form - just a vast sequence of 1's and 0's. In order to reproduce it by your speakers, it needs to be converted to analog form, similar to what you would get off a cassette or LP.
If you can hear the difference between 16-bit or 24-bit or 1-bit D/A converters, more power to you! I certainly wouldn't rule out a unit because it had one kind of the other, however.
Aaron Gilbert
1987 9000T 282k miles
posted by 205.215.216...
, Mon, 14 Oct 2002 13:42:30
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