After buying a new car, the first thing that comes to mind is upgrading the music playing capabilities of your drive. Upgrading the speakers of your car stereo is essentially the very first step, and easiest one if you want better quality music in you car. With a myriad number of choices and configurations available in the market, your very first step should be to learn about various components and varieties, and then select from them the one that best suits your budget and requirements.

Types of speakers

Coaxials:

Coaxials are the cheapest and most common speakers available in the market. They are actually a woofer and a tweeter packed together in a single box. Due to their cheap costs and acceptable quality, they are easily available in custom sizes that fit directly into most cars. They are also much more easier to install. Their disadvantages include lower sound quality and lack of portability inside the car (they have to be at optimum height for best performance). Coaxials are generally suited for the rear end of the car.

Separates:

Separates consist of a tweeter and a woofer linked together with an external crossover. They are generally more difficult to install and come with a higher price tag as compared to Coaxials. Their main advantage over Coaxials is that the woofer and tweeters can be mounted at different places, giving a much better effect

Midbases:

As their name suggests, midbases are designed to handle frequencies that lie between a woofer and a tweeter. They add further to the quality of the sound produced. A three way speaker system with midbases can get quite cumbersome to install and requires more complicated crossovers.

Subwoofers:

Subwoofers are used for the lowest frequencies in a set of speakers. They are usually larger and require more power. Subwoofers also need proper enclosure to produce the right effect. The cone size (bigger the better) and enclosure are the two major factors that determine a subwoofer’s input to the quality of the sound.

Mounting your speakers

Mounting your speakers inside the car is the most difficult task during the whole installation process. You have to carefully select which speakers, or which component should go where and then experiment with positions and angles of individual speakers to determine their best-suited position.

Coaxials should be mounted in the front at an angle so that they directly point to the listener’s ears. If you are using a two speakers system, the tweeters replace the coaxials in the dash holes. The woofer is usually mounted in the in the factory hole in the door or the kick panel. Tweeters can also be mounted on top corners, pointing towards the center of the car or on the interior ends of side view mirrors. If you have an additional midbase speaker in your set, it would most suitably go into the front and rear doors of your car. Horns are usually mounted under the dash to bridge the gap between left and right speakers.

The trunk is the perfect location for a subwoofer. If you have an adequately fitting subwoofer, the rear can act as a perfect enclosure enabling the subwoofer to produce excellent quality effects.

If the position of your speakers matters more to you than the actual components, keep in mind that lesser the gap between speakers and ears, the better. In other cases, it is suggested to install speakers at an angle where they point towards the center of the car. Minimizing the distance between left and right speakers is also a good bet. Custom kick panels are available in the market to fix your speakers at the exact desired spot.

Speakers in the rear end are for sometimes desired to add volume and fullness to the sound. If you really want something in addition to the subwoofer in the rear end, go for a pair of coaxials that tend to provide a decent fill from the rear.

One size fits all. Not really

Car speakers come in a huge number of shapes and sizes. For a component set, the tweeters are the smallest, followed by midrange, woofer and then the subwoofer, generally following the rule of inverse relation with the frequency they require to produce.

Size and shape of your speakers matters a lot because of the limited amount of space available in your car. You should use caution while buying speakers and test before hand that if they fit at the position desired. If you are looking to install speakers in your dash (or for that matter any inbuilt speaker casing in your car), make sure that the speakers don’t only fit in by the width, but also by the depth.

            Speakers with different shape differ in sound quality. For example, round speakers tend to have a rigid cone, which holds its shape at higher levels. On the contrary, oval shaped speakers have a bigger area and produce more bass. They also tend to fit perfectly in the rear deck as compared to the round shaped ones.

Powering up your speakers

Speakers need to be supplied with adequate power for them to perform at their full potential. A usual set of speakers would require at least 200W of power. Out of this, more than half should be applied to the subwoofer and around 35 to 50 watts each to the front and rear speakers. Tweeters require much less power (in the range of 230 Watts). You can always have crossovers blocking off unwanted frequencies for different speakers to save them from getting damaged. As we increase the power input, more output volume is generated for a specific volume set on your radio. It is normally suggested to have more power than required to get a crispier sound.

Car Speakers 102, and beyond

After you have sorted out on which speakers you decide to buy, three more factors should be considered before installing them.

 Check out your system’s imaging, staging and directivity. Imaging is the ability to make the sound appear from different instruments and voices, rather from the speakers. Staging is making the sound appear from the front, as if you were sitting in a concert. Directivity is about making use of frequencies and the fact that our ears are more receptive to higher frequencies. All these effects can be tuned to perfection to get the ultimate effect in a car system.

We hope reading this article sorted out a lot of things for you and you are finally ready to go ahead and buy the perfect speakers for your car stereo. So let the music play!