by Crutchfield's Writing Team
Oct 25, 2024
In this episode:
J.R. and Eric return for Part 2 of our series on how to build the perfect car audio system for your needs.
Once again, your hosts explain the jargon and answer essential questions like, "What is RMS wattage?" and "Do I need to think about 'sensitivity'?" Find out more about speaker sizes, the importance of speaker materials, and all the good reasons to upgrade the factory speakers in your older vehicle.
Ready to find out which speakers fit your vehicle? Start with our vehicle selector tool.
And for a recap of everything in this episode, check out our car speakers buying guide.
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CrutchfieldS4E2.mp3 Transcript 00:00:07 J.R. Hello and welcome to Crutchfield. The podcast I'm your host Jr. joined in studio yet again by my good friend and Co host, Eric, how you? 00:00:17 Eric Doing I am doing wonderful, outstanding. 00:00:21 J.R. Outstanding, huh? Yeah. Outstanding. You know why Iowa farmers are the best? 00:00:26 Eric No boy, no, I. 00:00:27 J.R. Don't, because they're all outstanding in their. 00:00:29 Eric Field. Ohh nice. 00:00:32 Eric Why say that about any number? Why does it have? 00:00:34 J.R. My, my, my dad. 00:00:35 Eric To be Iowa. 00:00:35 J.R. My dad's from Iowa, so it's an Iowa farmer joke for. 00:00:39 Eric Sure. I think you could just plug in any state there and it still works. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. 00:00:41 J.R. Use quirks any anywhere there's a farm. Really. You could do that. 00:00:45 Eric Cool, cool. 00:00:46 J.R. But that's not what we're here to talk about. No, not at all. 00:00:50 Eric Not at all. 00:00:50 J.R. No. Today is this episode is the second episode in a four part series in which we are discussing how to get the perfect car stereo for you and your car. In episode 1, we dove Deep on replacing the radio and all the things you need to consider when choosing a new radio. 00:01:09 J.R. For your car, right? 00:01:11 J.R. In this episode, we're going to dive into the speakers, yeah. 00:01:15 J.R. The those speakers that are in your doors and your dash and your rear deck and your rear doors wherever the speakers are in your car, you might think you wanna replace them. You might, you might hear a balloon speaker. You might the sound might not be as loud as you want. You might not have as much bass as you want. It might just not sound as good as you. 00:01:32 J.R. Wants and there's lots of reasons to replace the speakers, and we're gonna sort of talk about the issues and things you need to consider to get the right new speakers for your car. You know, for for people with cars that are a little bit older, you are more likely a candidate for needing new speakers factory. 00:01:53 J.R. Speakers. 00:01:53 J.R. Are not known for being made out of resilience. Amazing materials. I'm talking paper. Very small magnets foam. Yeah, right. These are materials that disintegrate over time and. 00:02:07 Eric Yeah, let's talk about that environment for a second of a car I don't know about you, but you know, we we live here in Virginia, you got extreme temperature variations. You got moisture variations in the vehicle and sun shining in. Yeah. And sometimes those can actually, it can shine directly down on rear deck speaker. 00:02:18 J.R. The sun shining in. 00:02:25 Eric So you know, over time paper and foam that it's just not a great recipe for longevity of a speaker. 00:02:33 J.R. Paper is not inherently bad for speakers. Yeah, it's just not a great material in a harsh car environment for a speaker that's going to last. Yeah, and to deal with what it takes to make good sound in a car. 00:02:46 J.R. Papers typically not where it's at. There's some manufacturers that do it, but even they will treat their paper with some protective coating so that the paper lasts a lot longer. Safe to say, Toyota's not doing that. 00:02:53 Eric Right. 00:02:58 Eric Yeah, that's right. 00:02:59 J.R. And neither is Chevy or any other large area. In fact, we're not singling out Toyota. 00:03:00 Eric Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're not picking on one. 00:03:04 Eric Do it. 00:03:04 J.R. So if you have an older car, you might have a blown speaker. You might have a speaker that's completely worn out. So regardless of whether or not you think of yourself as a person who wants a great big stereo in your car, you might need new speakers, right? Just to fix that problem. 00:03:19 Eric Yeah, speakers don't last forever, especially in. 00:03:22 J.R. A car. And as cars have gotten. 00:03:24 J.R. Newer, more modern the the speaker. 