# What kind of car stereo system would you recommend for classical music?



## Uematsu (Dec 27, 2017)

The title says it all. I find that I get a much better sound from my home music system and even on my Beats wireless headphones than on my car's stereo system. If I was to upgrade, what kind of system would you all recommend?


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Uematsu said:


> The title says it all. I find that I get a much better sound from my home music system and even on my Beats wireless headphones than on my car's stereo system. If I was to upgrade, what kind of system would you all recommend?


Personally, I gave up the quest to get classical music playing in the car properly. The dynamic range is just too great. When the thumping loud bits are on, great. But if it goes to anything less than _forte_, you're not really going to hear it over the road noise, engine noise, wind noise and all the rest.

So then you turn the volume up and the _pp_ bits play lovely for two minutes... until there's a sudden _fff_ and you nearly have a car crash with the shock!

I found Bach keyboard works play OK. Not too much you can do with dynamics on the harpsichord after all. But for that, any pair of speakers will do just fine.

Anyway: I hope you have better luck than I did


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

it depends what kind of music. Pure orchestral music is not good, you will not hear the fine details. Especially if you go at higher speeds on a highway, there is lot of noise. I found out that Bach's keyboard music and opera works just fine. I would not do symphonies.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Fortunately I like both classical music and pop/rock. So in the car it's pop/rock all the way for reasons specified earlier in the thread.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

AbsolutelyBaching said:


> Personally, I gave up the quest to get classical music playing in the car properly. The dynamic range is just too great. When the thumping loud bits are on, great. But if it goes to anything less than _forte_, you're not really going to hear it over the road noise, engine noise, wind noise and all the rest.
> 
> So then you turn the volume up and the _pp_ bits play lovely for two minutes... until there's a sudden _fff_ and you nearly have a car crash with the shock!
> 
> ...


AbsolutelyBaching has it about right. No matter what the salesperson at The Car Stereo Shop tells you, you're not going to get satisfying results listening to classical music in your car, unless you park the car out in the desert somewhere and keep the windows rolled up. Make sure you have reception if you're depending upon a radio transmission. (Most of the deserts I've driven through seem to have only country-western and right-wing-religion stations available.)

I would suggest to anyone with classical music listening tastes that they save the money they would invest in a car stereo system to upgrade their home listening system instead. No matter what equipment you put into the car, you'll be upping and downing the volume control frequently during listening, and that's not a safe thing to do, either. An extended bass system will provide the illusion of "better sound", but what you really get is distortion of what is on the music disc or in the radio transmission. The ideal classical music playback system provides an accurate account of what was engineered onto the source disc. Equalization and all that other crap should be used only sparingly. Ideally, once your listening room is calibrated (by whatever equalization means you provide), you should not have to touch the dials (except for maybe the volume once in a while). But car stereo systems allow so many variables that one is always tweaking the sound. And laws of physics reveal that certain frequency waves don't fit well inside the passenger compartment of an automobile anyhow.

Which is why I actually prefer jazz music for listening-to in the ol' Jeep. The dynamic range is not as extreme as for classical, and one need not fiddle much with the knobs (or the push buttons or whatever it is runs your equipment). And you needn't spend a lot of time in the desert with your windows rolled up, which ain't the most comfortable way to enjoy music anyhow.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Depends on: what car are you talking about? How old is it? How many speakers can you install? Do you have room for a separate power amp (makes a huge difference)? Do you want/need a cd player, or is Bluetooth or USB enough? So many variables. And the most important: what do you want to spend?

I drive an admittedly noisy Mazda Miata. The original factory stereo was a decent 6-disk cd/am/fm combo with a Bose label (it was actually made by Delco). It sounded fine to me with the two in-door speakers and the ones in the headrest. But after 8 years it died and the OEM unit no longer available. So I took it to an car stereo shop. Highly recommended - they were able to remove the old unit and connect the new so the steering wheel controls still worked. I put in a moderate priced Sony with a cd player, usb input, and Bluetooth so it even connects to the phone. The sound is even better than I expected: more than enough power, deep bass, and that's without a power amp. Total cost for unit and installation: around $450. There are excellent units from Alpine, Jensen, Kenwood and others. I went for the Sony because a) I've been a long time Sony fan, and 2) there are very few units out there that have cd players which really surprised me. 

Now a friend liked it, and wanted to put a new system in his Toyota Tacoma but wanted to do it on the cheap. He went to the online retailer Crutchfield, bought a nice unit, new speakers and a device to connect the steering wheel controls. Nightmare. It didn't take long before he realized he was in way, way over his head despite the very thorough documentation and instructions provided. Take it to a pro.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Well, what I do for rock music is, I have a five-pound hand sledge hammer rigged up on an arm pounding the under side of the driver's seat rhythmically. That way I get the effect without bothering everyone in the neighborhoods I drive through.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I assume people play music today in modern vehicles via playlists? I have a 2011 car with a CD player which apparently are no longer in newer cars. I don't own a phone or music player so if I had to get a car without a CD player I wouldn't play music.

There's always a lot of noise in a car that defeats the idea of hearing everything in classical music, especially quieter sections. Because of that I never thought the quality of a car stereo was very important -- just that it be good enough for the music to sound good. 

I used cassette players for years before the CD came along; they were OK too. Before the cassette I fantasized about ways to play an LP while traveling in my car.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

larold said:


> I assume people play music today in modern vehicles via playlists? I have a 2011 car with a CD player which apparently are no longer in newer cars. I don't own a phone or music player so if I had to get a car without a CD player I wouldn't play music.
> 
> There's always a lot of noise in a car that defeats the idea of hearing everything in classical music, especially quieter sections. Because of that I never thought the quality of a car stereo was very important -- just that it be good enough for the music to sound good.
> 
> I used cassette players for years before the CD came along; they were OK too. Before the cassette I fantasized about ways to play an LP while traveling in my car.


I used to 'ave that Amadeus Quartet in the back of me cab, guv'nor.

It was a bit of a tight squeeze for the cellist, though.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

larold said:


> Before the cassette I fantasized about ways to play an LP while traveling in my car.


Don't laugh:








I wonder what the tracking force was to keep a needle in the groove?


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

I play classical music in the car all the time. Apart from the odd recording that may be too low everything else is nice and loud, very clear on my system and doesn't get interfered with by road noise. Some of you guys must drive around in some right noisy, old bangers.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

If you drive an old banger, just get a big amp and some sub woofers so you can blast those Tchaikovsky crowd pleasers. And when you switch up to some AC/DC it'll really sound awesome!


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Merl said:


> I play classical music in the car all the time. Apart from the odd recording that may be too low everything else is nice and loud, very clear on my system and doesn't get interfered with by road noise. Some of you guys must drive around in some right noisy, old bangers.


I don't know what kind of classical music you use to listen, but it probably is something without a lot of dynamics. Like harpsichord pieces or something like that. Because as AbsolutelyBaching said, dynamics are a real problem even in places with a low level of noises (it's a problem in my room because of the fan of the pc, and it's not that loud, and I live in very quiet place), in a car I wouldn't like or appreciate the experience of something with a range of 80db (that for what I know it's the dynamic range of a cd) in a car. With other genres like rock or pop music, that have a much more compressed sound and a lot less dynamics sure, no problem at all. You set a decent volume level and you can hear everything. But classical music is another story.


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## Saxman (Jun 11, 2019)

I find the biggest impact is not the quality of the system, but how quiet the interior is (or how much you can reduce all the sounds in the interior of the car).


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