Car Audio - Starting with Sound Advice

Figure 1-2: A wild system looks great but can leave you with no trunk space.

Upgrade your factory-installed system
If you really want to stay on the mild end of the scale and keep from altering your car too much — as well as protect against theft — you can keep the factory radio and add components such as amplifiers and subwoofers. Inversely, you could always change out your factory radio and keep your factory speakers intact.

I did this in one of my own vehicles, a 1997 VW Eurovan Camper that’s a family mobile. After talking it over with my installer, we decided I could get the sort of performance I needed in the vehicle (after all, my wife mostly drives it, and I can’t really crank it up with the kids around) just by swapping out the radio. This also gave me the option to add satellite radio and an auxiliary input that allowed me to easily jack in an iPod. And I could always decide to upgrade the speakers and add an outboard amplifier later.

There are several options for upgrading your factory audio system. You should consider these first if you’re primarily looking for better sound. The easiest and least expensive path to better sound is to swap the factory speakers for higher quality aftermarket ones. Many car audio manufacturers offer drop-in speakers that are specifically designed to fit factory provisions in a vehicle with a minimal amount of hassle and little to no modification. Often it’s just a matter of taking out the factory speakers and dropping in new ones.
This approach generally offers the most bang for your buck because many stock car audio systems use cheap and poor performing speakers, and even inexpensive aftermarket speakers can offer a dramatic difference in sound quality.