[JMT]

It is short for "heck-uva". What they really mean is "h**l-uva, which is shortened to h**l-a. But they don't want to swear.

Example: "Dad, those headphones are heck-a cool."

Translation: "Dad, those Grado SR-225s will provide you a very detailed sound, some would call it almost to bright and fatiguing. They match up very nicely with certain types of music. They look very retro from a styling perspective. I believe that I would like you to buy me a pair too."

So I can live with heck-a.

 

[joelongwood]

Teaching in a junior high, I'm used to the full version........and a heck-a lot worse!

 

[mbriant]

Getting back to car stereos, I've found in the past and with my present car, that the stock speakers are usually not too bad and that by simply adding a clean, high powered amp (true high powered amp measured at 1% THD rather than 10%) they can actually sound quite good. Especially if you also add a subwoofer and crossover to take the low end load off of the stock speakers.

Saves a lot of money on buying new speakers all round and then having to have them installed.

 

[dhwilkin]

Good advice. My stock speakers don't usually start sounding bad until I try to raise the volume louder than usual, meaning they need more juice.

Question: Is there any such thing as a musical car subwoofer, and if so, which ones are they?

 

[Deuce_Bigalow]

I've wondered the same thing. My friends just want the loudest ****tiest bass. If I get an all out stereo in my car it's gonna be a good one. Good separate tweeters and midrange and probably just 1 subwoofer. Is it true that the bigger the subwoofer the deeper the bass? Therefore would it be better to go with 1 12" sub instead of like 2 8" or 2 10"? 1 sub would be plenty loud enough, I don't want enough bass to show off, just enough to sound good in the car.

I'd have to wait to get a new car first anyways, the 83 Grand Prix won't take much vibrating b4 it falls apart totally.

 

[neil]

Back when we were kids, Jude had a Pontiac Lemans with a pair of house speakers in the hatchback. I don't remember who manufactured them, but they sounded fantastic. I mean, it was bassy, but they had good ole' house speaker quality sound.. and shoot, that had to be a super cheap rig (compared to what car audio nuts pay for) and it sounded fantastic.

Like Jude says, I pretty much break everything I own -- so my indirect way of breaking these speakers was just to crash the car.

 

[mbriant]

quote:

"Question: Is there any such thing as a musical car subwoofer, and if so, which ones are they?"

I don't know how musical true subwoofers can be, but it's my understanding that the smaller the woofer, the faster it's potential attack time. It's starts woofing a split second sooner (and therefore closer to when it's supposed to) than it's larger counterpart. Also, depending on where you put your crossover frequency, a small subwoofer can also handle some of the lowest end woofer duties.

Unless you're out to shake up the whole neighbourhood, you don't need too much in the way of subwoofers in your car.

My minivan has a single 10" Denon subwoofer in a portable box, driven by a high quality 100 watt Denon amp (fan cooled) and it's got more than enough oomph in my opinion. A pair of eights may even be better. A 12" or 15" woofer will go lower, but again, how low do you need to go inside a car?

neil: I have a friend who used to own a chain of car audio stores. He once disassembled a pair of the top of the line B&W loudspeakers ( I forget the model number but they cost several thousand dollars and had the tweeter mounted separately on top of the cabinet.) and installed the crossovers, tweeters and drivers in his Jaguar. Sounded pretty good.

My first car, an Austin 1100, had a Lear Jet 8-track player hooked up to a small amp with a pair of "Bass 48" 6" round mids and a 2 x 12" guitar speaker cabinet in the back seat for woofers. It didn't exactly have a flat frequency response, but it rocked.

 

[bpm2000]

The size of the woofer doesnt neccessarily make it "faster" or "tighter". Different designs, contruction, etc all affect the outcome of bass. Most people find sealed designs to be "tighter" due to their usually low group delay, although ported designs can have just the same or lower gd to tuning.

 

[mbriant]

You're absolutely right bpm2000, size of woofer doesn't NECESSARILY make it faster or tighter. I used the word "potential".

If you were to use an identical amp on an 8" sub and say a 12" sub, from the same line, design, and manufacturer, the 8" would be faster or tighter simply because it had less mass to move.

 

[sackley]

I didn't put too much money into my car stereo, but I knew I had to do something when all my 86 Toyota pickup had was an analogue AM/FM radio. There wasn't even a freaking cassette player. So I went out and got an Alpine CD deck, a pair of Rockford Fosgate 4" for under the dash, pair of MTX tweaters, Rockford and Fosgate 50 X 2 amp, and a pair of 8"subs. Overall, it sounds much better than the system I had before and the best part is that it isn't a duh-m-bass system.

 

[Voyager]

Has anyone seen the Mark Levinson/Lexus car in Stereophile? I think that might be a good car radio.