Let's face it, a car is such a bad environment sonically:

Every time I hear statements like this, I have to disagree.

I mean, OK, you're right about all of the drawbacks to audio-in-the-car,


I thought that's all I was talking about.


but the car is the only place where I've got the time to really sit and listen to music intently. When I'm at home, I'm too distracted by doing other things for the music to be anything but background noise. It's very hard for me to force myself to sit there and do NOTHING but listen, so I'm always doing something else at the same time and I find that I often don't really HEAR the music. On the road is the only place where I ever feel like I'm able to pay proper attention to the music. Driving takes exactly enough of my attention so that the rest of my brain can pay attention to the music.

So for me, it makes sense to pour time and money into getting my car audio to sound the best that it possibly can sound. And despite the drawbacks you listed, there are also advantages to car audio:

- You can get rather large speakers with decent amounts of power into a small space.

- The speakers are relatively close to your ears.

- You can listen at loud volume settings without anyone asking you to turn it down (well, on the highway anyhow).

- The odd shape and cloth interior of most cars tends to soak up reflections instead of creating reverberation problems between flat walls.


Yeah, I totally agree with you about the usability aspect, and I have no problem with people that spend a wad on their car audio - I was just observing that sb16 quality outputs vs pro-quality outputs is far less important in your average car because there is so much working against you to start with.

I disagree with your last point though. The odd shape and soft cloth of car interiors creates a complete acoustic mess...and gives each speaker a different response. It is easier to deal with 2 sets of opposing walls, and a floor/ceiling reverberation, as the resonant frequencies can be calcluated and eq'd easily, or passive measures can be easily implemented (eg live-end, dead-end approach)