00:03:27 J.R. On the basic level, factory systems hasn't changed much. No, they've added more, right? A lot of newer cars have tweeters mounted up a little higher on your door or maybe in your or on that a pillar, right. So that has helped raise, raise the sound from down low down near your ankles to up a little bit higher makes the band that you're listening to sound like there may be on the dash of your car. 00:03:49 J.R. That's that. They've done that because it's also made it easier to replace those tweeters with new ones. Yeah, that are made out of nicer, better sounding materials along with the woofer in your door. That's. 00:04:00 J.R. Matter, but the quality of the speakers they're putting in these basic level systems still not. 00:04:06 Eric Great, another manufacturer to hit a price point, right, they're making, you know, thousands and thousands of vehicles, and they need a lot of these speakers. They're just trying to get them in to keep the price at a certain point. And, you know, be able to put on that dealer tag. Yeah. This has got 6 speakers. This has got, you know, the nine speaker system and. 00:04:24 Eric And really, that's what they're trying to. 00:04:25 J.R. Do there? Yeah. They want you to finance that premium system in with the price of the car. Right, so that you don't realize or think about the fact that you paid $2000.00 for a premium system that arguably sounds better than most older factory car systems ever did. Yeah. Yeah. But they're, I mean, you can get. 00:04:30 Eric Yeah. 00:04:44 J.R. 10 times more sound for a fraction of the price in an. 00:04:48 J.R. System. If you happen to already own a car with a premium system, especially the ones by companies we're very familiar with, JBL, Rockford, Fosgate Bose, things like that. Yeah, a lot of those systems do really sound pretty good. They they've, they've upped their game. When you pay that extra, you are getting a better. 00:05:01 Eric Yeah. 00:05:06 Eric System. Yeah, there's some tuning going on there, right? Like they're tuning. 00:05:09 Eric The the radio and the amplification and they know what the speakers are capable. 00:05:12 Eric Of even if replacement speakers could be capable of more, they're kind of maximizing. 00:05:18 Eric About what those factory speakers can do in those premium factory systems. So yeah, they've gotten better, definitely. 00:05:25 J.R. So you may not even feel like you need to replace those until they wear out, right? Right. So a few years down the road may not be. 00:05:32 J.R. Case and you might be in that place right now. You might have a car with a premium system that's six or seven years old, and it might be time to put new speakers in that car. So let's talk about speakers for a little bit. I mentioned tweeters a minute ago. Yeah, and I didn't. I didn't stop to explain what a tweeter is. 00:05:44 Eric Yeah. 00:05:51 Eric Yeah, yeah. There's a bunch of terms that get thrown out there, kind of like what we talked about with the heading. 00:05:56 Eric Receivers, decks, stereos in the last. 00:05:59 J.R. Episode right car stereo industry jargon that yeah, we use every day. But yeah, we wanna make sure you know. 00:06:01 Eric Right. 00:06:05 Eric What we're talking about, so yeah, so talk about some of those terms, so tweeters. So tweeters are the the smallest speaker you'll typically see. 00:06:12 Eric Right. And they're small because they are made to do the high frequencies, you know, so they're smaller drivers so they can move quicker and that's without getting too technical. That's what's required in order for us to get a. 00:06:24 J.R. High frequency and think about female vocals, electric guitars, the horn section. All of those higher frequencies. 00:06:32 J.R. Because of the way sound works, those are very directional and if you don't have separate tweeters mounted up a little higher. 00:06:38 J.R. Then it might make it hard to hear those higher frequencies because they they used to be in most cars, just in the woofer, and then those woofers were mounted down low in your doors. 00:06:49 Eric Oh, you. 00:06:50 Eric Again, you just used another term there. Perfect. 00:06:51 J.R. We're about to explain woofer enough. Yeah. So the tweeter and the woofer are. We're used to be combined into one. Yeah. And placed down low. And now they've, you know, they're putting tweeters up high, so those tweeters are aimed at your face aimed at your ear holes, right where you listen to the music. 00:07:09 J.R. So you it it, it elevates the sound and it's a big improvement, but that is what a tweeter does. 00:07:15 Eric Right, yes, it's basically for the high frequencies. What does a woofer do, Eric? Ooh, a woofer, a mid base, the mid range. The majority of the frequencies are covered by that woofer. So you know and and of course those come in. 00:07:29 Eric Well, in a wide range of sizes and even shapes for in your car. But yeah, I mean, that's when you're shopping for speakers, you know, on our website, you know you you might hear terms like 6 1/2 inch, right? So that's basically the size of the speaker and what they're talking about there is the woofer, so. 00:07:47 Eric Many speakers still will have that tweeter and the woofer together, and you know that would then make it a speaker. But you know, by talking about woofers, you're really just talking about that larger driver, that larger. 00:08:00 J.R. Portion of it and with a tweeter and a woofer working together that covers you for most of the frequencies. 00:08:07 Eric Yeah. 00:08:07 J.R. The tweeter does the highs, the. 00:08:09 J.R. Roofer does everything else. The mid range, the mid base, the base. Yeah, right it can. It's not as if you have more speakers of varying sizes. You might be able to have them each do their own specific band of frequencies, right? But typically you don't need that. Most of it, especially if you're not super demanding of the audio system in your car. 00:08:29 J.R. A tweeter and a woofer will get the job done whether they're in the. 00:08:32 J.R. Team basket. Mm-hmm. Right where the tweeters mounted with the woofer, or whether they're separated. You'll get all the frequencies either. 