Audiophile grade car audio?

Man of Honour
Man of Honour
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I hate the term as most self proclaimed are often full of it.
So let me replace the title with "music enthusiast". Personally I consider the car audio environment such a mess, that I've done nothing in our BMW (just the stock system) and only changed the HU in my MX5. Both are normally used with only MP3, which I wouldn't give the time of day to with my home system, but is seemingly quite adequate in a noisy environment.
 
Soldato
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I’d like a bit more depth and clarity in my sock Z4 base system, but the idea of shelling out £500 on an amp and some component speakers for such marginal sound quality stings a bit, especially when I’m getting such conflicting advice from all the installers.
 
Soldato
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I looked into improving the audio on my S5 as I wasn’t blown away by it. Took it to a well regarded specialist and they quoted over a grand add a decent sub, eq it add extra dampening etc. I didn’t bother in the end as unless you have a silent cabin I think you will get less than Stella performance for your cash.
 
Soldato
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In the good old days, I spent £1500 on a Clarion CD head unit, speakers all round, sub woofer and wiring and installation.

The Clarion head unit had no internal amp, so the amp was a 4.1 arrangement.

And I look back and think what a waste of money.

I've still got that head unit in my garage ready for an out of car installation for my garage.
 
Soldato
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Paid a specialist (Source Sounds) to do the system in my Megane. Rainbow front door speakers/tweeters, Audison sub and a Hertz amp, sound deadening etc. Cost me about 1200 all in I think.

I'm definitely not an audiophile but it's by far the best setup I've had in anything outside of a show car.
 
Soldato
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You can definitely improve on stock in most cases. However, there’s a line somewhere and there’s only so far you can go when you’re sitting off-centre in a noisy bean can.

I personally, generally wouldn’t bother unless it’s utterly dire.
 
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Wouldn’t call myself an audiophile by any means but I guess it depends how good you car audio is out of the factory. In my case (Skoda vrs) the standard audio was pretty rubbish, so I replaced the head unit for an alpine, the door speaker with some hertz components, disconnected the rear speakers, amped the fronts applied some sound deadening and fitted a small sub in the boot.

I brought nearly all of it second hand and probably spent between £5-600. The difference from standard is night and day.
 
Soldato
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I love the 12 speaker H/K factory specced system in my F56 Mini.

I've always been into quality audio whatever the situation, however this is the first car of my own that has a premium sound system. It's a must have option going forward as it's at least been designed and sound dampened to a decent level.
 
Soldato
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most of the car systems are just putting lots of middling quality speakers all round the car, without giving control over delay (time of flight) for the listener position,
or, access to a parametric equalizer,
with those capabilities, which you can get, in an aftermarket alpine, or some Android HU's, you can get a better sound with fewer better quality speakers.

In particular, I don't want an artificial surround sound creation ... maybe that sounded good when you had an 8-track mastered (genuinely?) cassette.
 
Soldato
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Funnily enough, I've done a few upgrades in my car over the past few months. I picked up a second hand Pioneer HU which was much better quality than the stock one, and I also bought some better front speakers/tweeters to compliment it. Added a bit of soundproofing to the doors when the speakers went in and that helped a lot with sound quality. Yesterday I ordered the Pioneer microphone so I can run the Auto EQ calibration which I'm told makes an even bigger improvement by setting up the speaker time delay properly.

I'm by no means an audiophile, and I've always been of the opinion that a car isn't a great environment for quality sound anyway, but I wanted to improve the rather poor setup I have for the times I have to do long journeys. So far all of the above has cost me less than £400 and has made a big improvement, but I'd baulk at throwing any more money at upgrading as I think there'd be diminishing returns.
 
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The HK system in my 3 series is pretty crap. It’s both dull and over bright and no matter of messing with the eq get its to anywhere near what sounds good to me.

The best audio I’ve had in a car has to be the Bose system that was in my very old Honda Accord.
 
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It wasn’t the Pioneer DEH-80PRS was it?

No, AVH-X5800DAB. I'd considered buying a Chinese Android headunit, but was concerned about reports that they could be quite slow when connecting to Bluetooth, something which already annoyed me about the stock unit.

Headunits from established brands (Pioneer, Alpine, etc) were better, but also much more expensive. I then found this one for sale owners club, so I picked it up. The sound quality, interface, connectivity and touchscreen are all improved over the factory unit; the only thing it doesn't have is onboard satnav, but I always use my phone for that anyway. The only real downside is that the volume control is on +/- buttons rather than a rotary nob.
 
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