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Old 22nd May 2018, 16:22   #1
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The 100 most influential car audio products of all time

Wow its nice to see some of the cool products of all time in Car Audio.

https://www.bestcaraudio.com/top-100...s-of-all-time/
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Old 23rd May 2018, 12:02   #2
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Re: The 100 most influential car audio products of all time

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Originally Posted by invincible7 View Post
Wow its nice to see some of the cool products of all time in Car Audio.

https://www.bestcaraudio.com/top-100...s-of-all-time/
You know you are old when you remember almost every one of those 100 products listed. Most of those products had their roots in home and pro audio.

In my view the 3 most game changing concepts that were most useful for car audio were:


Tape: 8-track and 2-track. Spray some metal oxide (ferric oxide, chromium-di-oxide, ferric-chromium-oxide) or pure metal pigment on a tape and you had a very good medium. If only Fritz Pfleumer had charged royalties for his invention he would have died a very, very rich man. Tape proved to be almost ubiquitous in Home, Pro and Car audio for almost all of the 70s, and 80s.

"High quality" MP3s. I know some of you will laugh at this oxymoron. Since when have MP3s and High Quality audio been used in the same sentence but really for every day use in traffic conditions there is little to distinguish between 256kbps VBR MP3s and CDs. The more golden eared may prefer FLAC but FLAC (and other lossless formats) may never had been developed if it was not for MP3s in the first place.

Damping; Anyone who worked on car audio in the decade between 1978 and 1988 knows the difficulties that existed in damping the resonances of door panels, firewalls, and other surfaces. While the concept of damping started taking root around 1982 (I tried it using resins and fiberglass rovings) it wasn't till 1989 when a company based in Hamilton Ohio produced Dynamat, that everyone and their mother was able to implement damping safely and easily. In my view damping is the easiest and most VFM upgrade any audio enthusiast can make to almost any small or midsized car (the big expensive machines from Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Volvo, Jaguar, etc are quite well damped).

Honorable mention:
Wave guides: Horns are probably the most obvious form of wave guides but there are gentler, less obvious ones as well. They seem particularly well suited for car audio in directing the sound towards the listener and away from the glass and steel and other acoustically reflecting surfaces that exist inside a car. Today B&O's "Acoustic Lens" systems in some Audis, Aston Martins, AMGs, Bentleys and BMWs are a direct derivative of the wave guide.

Got something I missed? Please feel free to add.

Last edited by navin : 10th January 2019 at 15:08.
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Old 23rd May 2018, 12:11   #3
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Re: The 100 most influential car audio products of all time

Well the article does cover the length and breadth of car audio journey over the years and the products which really made a significant impact in the market/users. It feels great to see how the audio products have evolved over generations, however I feel that over the last few years if you would see the audio market is not that active in terms of coming up with niche solutions (except a few like Sony GSX 9 HU) as it used to be couple of year ago and yes maybe its due to users being more adaptive to what comes from factory fitted in car - the hunger for good audio equipment is slowly fading for car enthusiasts except few of them. I wonder how long when the market will become very niche for very selected few who still would love to get a good gear for their cars.

One of the thing which should have been on the list I feel are

DAP's (Digital Audio Players)/ipad/android tabs use in car entertainment, I know its not a core car audio product but it does offer lot of choices to end users who are looking for solutions over factory systems, with android backbone the options are endless for the end users to use varied applications in their car.

Last edited by invincible7 : 23rd May 2018 at 12:22.
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Old 23rd May 2018, 13:06   #4
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Re: The 100 most influential car audio products of all time

Definitely a trip down memory lane!

I still have the Kenwood radio with 180o rotating front. It was known as Mask. Still works today!! It's still in my Alfa Romeo Spider.

These removable / rotating fronts were introduced to counter theft. I dont know about India, but in Europe radio's got stolen all the time out of cars.

Last time that happened was in 2011. Somebody smashed the window of my 1998 Jeep Cherokee in Kansas City. Ripped out the radio-casette player, did more damage to the car then to the $50 radio. And that radio was secured with a code, so useless.