00:08:40 Eric Way, yeah, you used another industry term there when? 00:08:42 Eric You said. 00:08:42 Eric Basket. Yeah, it's kind of the back of the speaker, right. You're talking about the physical. 00:08:47 Eric Yeah, the frame around the speaker. 00:08:48 J.R. Yeah. So a tweeter and a woofer gets the job done for a lot of folks. You'll see some cars have a mid range like a like a speaker that's kind of between the size of a tweeter in the woofer that plays just those mid range frequencies allowing the woofer to just play the lows and the tweeters to just play. 00:09:04 J.R. Highs, right? Right. Some factory systems have that. Some aftermarket systems have that, but it's not that super common. It's usually more of a two way system tweeter and woofer. 00:09:14 Eric Yeah. 00:09:15 J.R. The highs and the lows. There we go. What about the big thundery boomy systems, right? That's typically because of a sub woofer, right, which is just a woofer. 00:09:26 Eric That is a larger size, right? So we talked earlier about tweeters. They're small, so they can hit those high frequencies and then? 00:09:32 Eric Have a large driver as another term we could throw out there, but another a larger speaker would end up being the the subwoofer and they can be tuned for those low frequencies. So again, without getting too geeky, you know we can typically hear to around 20 Hertz. 00:09:49 Yep. 00:09:52 Eric And that's where it's nice to get a subwoofer to be able to hit down down too, right and. 00:09:57 J.R. Yeah, that's the boom. The Thunder, the kick drum, the bass guitar, all of that stuff. 00:09:59 Yeah. 00:10:03 J.R. And you know what this episode? Those are speakers. Yep. So we want to make sure you understand what they are, but we're going to have a whole separate episode where we dive into the world of Subs. Right. There's a whole, all tons of different Subs for different types of music and cars and preferences. We're going to dive deeper on those. So we're gonna hold off on diving any deeper than that now. 00:10:22 J.R. And we're gonna talk about the rest of the speakers in your car. The main ones, the ones that you hear most often, playing most of the frequencies. 00:10:31 J.R. And we want to try to figure out or help you figure out what does it take to make you happy driving around in your car, listening to whatever you listen to. And you, you don't necessarily need more than that, right? What will it take to make you happy? You might not be that demanding. You might just, you might be fine with music that doesn't go super. 00:10:49 J.R. Loud or sound incredibly pinpoint accurate. You just play audiobooks or podcasts and you're fine. But if you want music to sound better, louder, clearer, bassier. 00:11:02 J.R. Fuller then you might need new speakers because new speakers are those things that deliver the music. 00:11:08 Eric Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'd like to talk about that. The speakers are the final thing that imprints the sound before that sound gets delivered to your ear holes, right? So yeah, it's very, very important and you know. 00:11:22 Eric Speakers have kind of a different signature, if you will. You know, depending on the size and what they're made out of. 00:11:29 Eric You know, they can, you know, along with performance variances, they all kind of have their own, I don't know, special recipe if you will. They're secret sauce on trying to do what they do best and you know you want to talk about what they're trying to accomplish. What what a good speaker is. 00:11:45 J.R. Trying to accomplish every speaker company, whether we're talking about the most. 00:11:46 And. 00:11:49 J.R. Expensive home speakers or the cheapest car speakers, or anything in between. They're all true. 00:11:54 J.R. Thing, or at least they will tell you they're all trying to do the same thing, which is to accurately and faithfully recreate the music as the artist intended, right? They're not trying to add their own flavor, yet they do just simply because they're made out of different materials. They're made with different designs and different speakers do sound a little bit. 00:12:15 J.R. Different and you know this is where we get into some really subjective opinion stuff. You know you'll have. You'll have, it's like a Ford versus Chevy thing. 00:12:20 Eric Absolutely, absolutely. 00:12:25 J.R. Some people will feel very strongly that some speakers sound different or better than others, and they're not wrong. Who's to tell them they're wrong? It's their ears and. 00:12:30 OK. 00:12:33 Eric Their music. Right. I might think they're wrong, but you know I won't tell them. I mean they. 00:12:37 J.R. Are wrong. Yeah, well. 00:12:38 Eric Yeah, let's say agree with me. 00:12:38 J.R. We could tell them what's. 00:12:41 J.R. So how about this? We'll replacing speakers. 00:12:45 J.R. Always improve the sound. Ooh. 00:12:47 Eric That's a bit of a loaded question, not necessarily. 00:12:51 Eric Right. Like I mean, of course, if there's a blown speaker, you need to fix that thing. But you know, there's there's a lot that goes into sound in a car. You know what your source is? You know? So are you playing CD? Are you listening to satellite radio on top of that, the the electronics that are in the car. So actually you know the. 00:13:12 Eric Amplifier that's sending that signal, that source material to those speakers, those things imprint that sound as well. 00:13:19 J.R. Yeah, they matter greatly, right? The source and how much power is going to the speakers. 