A quick in-car entertainment guide on turning your car into a mobile disco or boom box. Music is life as we used to say, and the car player will always be on unless it’s broken. Now you have landed on the right page as we are about to reveal how to upgrade your car sound system in just 4 simple steps.
Just make sure don’t get your neighbours annoyed with really loud sounds on the weekends. Listening to very loud music while driving is dangerous too, so bear in mind. If you’re not the boom boom type, best check out how to set up SQ audio in the car to relax, and enjoy during a road trip or stuck in a traffic jam.
Now how to turn your car into a mobile disco? Crank up some best dance music, booming night and day! Here are the 4 basic steps to upgrade the car audio system or in-car entertainment also known as ICE.
Step 1 – Upgrade Head Unit
Upgrading your head unit or HU is the most important in-car entertainment upgrade of all. Give this upgrade the top priority before getting other types of equipment like speakers or subwoofers. The Head unit is like the ‘heart’ of the car audio system.
Nowadays head unit features a USB slot, Bluetooth, wifi, and various sound equalizer and mode to choose from, which enhanced the sound a little according to your type of music. Connecting to the head unit is made simple by just syncing your mobile phone and iPod with the head unit and playing it with Android music apps.
When listening to music, either choose CD, FLAC or MP3 with the highest bitrate. MP3 songs with the highest bitrate of 320kbps always give the best audio quality.
Step 2 – Component Speakers
The component speaker is the second important upgrade for ICE. The car speaker comes in different sizes from 5.25″ to 6.5″ component speakers. Normally we use a 6.5″ component speaker, which includes a pair of the woofer, a pair of tweezers and a crossover. The component speaker gives some mid-range & mid-bass to the sound stage and it also sounds great even without an amplifier. Get this as a second upgrade if the budget is a little tight until the next upgrade of the amplifier.
Step 3 – Car Amplifier
A car amplifier is a next upgrade after component speakers. It gives more power to drive car speakers at louder volumes without relaying from the head unit. Now your head unit will connect to an amplifier to produce more power for car speakers. Choose from 2-channels, 4-channels or 5-channels car amplifier. 1 channel monoblock amplifier is normally used to drive a subwoofer, this step we will explain later on.
2 channel amplifier can be used to power your front component speakers or subwoofer. For 4 channels, it gives more selection to hook up the front, and rear speakers and even power the subwoofer. For better sound achievement, it is recommended to separate the system between speakers and the subwoofer for more control, use a monoblock amp for the subwoofer, this way you won’t stress your 2 / 4 channel amplifier.
Step 4 – Subwoofer
To add more bass to the car audio system, adding a subwoofer will be sufficient for a standard setup. Normally best to get 8″, 10″ or 12″ sub. It all depends, but bigger doesn’t better. some 8″ can output and give a lot more clarity to the entire sound stage. In case having a subwoofer at the rear boot consume too much space, try to get an under-seat subwoofer.
Now you should roughly get the idea of how to upgrade your ICE or in-car entertainment into a mobile disco, hook up the best funky house music or best dance music and blast away!