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Old 24th May 2018, 11:28   #5
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Re: The 100 most influential car audio products of all time

Japanese dominance in the head unit scene for sure. I knew Clarion and Alpine were front runners in the high end space. Took me by surprise that Sony were too.

Must have been back in 1992 when I first saw and heard a seriously good car audio rig in my uncles Maruti 1000. He had the ability the remote start the car too, so the cabin would cool down before he got in. The stereo was a Pioneer head unit (KEX-P820 probably) mated to a 12 cd changer in the boot and some fancy looking TS-2150 cross axial speakers. Steering wheel remote and the works. It was much better than the wired IR steering wheel remote I had on my Blaupunkt.

I had also seen a Pioneer cassette player with a motorized load and eject mechanism. It looked so cool watching the cassette being pulled in slowly and not having the tape fly out when you hit the eject button.

I have to admit, I wanted a cool looking car stereo cause when someone peeked into your car at night, it looked like you were operating a space ship. All of this has been replaced by fancy iDrive and touch screen stereo. In my books, those single din color dot matrix displays looked way cooler.

Last edited by sandeepmohan : 24th May 2018 at 11:38.
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Old 24th May 2018, 11:53   #6
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Re: The 100 most influential car audio products of all time

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Originally Posted by invincible7 View Post
DAP's (Digital Audio Players)/ipad/android tabs use in car entertainment, I know its not a core car audio product but it does offer lot of choices to end users who are looking for solutions over factory systems, with android backbone the options are endless for the end users to use varied applications in their car.

Absolutely. I did not specifically include DAPs because without the advent of MP3s DAPs would not have had an application. I am a big fan of DAPs (my own car has 2 iPods, one for the head unit and one connected to an headphone amp for when I am in the rear seat).
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Old 25th May 2018, 13:52   #7
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Re: The 100 most influential car audio products of all time

What a trip down memory lane. I've used the alpine chiclet and the scosche converter. Thanks for sharing!
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Old 25th May 2018, 15:10   #8
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Re: The 100 most influential car audio products of all time

A lovely read indeed. A good car audio system was a dream I had ever since I was in school. A car CD changer, those Pioneer helmet speakers and those fancy Pioneer HUs all were such drool worthy stuff while growing up. I even got those second hand car stereo magazines from Fort which was again stuff I dreamt of getting someday and found some esoteric brands like Sony ES, alpine, dynaudio to name a few. Still am a great fan of good sound in the car and I just fitted a cool sounding system in my Crysta around a pair of Focal 165 KR2 components and a Pioneer Apple Car Play HU.
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Old 28th May 2018, 12:57   #9
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Re: The 100 most influential car audio products of all time

The green chicklet button of Alpine stereos, how right they were. The Alpine was considered the best of stereos that time (at least as far as I know) and used to drool if I see any car with that. Had a classy minimalist look to their design.
Another impressive device was the DSP unit from Pioneer with the full display unit. One of dad's friend had the Pioneer full display stereo which can electriclally fold to show a Cassette slot and just below this impressive full display unit was the full display DSP unit. All connected to a 12 CD changer in the boot which way back in the late 90's, was the ultimate sound combo. Hooked this to Alpine amplifier and the 12 inch pioneer sub, 6X9 JBL Decade speaker, Pioneer's 'super' tweeter (not sure which was the front speaker) and to top it off, had a nice looking steering remote. Dang. All this was done in his Opel Astra 'Club' which in it's own right was the good luxury car besides the W124 E class. Good ol memories!

Last edited by rosh_aveo1.4 : 28th May 2018 at 12:59.
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Old 10th January 2019, 14:46   #10
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Re: The 100 most influential car audio products of all time

While most of us here reminisce about the good old infotainment systems with their great haptics and cool electro-mechanical setups, the current in-car screens are getting into the ridiculous category.

With this illogical race for the biggest touch-screen & minimal/no buttons 'experiance' whatever happened to the 'focus on the road while driving' advice!

Quote:
“The screens are the window to the digital world,” said Gorden Wagener, chief design officer for Daimler AG, Mercedes-Benz’s parent. “Screens are the new horsepower.”
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