00:13:25 J.R. It has to be considered and if you simply replace the speakers without thinking about that, you might not get the results you're looking. 00:13:31 Eric For yeah, I I think you know we've we've used the term recipe or secret sauce. You know, I feel like, you know, you're kind of you're making, you know, you're you're you're baking a cake, you're making a dish when you're trying to get sound and you each one of those ingredients along the way are going to impact. 00:13:44 Eric You know the final result there, so you know you can improve the sound just by replacing the speakers absolutely, but you are going to want to consider. 00:13:53 Eric For those other things, just to make sure your expectations are in line with reality and hey, good news. We're here for you for that, so. 00:14:01 J.R. Yep. And if you're not looking for super loud, crazy great sound, you don't have to, you still will benefit from new speakers because they it will make it sound at least a little better. It will fix a broken speaker. Yeah. And and if you want to take it to the next level. 00:14:15 J.R. We can help you do that as well. I can't tell you how many folks I've talked to over the years that think. 00:14:20 J.R. The problem with their stereo is the speakers and and then so they call us and we help them replace those speakers, and then they call back and they're like, it's not any louder. It's not. It's not crazy better. And there's a reason for that. And it's usually that the factory radio isn't. 00:14:39 Yeah. 00:14:40 J.R. Providing those speakers with very much power. 00:14:42 Eric Yeah. So what you? What happens then is, you know, those speakers are giving a wonderful representation of the crappy signal that they are receiving. So you know it it, it's definitely worth. 00:14:55 Eric Littering all the links in the chain when you're talking about. 00:14:58 J.R. This type of thing, so and we'll get into how to get them more power in a in episode #4 when we dive deep on amplifiers, maybe just replacing the radio will do it. You might need more power than that. Suffice it to say, a new speaker will have better materials and will sound better pretty much no matter what. 00:15:16 J.R. And then if you really want to take it up a notch, add. 00:15:18 Eric An amplifier, right? Yeah. And with adding an amp, now you're talking about. 00:15:22 Eric The ability to turn it up right and play it loudly and maintain that. 00:15:27 J.R. Quality. Yeah, we call that headroom. Yeah, right where you can listen comfortably at the volume you want most of the time. But when that right song comes on and you need to crank it a little more. Yeah, you can. And it doesn't distort. Yes. Yes. 00:15:41 J.R. Problem with so many factory systems as you turn it up and the factory speakers are distorting, especially when the base hits right, that's been the problem for years. In older cars, they've the car manufacturers have figured out how to. 00:15:56 J.R. Make that problem go away. But they didn't really fix it, right? They what they did is they tuned the factory radio for bad speakers, right. They put some circuitry in there that says when you turn the volume up, let's turn the base down. 00:16:10 Eric Right. We're just going to eliminate those frequencies that we have a hard time producing when you get to those louder volume levels and. 00:16:17 Eric Then the problem seems to go away, but doesn't really. That's just not. 00:16:21 Eric You want is what's absent. 00:16:22 J.R. That's simply a software fix for the problem that could have also been fixed by spending an extra dollar on those speakers and making them. 00:16:30 J.R. A little bit. 00:16:30 Eric Better. It's like fixing your cars engine by putting a governor on it. 00:16:34 Eric Yeah, yeah, you just. 00:16:35 J.R. Won't let you go fast exactly, because that's when this engine has. 00:16:38 J.R. A problem, right? 00:16:40 J.R. So I think I like to think of that as the car stereos these days are tuned for the test drive, right? So you get in a new car, you're thinking about buying it, you turn the volume up, you're like, oh, cool, the system doesn't distort horribly at loud volumes. And then over time, you realize, yeah, it also doesn't play bass. 00:16:56 J.R. Very well. When you turn it up. And so it if that happens, if you replace just your speakers and don't do anything else, that problem doesn't go away. Replacing the radios. The best way to deal with that, also adding amps and fancy interfaces that can fix that problem too. But in this episode, we're diving in on speakers. 00:17:14 J.R. So there are so many speakers to choose from. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of different pairs of speakers, all different sizes. When you go to crutchfield.com, you just the first thing we need to do is consider your car. Enter your car into the website. Think about the car that way, we'll know what sizes you need. That's the easy way to. 00:17:34 J.R. Sort of narrow that list down to just the right sizes. 00:17:37 Eric For your car. Yeah. General rule of thumb, if you've got the ability to put a larger speaker in there. 