Kimberly Lazarski
Active Member
I've been reading pretty much every thread I can make the time to read and there are a few things I'd like to clarify:
Also, I saw BOSE mentioned in here and questions about how GM's systems sound: zr1.net members were always fond of saying "No highs, no lows, must be BOSE." Those GM systems sound like utter crap, with the only reason for keeping it being that the system coordinates nice in the interior. The drivers in the speaker enclosures were crap, the amps built into the speaker enclosures were crap and prone to repeated failures, and the sound quality was total crap. When I see the BOSE name in a car I do not expect much, and I am therefore never disappointed. I do expect more from HK, B&O, etc. and for a factory system the Stinger sounded pretty OK, but doesn't compare to even to a $3,000 aftermarket system.
Also, don't waste big money on monster cable or any other boutique brands; they don't improve your sound. Just get some shielded monoprice interconnects, and spring for monoprice OFC speaker cable because it tends to be more flexible but don't expect the sound to be any better than zip cord, and be done with it and put the money you saved toward an EVC exhaust or other go-fast items.
My first business was doing custom car audio and alarm systems... until I got tired of dealing with teenagers.
- Speaker drivers are broken in, in mere seconds at anything at or above moderate volume. The idea of a speaker's taking weeks to break in is nonsense and attributable to the placebo effect (you expect it to sound better with time, so it does). Want to break it in quickly? queue up some metal and crank it up for a few seconds. Bang. Done. It's broken in as soon as the spider (the stiff bit that dampens and limits the voicecoil's movement and keeps it centered around the magnet) flexes a few times and the ferrofluid is dispersed. It only degrades from that point forward in time.
- Impedance cannot measured with an ohmmeter; impedance is a measure of a combination of resistance and reactance, and varies with frequency. A 4 ohm driver may or may not measure 4 ohms with an ohmmeter. It will not present 4 ohms at every freqeuency, but if you average impedance at different frequencies throughout a driver's rated frequency response range, it will average 4 ohms. Some frequencies may have 2 ohms impedance, and other frequencies may have 6 ohms impedance, for the same driver
- The sound system can sound only as good as the worst-quality component. The head unit + amp are the weakest link here since the Stinger's head unit doesn't seem to put out a standard S/PDIF signal but a proprietary superset so you need to tap through the proprietary amplifier made components where the final selection was by beancounters rather than engineers
Also, I saw BOSE mentioned in here and questions about how GM's systems sound: zr1.net members were always fond of saying "No highs, no lows, must be BOSE." Those GM systems sound like utter crap, with the only reason for keeping it being that the system coordinates nice in the interior. The drivers in the speaker enclosures were crap, the amps built into the speaker enclosures were crap and prone to repeated failures, and the sound quality was total crap. When I see the BOSE name in a car I do not expect much, and I am therefore never disappointed. I do expect more from HK, B&O, etc. and for a factory system the Stinger sounded pretty OK, but doesn't compare to even to a $3,000 aftermarket system.
Also, don't waste big money on monster cable or any other boutique brands; they don't improve your sound. Just get some shielded monoprice interconnects, and spring for monoprice OFC speaker cable because it tends to be more flexible but don't expect the sound to be any better than zip cord, and be done with it and put the money you saved toward an EVC exhaust or other go-fast items.

My first business was doing custom car audio and alarm systems... until I got tired of dealing with teenagers.
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