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Comment by Cruncharoo | Hacker News Reader

Disagree slightly with audio quality for cars. I recently got a car with "good" speakers and the difference from regular car speakers is striking. Although I'm sure that the curve quickly flattens on spending more to get more quality, going above the base car speaker level has been awesome for me.

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I think the point is that when you're driving (at least in a combustion engine car), the 60-70dB noise floor is so high that it almost doesn't matter how good the speakers are in an ideal silent, soundproof chamber.

I recommend ripping your car apart and putting sound insulation panels everywhere you can! Also replacing your sound system...

Or you can just embrace the 128kbps lifestyle. :D

There's only so much you can do. A car is filled with funny angles, plastics, and a lot of glass. It's never going to be a particularly good acoustic environment even if you manage to shield 100% of the road noise.

You can make it so much better than stock with proper insulation and speaker elements. Car manufacturers often use 5€$ elements which sound like shit.

You can't have a proper soundstage in a car no matter your setup, which kinda degrades a lot of music that wasn't designed for clubs. In a car it's basically background music when you're driving because you can't really give the music your full attention anyway (passive listening), where the lack of focus also masks a lot of details you'd hear on a proper stereo system (active listening).

Edit: to answer your question below, I like both, active and passive listening. But I wouldn't try to optimize for active criteria like details in a passive evironment like a car, so I'd spend more money on fun things like buttkickers instead of high end detail.

Obviously a car isn't a dedicated listening room. Music can be enjoyed by just listening to it and not focusing on all the nuances. Or are you one of those hardcore audiophiles who can't listen to music without a ultra high end sound system?

Also soundstage can be greatly improved by placing speakers on non factory locations because manufacturers usually prioritize packaging above all else. A tweeter placed at the bottom of the A-pillar near the windshield is the worst possible location and sounds like it was put in a tin can.

Background noise in a car also has a solution, turning up the volume. Plus getting quiet tires.

> Or are you one of those hardcore audiophiles who can't listen to music without a ultra high end sound system?

Music lovers buy stereo systems to listen to their music.

Audiophiles buy music to listen to their stereo systems.

Sure is for bass. It's a sealed box that you're in, with shapes that stop anything from acting like a simple room shape, and surfaces that can soak up highs, and so small that this absorption is a huge percentage of surface area.

There's a reason mix engineers have always done 'check the mix in a car'. It might be way more revealing of what's happening in the bass, even when the speakers are relatively weak. Once you get anything decent, watch out. It's a bit like having your whole body inside headphones.

That's the point, isn't it? You'd have to spend a lot of money on related stuff before audio upgrades, otherwise those audio upgrades are just money wasted.

> I recommend ripping your car apart and putting sound insulation panels everywhere you can! Also replacing your sound system...

Ripping the car apart to install sound insulation might void your warranty.

I have a Bose sound system in my car with 11 or 13 speakers (they're everywhere), but the car is so poorly insulated that I have to turn up the volume quite a lot at highway speeds, or even after about ~ 35-40MPH.

> Ripping the car apart to install sound insulation might void your warranty.

On my Toyota it only involved basic removal of interior panels, I can't imagine that affecting warranty or resale

What other effects does that have? Weight, heat, etc.

Car's have it really tough in the audio department. SO many things work against it

You also need microphones to pick up ambient sound and play it back at 180 phase shift ..

There is a reason premium audio car packages cost over 2000$

I believe the disconnect is that the goal isn't to be as good quality as a controlled indoor environment; it's that there are car setups that sound dramatically better than other car setups. There is merit to your interlocutors stances, even though cars are a challenging audio environment as you point out.

Is it that high? I know that in my Audis, there's actually a system that (in sport mode) pumps engine noise -into- the cabin because the sound damping was that good. And my partner's A4 is at the point where you hear only tire noise, not engine noise.

And I used to own a Jaguar XJ that (while the car itself I had to get rid of after the entire cooling system shit the bed for the second time) was the quietest car I've ever owned and not even close, despite being a 5L V8. (The Jaguar also had probably the best sound system I've heard in a vehicle - 1200W B&W 7.1 channel, 20 transducers).

In cars it’s also important how good it isolates you from the engine and external noise like wind and wheels on the road. Some cars even have noise cancellation for that.

Some cars have gone so far on the isolation and sound damping front that they pipe back in a little bit of engine noise (but only the part that sounds sporty) via the speakers.

Some cars isolate the noise with speakers in the head rest so everyone gets a optimal level of isolation.

Its interesting though because I have a car with excellent speakers and I am extremely glad that I can plug my phone into my car and play music through the Lightning port, it sounds drastically different between that and playing it through the Bluetooth connection.

I am looking to purchase a new car and through test driving it has a better sound system on paper with more speakers and a subwoofer and the sound is limited by the performance of the Bluetooth connection.

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