Car stereo as stationery hifi

insider9

Well-known member
Been for a drive today. Listening to BBC Radio 2. It all sounded pretty good. And then a thought popped into my head.

How would a car stereo sound powering my floorstanders? Why don't people use this solution more often? Battery operated so no need for mains cables or mains regeneration. Most all in one units, dac, Bluetooth, radio. All you need is a car battery.

Seems too good to be true... Thoughts
 

Samd

Well-known member
insider9 said:
Been for a drive today. Listening to BBC Radio 2. It all sounded pretty good. And then a thought popped into my head.

How would a car stereo sound powering my floorstanders? Why don't people use this solution more often? Battery operated so no need for mains cables or mains regeneration. Most all in one units, dac, Bluetooth, radio. All you need is a car battery.

Seems too good to be true... Thoughts

Did you listen with the engine off?
 

jjbomber

Well-known member
insider9 said:
Why don't people use this solution more often? All you need is a car battery.

Need an aerial as well. I am looking forward to your photos of your hi-fi rack, with the car battery in place. Even the Leader of the Opposition would suddenly find cables attractive.

''Darling, I'm thinking of spending £100 on a cable. Either that or a car battery on the rack''

Leader of the Opposition ''Here's £200, buy 2 cables. Anything but a car battery''.
 

insider9

Well-known member
Samd said:
insider9 said:
Been for a drive today. Listening to BBC Radio 2. It all sounded pretty good. And then a thought popped into my head.

How would a car stereo sound powering my floorstanders? Why don't people use this solution more often? Battery operated so no need for mains cables or mains regeneration. Most all in one units, dac, Bluetooth, radio. All you need is a car battery.

Seems too good to be true... Thoughts

Did you listen with the engine off?
No, the whole point of a drive is to be moving :)
 
bigfish786 said:
I’ve known people fit them in static caravans etc, but not in a home.

You could always buy a Cyrus CD player, that looks like a car stereo to me.

WTF.... I own caravan and it has a Sony system fitted,and it's carp. The idea harmonics in a car can be good is nonsense unless you are purchasing a car that costs more than my house.
 

steve_1979

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I've heard an Alpine car stereo at a show that was much better than most home hifi. Unlike all the other cars at the show which had 8000 watts or more and at least half a dozen 15" subwoofers this one Alpine car was totally different beast. It was custom built by Alpine with the aim to give 100% best sound quality not just lots of sound quantity.

There were photos of the car interior stripped to metal and being covered with sound deadening material. Then all of the interior was custom built from scratch using a unique design developed using special audio development software. There were just four tweeters, four 6.5" mid/bass drivers and a pair of 10" sub woofers. All of the drivers, amplifiers and active crossovers were Alpine's own of the shelf top of the range units.

The sound quality was out of this world. I would happily have something similar to this at home.
 

Samd

Well-known member
Al ears said:
bigfish786 said:
I’ve known people fit them in static caravans etc, but not in a home.

You could always buy a Cyrus CD player, that looks like a car stereo to me.

WTF.... I own caravan and it has a Sony system fitted,and it's carp. The idea harmonics in a car can be good is nonsense unless you are purchasing a car that costs more than my house.

Mine has a Blaupunkt and it's cod! I just take my tablet with all my flacs on SD card and BT them to BOSE Soundlink Min II - Really very good for the price with a quite reasonable amount of sea bream.

https://www.bose.co.uk/en_gb/products/speakers/portable_speakers/soundlink_mini_ii.html
 

davedotco

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Mrs DDC's coupe has a jbl system that came as a factory option, she uses it a lot and reckons it sounds pretty good.

Personally, I can't listen to music in a car, not these days anyway.
 

Oldphrt

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Like any system, good speakers are the key to good sound. You don't need a car battery in your living roo, just a beefy 12 volt PSU.
 

Oldphrt

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Samd said:
insider9 said:
Been for a drive today. Listening to BBC Radio 2. It all sounded pretty good. And then a thought popped into my head.

How would a car stereo sound powering my floorstanders? Why don't people use this solution more often? Battery operated so no need for mains cables or mains regeneration. Most all in one units, dac, Bluetooth, radio. All you need is a car battery.

Seems too good to be true... Thoughts

Did you listen with the engine off?

Radio 2 always plays lousy music during the day.
 

davedotco

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Gaz37 said:
I concentrate on the road too much when I'm driving to pay attention to the sound quality of the stereo.

I am just the opposite.

If the music is any good it distracts me to the point that I drive into things. Not good.

Seriously, it's why I don't listen to music when driving.
 
I think it’s hard to make a meaningful comparison. Inside a car, the experience is close to wearing headphones, as it is much more “near field “ than a typical domestic setup.

It is certainly possible to have a very decent car audio system.
 

Gaz37

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jjbomber said:
Macspur said:
A friend of mine owns a Mazda fitted with a Bose stereo and have to admit sounds very good.

Mac

The one advantage designers have in car systems is they know exactly where the listener is sitting. Easy to optimise the sound.

Well they have four or five possible positions depending how many seats are occupied
 

JMac

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Car hifi has come a very long way. Back in the 1990's, early 2000's I had a Golf GTI with about £2k (back then £2k was worth a lot more than now) of alpine and phoenix gold stuff in it. After I sold the car, for a while I did what you propsed. I ran the head unit, amps and some of the speakers that I'd put in to some mdf box straight from a battery that was linked to a battery charger. I was 19 and wasnt in to home audio at that point so just wanted something to actually play music. It was a mess and cables where everywhere but it did the job. I suppose an advantage of car speakers is that they're designed to work in odd spaces so arent as dependent on baffles as home speakers.

Now, I have a Harman Karden system in my BMW that has 11 drivers, two amps, paramtetric equaliser, dsp etc all built in as standard. I spent some time tweaking it (and turned off the Logic 7) and on some recordings it sounds better than my system at home.
 

andyjm

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insider9 said:
Been for a drive today. Listening to BBC Radio 2. It all sounded pretty good. And then a thought popped into my head.

How would a car stereo sound powering my floorstanders? Why don't people use this solution more often? Battery operated so no need for mains cables or mains regeneration. Most all in one units, dac, Bluetooth, radio. All you need is a car battery.

Seems too good to be true... Thoughts

Performance of car units is generally terrible. You don't notice when you are driving because there is so much background noise. Even if it sounds halfway decent with the engine off, you are effectively sitting inside the speaker enclosure, and those rules don't apply at home.

The amps have to get up to all sorts of fancy stuff to produce decent power outputs from a 12V supply and quality generally suffers as a result. The power figures quoted for in car systems are highly misleading as they are at very high distortion levels which would be completely unacceptable to listen to at home.

Building a high current 12v supply and an enclosure to hold everything only to end up with a substandard system really isn't worth the effort.

To be clear, it is remarkable that in-car systems work as well as they do, but don't confuse them with HiFi.
 

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