THE HOW TO CAR STERIO PAGE
UNDER CONSTRUCTION

now keep in mind that i am not a car sterio professional, i am however a home theater professional, with college to back it up. i am also now going to school for electrical.

WHY A SHITTY AMP WILL BLOW YOUR SPEAKERS
allot of people throw a sterio together (home or car) and insist on running it as loud as it will possibly go and of course they blow they're speakers. so they'll go out and get bigger and better ones. then they blow those also and say wow that 100watts amp blew my 500watts speakers, it must be pretty good. wrong!!! why the amp blew your speakers is because of signal clip. Signal clip occurs when you push an amp to the point were it can no longer push out the signal that is being fed to it. when sound is sent to the speakers it is sent as an electrical sin wave which is nice and round but a cliped sin wave has sharp sqare corners. so its like driving your car directly into a curb instead of over a speed bumb

you should always match your speakers to your amp, if you want it loud and clear so it wont blow your speakers then its going to cost more $$$. you should always strive for clarity, and not push your system to the point of distortion. A good way to listen for distortion i find is outside of the car with the windows down. another way to limit distortion is to turn on the high pass filters, if your sub is crossed over at lets say 90Hz then there is no reason for your interior speakers to push those frequencies.

HOW TO WIRE IT UP
when your running power to your amps you cant just go off the cars power system it wasn't meant for that kind of power draw. so the first thing you have to do is run a wire from the battery to the amplifiers. now you cant just run any kind of wire, it has to be the right guage. so to find out what you need, you need the power draw and the length of the wire. the reason for this is because voltage is droped through the wire because of its resistance (measured in ohms)the smaller the guage (bigger the wire) the less resistance you have. i have 8awg to power 700watts it is 17 feet long (yeah i drive a boat) if i had 200 more watts i would have to go to 4awg or run two 8awg wires

so now that you've picked out your wire its time to run it through the car. when running the wire through the engine compartment always use split looming. it protects the wire from rubing through the insulation, makes it look cleaner and proffesional, protects it from engine fluids and stuff. if possible use gold plated ring terminals to connect to the battery, they resist corrosion and conduct better. whatever you do dont run the wire around your door jam, find a hole in the fire wall that has no moving parts (mine goes in with all the dash wires) or make your own hole. make sure that there are no sharp edges to cut through the insulation. heres the important part use a fuse in the engine compartment not doing so is a gamble because without a fuse if the wire makes contact with the frame it will get really hot and all you can do is stand there and watch your car burn to the ground. the fuse should be as close to the battery as possible, try to run all wire before the fuse around non-flamable material. now that the wire is in the passanger compartment run it under kick plates, the carpet, anywhere convinient really. make sure it doesn't interfer with any pedals or moving parts, and when putting your car back together dont drive the screws through the wire.
Always use good signal wire, you would not belive the difference in clearity from wire to wire, so get something with a foil sheild and good quality connectors, its also good to run it down the middle of the car if you can.

placing your amplifiers
the possition of the amplifier is really up to personal preference, they can go in the trunk, under seats, on the floor(as long as you wont be stepping there) really anywhere were its going to get enough air to be kept cool and where it can get power routed to it. if you drive a very small car you might not be able to put the amps under the seats because too much heat will build up. its also not a good idea to mount them directly onto steel, it can create ground problems.

THIS TEXT TAKEN FROM KEEP HOPE ALIVES PAGE, LINK IN MY FRIENDS LIST
SECURITY
you need it, thieves are dicks. i have never had my equipment stolen. alarms are important. but so is the install. put it in such that it is hard to get out unless you built it. Your security is your own business, keep it that way. Tell no one.

SPEAKERS
Two things have the largest bearing on how a speaker will sound:
1. Enclosure
2. Crossover

A speaker is nothing without an enclosure. Don't believe me, turn one on without one. And please be smart enough to realize that a good enclosure will make all the difference. And because a true single full range driver is unattainable at high volumes, we are forced to use multiple driver setups to achieve our goal. And each driver has a specific job, or range of frequencies that it must faithfully reproduce. A crossover can be very simple (6 dB/octave) or very complex (48 dB/octave). The steeper the slope, the closer to ideal. The major downfall to coaxial speakers is the use of a single capacitor in series with the tweeter. Nothing more. The woofer operates full range, and the crossover point needs to be higher than usual due to the gradual drop off provided by the -6 dB slope. Because there is no low pass for the woofer, both drivers will try to reproduce the same frequencies, with very different results. This takes place right in the crucial vocal range. Which is why most coaxial speakers sound poor. And if we have a 3-way speaker, we have two very poor crossover points in the vocal range, not to mention the low quality of the drivers themselves. And then lets distort the size of the woofer cone by stretching it, making it an ellipse. And finally let’s place the two poor mid and high drivers in the way of the stretched woofer to create reflections. And what do you have? A 6x9, or 4x6, or 5x7, or 4x10, or 6x8. A component set allows for the user have more control over the drivers. The quality of the crossover is usually dictated by the price of the set, or vice versa. Take a look at any competition car in IASCA. do you see any 6x9's in any winning cars? HELL NO!! I cannot understand why people insist on putting these pieces of crap in their cars, or even worse, they think that they are cool cuz of it!! God save us all!! My opinions are based on 8 years of experience. I have owned all types of 6x9 speakers from nappy $20 pioneer by-nines with a wizzer cone, to $280 kicker component 6x9's, and i learned that they all suck ass!!! I will never, ever waste my money and hurt my ears like that again. And my recent purchase helped remind me why i stopped buying coaxial speakers 5 years ago. So do yourself, your ears, and for God's sake, your friends ears a favor, and quit buying these evil contraptions, they only exist because automotive manufacturers are ignorant. How many elliptical speakers to you see in home audio?

SUBWOOFERS
i think that subwoofers are crucial in providing the complete aural sensation that is car audio. Bass is quite amazing, and clean 140dB bass sounds great. But it only makes up 1% of what you can hear. so please, give it 1% of your attention. Instead give acoustics the extra money. Cars are as great as they are crappy for sound. Windows and flimsy sheet metal are not common in speaker enclosures in your home. If you want more bass, sound-deaden your trunk!!! Gain does not mean Volume!!! I have NEVER blown a sub! I have owened dozens from 10" to 18" I bought 4 - 12" Hollywood subs in 1996. I sold two and am still using the other today. They were nothing special (JL-W4 identicals), but i ran those four real hard , but completely clean, for about 4 years. Subs are blown by people that are either ignorant or mistaken. Mistakes can happen, but if it is a mistake, you know it instantly (i did blow a tweeter by mistakenly swapping the mid/high output of a crossover. one second later, poof). Most people are ignorant. The problem is that a lot of people confuse distortion with loud volumes. Just because it is loud, doesn't mean it has to sound bad. This evades some people. I was taught about distortion pretty young(my father never blew speakers either. by the way dad, thanks for the Marantz Model 300dc), Distortion is bad, very bad. And subs usually blow from clipping (which is NOT dc current).
Anyway, i do understand why some prefer to put subs in their vehicle first, but make sure you address the other 99% soon after. It costs a lot of money to be musical, loud AND sound good enough for a competition judge to not laugh or shake their head. And by a lot i mean >$5,000.