00:17:43 Eric Do it. Yeah, we have adapters that will let you put a small speaker often into what? A place where maybe a larger speaker could go. Just always go with the bigger speaker as. 00:17:51 J.R. Big as you can. Yeah, the the biggest speakers typically are 6 by nines and a lot of cars are putting 6 by nines in like even the front doors. It used to be just a rear deck. Right now it's my Subaru. 00:18:03 J.R. Crosstrek has 6 by nines in the front. 00:18:05 Eric Doors because then being a large. 00:18:07 Eric Speaker, it's going to be able to give you. 00:18:08 Eric A little bit. 00:18:09 Eric More base response exactly. It's gonna be a fuller range speaker right from I mean that's amazing that that comes on a Subaru I think. 00:18:17 J.R. That's pretty cool. You can also put smaller speakers like 6 1/2 or 500 quarters in that 6 by 9 location with brackets and stuff, and so our website will show you that if you enter your car. 00:18:27 J.R. Yeah, but if you see that, go with the biggest 1, you can't. Absolutely. That's a general rule of thumb. Go with the biggest speaker that will fit into your. 00:18:33 J.R. Factory location absolute. 00:18:35 J.R. And again, when you're shopping on crutchfield.com, we're talking to one of our advisors. They we will know and we will show you what might be needed to install those speakers. You might need some sort of bracket. You might need a wiring harness to get it plugged in. And by the way, at Crutchfield, all that stuff is included free with the purchase of speakers. And if there's anything in addition to that. 00:18:56 J.R. Stuff you'll need. We can show you that as well. Based on our vehicle research, which is pretty extensive, in other words, let us deal with the minutiae. 00:19:04 Eric Yeah. For you. Yeah. Now that's that's important, I think. 00:19:08 Eric You know, if you were to go out and measure the size of speaker, you think you need, there's just a lot, a lot of considerations we've learned over the years. Yeah, from past mistakes. Right. You know, we're measuring the height, the depth, the, the, the diameter of the actual magnet on the back of the speaker. We're measuring all these things so that we can make sure when we replace the speakers in your. 00:19:28 Eric Car door. It's not going to interfere with your window when you roll it down, right? And I've seen that happen. I've seen people scratch their car windows because they just kind of, you know, they they just went with the speaker that they thought would fit without actually confirming all those additional measurements. So let us do that for. 00:19:45 J.R. And you can't just tell what speaker fits in there based on measuring the grill. We have to take those doors apart, right? We have to dismantle the car to get this information. So let us let us deal with that for you and we. 00:19:57 J.R. We got you taken care. 00:19:57 J.R. Of absolutely. So let's let's divert now, now that we figured out how to figure out what size speaker to put in there. 00:20:06 J.R. Now you've still got a ton of choices, right? Right. You might still have 100 pairs of 6 1/2. 00:20:11 J.R. More than that to to figure out which one to get some things to think about here are what is your goal for the system, right? Are you trying to build a system that goes super loud and sounds incredibly clear? Do you just need a modest sound? Do you just need a small improvement? Things like that, which will lead you into thinking about how much power. 00:20:11 Yeah. 00:20:32 J.R. Do you need and how much power do your speakers need to be able to handle as well as efficiency which is going to be a little bit techie right? But you need to kind of think about we certainly think about it right when we are helping customers buy new speakers. One of the things we will talk to them about is. 00:20:49 J.R. You know what is your end goal? How loud do you want it? 00:20:52 J.R. Are you replacing? 00:20:53 J.R. The radio or are you keeping the factory radio? 00:20:53 Eric Yeah. 00:20:55 Eric Yeah, and and that's important to consider that one right there specifically because some of our speakers are meant to handle. 00:21:03 Eric A ton of power. 00:21:05 Eric But if you're not never planning on replacing the amplifier or the radio in the car, you don't really need that, right? You don't need them to handle a ton of power because you might not be giving them much, and then that might. That's a different measurement, right? We want to make sure that we're considering that system when you're picking out the speakers just so we can optimize the two for you. 00:21:24 J.R. Yeah, pretty much every speaker we've got is going to be just fine being powered by the factory radio and aftermarket radio like they that that's never going to overpower those speakers, right? What matters a lot, though, is efficiency. How well does that speaker turn electrical power wattage? 00:21:44 J.R. Right into acoustic energy and sound that you can hear with your ears, there's a measurement for that. Yeah, it's called efficiency or sensitivity and just. 00:21:56 J.R. So I'm going to simplify it here. The higher the number, the better, the more efficient it. 00:22:00 J.R. Is and this is important in low power situations. 