Knowing What Goes Into a Car Stereo System Installation by Edwardo A. Compton

First of all, you want to make sure you find a head unit that is going to match your car. You don't want a pink head unit going into a car with a brown interior, it will just look out of place. If all else fails, just use a silver head unit. Now, the head unit is going to replace the previous stereo you had. You can remove your previous stereo one of two ways, by either opening the spring clips, or undoing the bolts that hold it in place. Either way, you will probably have to remove the dash board around it.

When you are done with your head unit installation, which is generally the easiest part of the entire task, you need to think about three components in the car; the amplifier, the speakers and the subwoofer.

The amplifier, which many people forget about, is what will give the head unit's signal an added bit of power so that it can feed to the speakers, tweeter and subwoofer. You will need an amplifier that is going to be powerful enough to handle going to all your speakers and your subwoofer. If you fail in this task, then you will find the signal quality is quite poor. Typically, people will put the amplifier under a seat if they can to keep it out of the way.

Next, you need to deal with the speakers. This can be very easy or very hard. You may want to have a five-way amp that goes to five speakers. You can connect it to the two in side doors, and then depending on your car's model and year, you may have to add speakers in the dash, on the kick-panel and on the back side doors. Generally, most will choose to have the speakers in the kick-panel and the rear doors. This will involve wiring, changing the structure of the doors interior and more. It may be easier to not have the speakers in the back side doors, and instead have too small speakers on the dash in the corners.

Now we move on to the subwoofer. There are plenty of considerations here. First of which is the enclosure. You can have a sealed enclosure that will give you very precise bass, but not very deep bass. Another option is a ported subwoofer because it allows for much deeper bass due to a small hold that shoots the bass sound out. Both of these are best put under the seats for the top effect. The other option is a free-air subwoofer. This can sit on a board on the kick-panel, or in the trunk. As long as you have the back secured to a surface so that the back sound is not cancelling out the front sound, you should be fine.

When you buy your subwoofer, make sure that it is meant to be a sealed subwoofer, ported subwoofer or free-air subwoofer. Buying the wrong type means your subwoofer sound will suffer.

The most important things to consider when you are putting your car stereo system together is that you take the time to do it right, have the money for what you want and know what you are doing.

You want to turn heads for the right reason (a great system), and not for the wrong systems (a poorly sounding car stereo system).