Customers will come into Certified Sounds all the time looking to improve the sound quality and clarity of their car audio system. When the topic of car amplifiers come up, popular sentiment is “I don’t need an amplifier because I don’t play my music loud.” That is a very common misconception in our industry so let’s explore this some more together.
Car Amplifiers Improve Sound Quality
It is true that if you want your music to play very loud you will need an amplifier. What is not known as well as how much better an audio system sounds playing at any volume level with an amplifier. A speaker in its simplest form is an air piston. It moves forward and backwards, attacking the air around us and creating sound waves. What causes the speaker to move in and out is the amplifier. The amplifier that comes inside of many stock equipped car audio systems, and replacement in dash stereo systems is nothing more than a simple IC circuit that is about as big as the end of your thumb. It has no real engine, or heart, like a good quality amplifier.
The Engine For You Car’s Audio System
Quality car amplifiers are often jam packed with high end components
A real car amplifier has an engine, or power supply, that takes the voltage coming from the battery and steps it up to a higher voltage to give it some real horsepower. This allows the amplifier to maintain much better control over the speaker, making it more accurate, defined, and clear. What happens if you put a more powerful engine and bigger brakes on a car? It can start and stop faster. The amplifier accomplishes the same thing, except it is with the speaker. Since the amplifier can better control the speaker, the end result is much improved clarity, and impact of the sound. Amplifiers also increase sound quality by using much higher quality parts, so the music that gets to the speaker is closer to the recording.
Car Amplifiers Provide Improved Dynamic Range
The last thing a car amplifier does is keep the speakers from sounding like they are straining, or getting grainy as you turn up the volume. When you are playing a passage of music that has some quiet parts to it, and then the music jumps up to a much louder crescendo, you may need 10-20 times the power to handle that dynamic range without distorting. Those little IC circuits we talked about earlier have no shot in delivering that, so your music goes from crystal clear to muddy. Ever experienced that? It’s not a very good listening experience.
We invite you to stop by Certified Sound, in Wailuku and experience for yourself the improvement an amplifier can make in your car audio system. We have both in-store and in-vehicle demonstrations which will allow you to hear the difference for yourself!