00:22:04 Eric So if you're not replacing that factory radio, if you're not adding additional amplifiers, so efficiency is going to be one of those things we really want you to look at. You know the factory speakers, you know, they're not always made out of the best materials, but the one thing they are typically engineered to be is. 00:22:20 J.R. Efficient and a lot of sound is what you get with a highly efficient speaker. More sound. That doesn't necessarily mean get better sounds now, but it does mean more volume. 00:22:20 Eric So. 00:22:30 Eric So if you were to inefficient speaker right next to a very efficient speaker and you're kind of AB test them back and forth with the exact same power without adjusting the volume, it's going to sound like the more efficient speaker plays louder. 00:22:44 J.R. And which some people think is better. But if you really analyze it and think about it or listen to it for much longer, you might find. 00:22:49 J.R. That the other. 00:22:50 J.R. One sounds better. We, but you just want more volume, right? And the answer to that is more power. Yeah. And when you have more power for your speakers, like if you are adding an amplifier to power them, efficiency does not matter if you have power. 00:23:04 J.R. You don't need efficiency. You don't buy a Corvette because of how efficient it is, right? You buy it because of the power and how fast it goes and how much fun it is to drive. And when you have the power for your speed. 00:23:16 J.R. Years. Don't worry about efficiency, that's when you need to worry about can these speakers handle the power of the amplifier you're going with? And typically you pick your speakers 1st and then you get an amplifier to power them. So it's a pretty easy thing to do, but it allows you to not worry about efficiency so much. Just make sure they can handle the power and you're good to go. 00:23:36 Eric So that's efficiency. 00:23:39 Eric You said power a bunch of times. You talk about that real quick power. What? 00:23:43 Eric There's there's. There's some different ways of looking at that. We try to throw, we try to simplify it, right, because there's kind of the we're on the box that, you know, some places will focus on some manufacturers like to focus on and and and that's just put the biggest number on the box because that will help us sell more and. 00:24:01 Eric That is peak. 00:24:02 J.R. Power. Yeah. When you see big numbers for power handling and you'll even see this on your factory system if you go back and look at the sticker for your brand new car, it probably. 00:24:11 J.R. Has something like 800 Watt factory system and they're talking about peak power. You're gonna see that number on speakers. You're gonna see a peak power number, but you're also gonna see an RMS power range on most speakers. And those numbers will be much lower. And that's important because those are the important. 00:24:28 Eric Numbers. Those are the ones we want to focus on. There's no real industry. 00:24:28 Yes. 00:24:31 Eric Standard for peak power. That's why we don't want to focus on that number. That's why. 00:24:35 Eric By you know we we kind of take that with a grain of salt and you know if we're dealing with in the world of RMS power, we're we're in a much better spot. We can kind of talk across brands a lot better and and and whatnot. So it definitely we're focusing. 00:24:49 J.R. On that and RMS is synonymous with continuous amount of power. It's like the amount of power you can deliver to that speaker. 00:24:55 J.R. All day without worrying about it blowing right peak power. If you give a speaker significantly more than it's RMS power because you think you can give it all the way up to its peak, that's when you're going to recipe for disaster. 00:25:05 J.R. There I I wanted to talk very briefly about impedance, if you if you start shopping for speakers, you're going to see impedance things like 4 ohms, 2 ohms, 3 ohms, things like that. I'm not going to resist this, less resistance, more power. 00:25:23 Eric Yeah. 00:25:26 J.R. And here's the deal the the standard for impedance for car speakers is 4 ohms. What this means is. 00:25:33 J.R. The amplifiers that power speakers are designed for speakers that present it with A4 ohm load of resistance. Yeah, this is getting into electrical stuff, but it's it's simply, yeah. 00:25:40 So. 00:25:42 Eric Yeah, you're talking about electrical resistance. That's what ohms equals right is is the electrical resistance. 00:25:47 J.R. It's the relationship of the amplifier to the speaker and they need to be on the same page and the standard for car stereo is 4 ohms. There are exceptions to that. There are companies that make speakers with three ohms 2.7 ohms and they will tell you and they're right. 00:26:02 J.R. To tell you that when you drop the impedance a little bit, your amplifier puts out a little bit more power. That's the benefit of that. And if you do it right, it's just fine. 00:26:11 J.R. Don't worry about this. Most of the time. Yeah, the impedance is irrelevant most of the time because it's all designed to work together. 4 ohm speakers as the standard car amplifiers, car stereos. They're all designed for your 4 ohm speakers and they can handle it when you drop the impedance a little bit. Not a problem, so don't worry too much about the impedance that plays a bigger role. 00:26:32 J.R. In the world of subwoofers, where we do need to think about that a little bit more, but really don't don't sweat, the impedance thing. Agreed. Another thing you're going to see when you're shopping for speakers is speakers that have, and we sort of alluded to this before. The tweeter kind of built in to the wolf. 00:26:49 J.R. Which industry jargon for that? We call those two ways we call those coaxial speakers full range. Sometimes you'll see a tweeter and a mid range and a woofer. Those are three ways or triaxial speakers. And you're also, of course, going to see a lot more than ever before. Component systems where the woofer is a separate. 