Is it best to use the same brand of audio equipment in your car?

Question

If im getting a stereo, amp, 5 1/4" speakers, 5"x7" speakers, and a 10" sub is it gonna sound better if it is all the same brand or can i cut corners and get some different brands that might have the same power or the power that im actually looking for, for a cheaper price

Answer 1

it doesn't matter what brand you get as long is not bootleg.

Answer 2

its far from necessary but in some cases it does make for a better sounding system-- the radio does not have to match anything

for your inside speakers you want a few things to be as close as possible--

1-sensitivity-- A speaker with a sensitivity rating that's 3 dB higher than another speaker's only needs half as much power to deliver the same amount of sound.

2-RMS wattage

3-frequency response- you want the speakers to be able to hit the same low and high notes

when it comes to car audio nine times out of ten you get what you pay for- and you need to look for CEA-compliant brands which means that the amps have been tested and produce or exceed the advertised RMS wattage with minimum distortion (distortion over time is the main cause of speaker damage)

with non CEA-compliant brands you are lucky to get half of the advertised RMS wattage if you are lucky and its more than likely distorted, and if you don't know the "real" wattage then its IMPOSSIBLE the PROPERLY match your subs an amp

this is what happens

If you send too much power to your sub, you risk damaging it. The cone of the speaker and the mechanical parts that make it move may break under the stress. Surprisingly, too little power can also damage your subwoofer — in fact, it's actually more common than damage caused by overpowering.

When the volume is turned up and the amp doesn't have enough power, the signal becomes distorted, or "clipped." This distorted signal can cause parts of the speaker to overheat, warp and melt. Not good!

You don't have to match speaker and amp wattages exactly. An amp with a higher output than the speaker's rating won't necessarily damage the speaker — just turn the amp down a bit if you hear distortion from the sub and don't run the speaker at extremely loud volumes for lengthy periods. Likewise, you'll be OK with a lower powered amp if you keep the volume down and don't feed a distorted signal to the sub

you will send the amp into clipping

Clipping

Clipping occurs when an amplifier is asked to deliver more current to a speaker than the amp is capable of doing. When an amplifier clips, it literally cuts off the tops and bottoms of the musical waveforms that it's trying to reproduce, thus the term. This introduces a huge amount of distortion into the output signal. Clipping can be heard as a crunching sound on musical peaks.

that causes distorted sound which will damage your subs

here are the top CEA-compliant brands

Alpine

Bazooka

Blaupunkt

Clarion

Eclipse

Infinity

JBL

JL Audio

JVC

Kenwood

Kicker

MTX

Pioneer

Polk Audio

PPI

Rockford Fosgate

Sony

when you get CEA-compliant brands you know the specs you read are true and it makes mixing and matching of brands easier

Answer 3

It really isn't a problem to mix and match components. As long as you use the same model in pairs for the front and rear.

Just because you use one brand in the front doesn't mean that you have to use the same brand in the rear.

Answer 4

Totally fine. You do, however want both front speakers one brand and both back speakers one brand. Otherwise front can be different from back, sub can be different from those, amps can be totally different that all of the others. The speakers don't care where the sound comes from it just likes to have the right wattage going in.

Hope this helps.

Answer 5

You get what you pay for