Tips For Tuning Your Car Audio

If you’ve invested hard-earned money in buying a decent car, the chances are you want to enjoy yourself while you’re driving it. For most of us, this means cranking up the audio and listening to our favourite tunes – but what if your car audio isn’t performing as it should?

If you know what you’re doing, it’s not hard to tune your car’s audio to sound much better, allowing you to experience your favourite tracks the way they’re meant to sound. Here are a few tips for keeping your car’s sound system in top condition.

Make sure your car speakers are in phase

Properly phased car speakers will make the inside of your car sound like a concert hall when you’ve got music playing; this means that the band’s lead instruments will come from the left and right side speakers of the car, while rhythm and vocals will come from the front. If your car audio doesn’t sound like this, then chances are your speakers may be wired incorrectly, or ‘out of phase’.

One way to check whether your speakers are out of phase is to turn the balance knob of your car’s receiver all the way down while music is playing. Wait a moment, and then turn it back to the centre. As the balance returns to the centre, you should notice the audio’s bass become much clearer; if you do, this means your speakers are in phase. If not, your car’s speakers may need rewiring.

Equalize

You can use your car’s stereo equalizer to make sure each section of the audio is playing in balance; if you listen to music in your car and think the lead parts – that’s lead guitar, synth, and vocals, usually – sound dampened or soft, you can use your car’s equalizer to add a boost to the mid-range frequencies, which are found at around 400-1000MHz.

Similarly, if your speakers make percussion sounds muffled, this indicates an issue with higher frequencies. You can fix this by installing dedicated tweeters to boost your car’s high-frequency sounds.

It’s all about that bass

When it comes to bass, it’s not always a case of more is better. To find exactly the right amount of bass in your car, use your stereo’s equalizer to turn the low frequencies all the way down. Then put on your favourite bass-heavy song, and slowly turn the bass back up until it sounds about right. This usually means you’re looking for bass sounds that are very clear, but without drowning out the rest of the band.

If your car’s fitted with a subwoofer, you might need to tune this too. If you can tell where the bass is coming from – usually, wherever your subwoofer is – this is a sign that some of your mid-range sounds are actually coming from your subwoofer, which will make it harder to achieve that ‘concert’ sound quality we’re aiming for.

Get in touch with Automotive Audio Visual

If only the best car audio will do for you, get in touch with us at AAV and we’ll see what we can do. We’re always happy to help our customers achieve the best sound quality with what they’ve got, or we can recommend new products to boost your car’s audio performance within your budget.