00:26:55 Eric Yeah. 00:27:09 J.R. Thing from the tweeter, they need to be installed separately. There's usually a crossover involved the crossovers for more industry jargon. For a box that sends the high frequencies to the tweeter and the low frequencies to the woofer. It's a more complicated install and you're thinking do I need? 00:27:27 J.R. Component speakers. Or should I go with a coaxial speaker and there's some considerations, some things to think about here. 00:27:32 Eric Yeah. 00:27:34 Eric Yeah. The nice thing about the component style speakers, you know, often today you alluded to it earlier. We're talking about the Twitter placement and often there's a a spot for your speaker up in the dash or on the A pillar and the A pillar is the the that pillar in between the window and the windshield. 00:27:52 Eric So, you know, kind of, you know, diagonal if you're sitting in the driver seat, right. And so often there'll be a tweeter location already from the factory there. Well with a good pair of component speakers and kind of get a 2 for one. Right. You can kind of replace maybe that tweeter and the. 00:28:06 Eric Door. 00:28:06 Eric Speaker with one speaker purchase and that's certainly going to appeal to some people. 00:28:12 Eric And even if you don't have that factory spot cool thing about a component speaker having that separate tweeter, you might be able to create a better tweeter location. You know, if you're. If you're comfortable doing it, certainly it's going to add to the complication of the installation. 00:28:26 Eric But your end result can be a higher sound stage can be crisper. Highs for sure, so you know it. It kind of got away. The pros and the. 00:28:36 J.R. Negatives for you, you know, for years the majority of car stereo speaker replacement was just the woofer, part of it, right. And now more cars have tweeter locations we sell more. 00:28:47 J.R. Component systems. The installation of those tweeters. Usually you can just fit them in a factory tweeter local. 00:28:53 J.R. Can we always still talk about how it's a custom installation cause it's it's it rarely just snaps into place, right? Yeah. You might have to hot glue it or use a bracket or use some of the hardware that the tweeters come with. Right? So you should know that that should be a consideration if you're going to do the installation yourself. Tweeters are a little bit harder to install than just. 00:29:14 J.R. Replacing the the system with a two way coaxial speaker that just goes where the woofer goes. That's right. And so if you're up for that challenge, the benefits are having the new tweeter with better materials than the factory tweeters and maybe you get them into more power, you've got a better crossover, goes with a better woofer. It's a big time upgrade. 00:29:33 J.R. And I highly recommend it if you can do the installation. 00:29:37 Eric Yeah, that's right. 00:29:39 J.R. Component systems used to be like only for the elite, right. If you're using amplifiers, you can have a ton of power and you're building a competition level system. That's not the case anymore. There's plenty of component systems that are very reasonably priced that are highly efficient and that are designed to work even with just your factory stereos amount of power. They will all sound better. 00:30:00 J.R. If you start replacing radios and power and amplifiers and things like that. 00:30:04 J.R. One thing you shouldn't do is simply replace the tweeters we do sell tweeters by themselves, like as a stand alone thing. You can just buy tweeters. Yeah, and we've got we've gotten plenty of calls from customers that think ohh, I've got 1 tweeter blown. I need to replace just the tweeters. It can be done, but it's not the best way to do it usually. 00:30:24 J.R. You should think about replacing the tweeters and the wolfers at the same time, because the new ones will be designed to work together. 00:30:31 J.R. Here, if you just replace the tweeters and leave the factory woofers, it might sound a little weird. You might have differences in efficiency and things like that, yeah? So replace them all together and it's usually a recipe for success. 00:30:43 Eric Yeah, that's a really good point. OK. So I think there's another big thing to consider when looking at speakers and. 00:30:51 Eric It's the materials, right? Not all we we talked about it earlier with paper and how. 00:30:56 Eric That's not so much a consideration here, but there's there's lots of materials to consider. 00:31:00 J.R. Some much nicer materials on aftermarket speakers than just paper, like give us some. 00:31:04 Eric Examples so you know you'll see tweeters made out. 00:31:07 Eric Of like. 00:31:08 Eric Right. That sounds lovely. That sounds smooth. Yeah. Yeah, it does sound smooth. 00:31:12 Eric And it's. 00:31:12 Eric It is. There will be speakers made out of plastic, you know you'll. 00:31:17 Eric Poly blah blah blah. 00:31:19 J.R. Blah Poly, Polyetherimide PEI there's there's so many fancy terms for plastic, right? It's kind of crazy. They like the I think a lot of the speaker manufacturers think you're going to think ohh plastic. I don't want that. Don't think that. 00:31:21 Eric Yeah, yeah, that's one. 00:31:26 Eric Right. 00:31:34 J.R. Is a major upgrade over the cheap paper that factory speakers are made out of. 00:31:40 J.R. And there the plastic is also extremely durable. 00:31:44 Eric And you'll see a lot of speakers made out of fiber. I think those look cool. 00:31:48 J.R. Rigid, lightweight. That's what they're going for here. So a speaker moves in and out evenly all the way around, and doesn't take as much power to do it. Carbon fiber is good for that. Yeah. Kevlar. Also good for that. Yeah. There's also some. 00:31:51 Right. 00:32:02 J.R. Not Kevlar branded versions of that same material that aren't Kevlar but are still, and we can't. Well, they're not bulletproof, even though they're Kevlar. 00:32:09 Eric Yeah. No, no, none of these. None of these are none of our speakers. 00:32:12 J.R. Are bulletproof, but when they when they use Kevlar that sounds. 00:32:14 J.R. Cool, doesn't it? Yeah. 00:32:15 J.R. It does because it's a lightweight rigid material that happens. 00:32:16 Eric Absolutely. 00:32:19 Eric To be good. Yeah, it kind of goes back to that secret sauce, right? Cause that's going to help decrease distortion and be able to handle power. 00:32:19 J.R. For speakers. 00:32:25 Eric And hit all those frequencies so. 00:32:27 J.R. So tweeter materials you mentioned silk, you mentioned some fibers, some plastic, there's metal tweeters, right? 00:32:29 Eric Yeah. 00:32:31 Eric Yeah, yeah, aluminum, titanium and all. 00:32:35 J.R. The metal should do. I need to think about that when I'm choosing the speaker system or tweeters that I want in my car. Will Silk sound better than metal? I mean that seems like it. 00:32:35 Eric Metals give you. 00:32:43 Eric They sound different, right? So you know the general rule of thumb that I've, I've, you know with my. 00:32:48 Eric A little bit of experience. What we decide 50 years between the two of us is that metal tends to sound crisper, right? And silk and other materials that are softer to the touch, they tend to sound a little more. 00:32:51 J.R. That's right. 00:33:02 J.R. Booth. So when you think of the difference between metal and silk, that translates into sound. 00:33:03 J.R. What you might. 00:33:06 Eric Exactly. 00:33:08 Eric Yeah. The good news is they kind of sound like what they're made out of, right. And so, you know, depending on where the placement is in your car, you know, a metal tweeter might perform better. And, you know, if you're the type of person that likes to get in the car and turn the the trouble. 00:33:22 Eric Up, you know, maybe a metal tweeter is perfect for you. And then if if that tweeter placement happens to be right on that a pillar right at your face, you know, in those cases, maybe I would lean toward a silk tweeter. But you know, you know, your ears better than we do. But these are kind of some of those considerations when we're trying to think whether or not we would recommend, you know, a a silk. 00:33:42 Eric Tweeter over a metal tweeter and vice versa. 00:33:45 J.R. And plastic is right there, kind of in. 00:33:47 Eric Between yeah and a good price point typically too, so that that's nothing wrong with that. 00:33:51 J.R. I know that's a lot to think about when you are replacing speakers in your car. That's kind of the purpose of this show was to hopefully boil it down to the important stuff. If you go to crutchfield.com, you're gonna see all those speakers enter your car, go through the filters, try to figure out what speakers are going to work for you, and if you have any questions, just call and talk to somebody. They can help you really, actually. 00:34:12 J.R. Figured out they've got a lot of experience listening to speakers, installing speakers and can make recommendations that are custom tailored for you, not just the most expensive but really the best for you in your situation. 00:34:24 J.R. Factoring in how much power you have, how much you know what you listen to, how you listen to it, and everything else we've discussed here today. 00:34:32 Eric Yeah, absolutely. So once again, our our our our big advice is give us a call. 00:34:37 J.R. Reach out. Send us a text. Hopefully this was helpful. If you've got questions you want us to answer. 00:34:44 J.R. On a future episode of this show, drop us a line podcast at crutchfield.com. We're more than happy to do that if your need is more urgent than that. We just told you what to do, so we've got people standing by to help you. 00:34:54 Yeah, that's right. 00:34:57 J.R. Thank you so much for listening to Crutchfield. The podcast we will be diving into subwoofers in our next episode. So furthering the discussion of speakers, but those big ones that play bass, the bass, you might think they're annoying when you hear them in other cars at the stop light or in the parking lot at the grocery store. But let me tell you, there's a subwoofer. 00:35:17 J.R. For everybody, yes, there is. There really is and we'll tell you more about that in our next episode. I'm Jr. on behalf of Eric. Thank you so much for listening. 00:35:24 J.R. We'll see you next time still. 00:35:25 Eric Doing that, I'm still right here.
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