Yesterday I took the day off since I need to burn off some vacation time before the end of the year. I can only carry a year's worth over to the next year and, as I haven't taken many vacation days this year, I'm at risk of losing some time if I don't use it up. Naturally, I used the day to spend money.
When I bought my current car over a year ago, one of the first things I did was replace the stock stereo with a better one. The new kit included a CD-deck that can play MP3 and WMA files on CD's I've burned as well as regular CD's, four good speakers (one in each door), and a 200 watt amplifier to power the speakers. The deck I bought has a separate output for a subwoofer and it was always my intention of adding one to the setup.
Well, that's what I did yesterday. I went on up to the local Car Toys store, from which I had purchased the original stereo kit (and an alarm, and a set of foglamps), and had them set me up.
Why add a subwoofer? Well, the speakers in the car are 6 inches in diameter for the front pair and 5 inches for the rear. They're good speakers and they sound great but their size limits how well they reproduce bass frequencies. They just can't move enough air. A subwoofer does two things. First, it produces those lower frequencies the regular speakers just can't put out. Second, since those lower frequencies aren't going through the amplifier and to the speakers anymore, it frees up the power that was wasted on failing to reproduce them and lets the amp use it for the frequencies they can reproduce. The subwoofer has its own separate amplifier designed for that role.
The rig I bought consists of a 310 watt amplifier and a sealed box containing two 10 inch diameter subwoofer drivers. It's not uncommon for the subwoofer amplifier to be more powerful than the amp that powers the speakers. It sounds great. In fact -- and here's why I titled this post as I did -- it's too much. In order for the subwoofer not to overwhelm the rest of the system, I have to crank it down quite a bit. The control on the deck that sets the subwoofer's relative volume goes from something like -6 to 6 with zero in the middle. I need to run it at -3 or -4 or else it's too loud. If I want, I can really crank it up and rattle windows as I drive by but that's not what I want, and it sounds crappy. Instead I want clean, tight bass to round out the lower-end and fill out the sound.
Knowing what I know now, having listened to it for a while, I should have gone with a setup with a lower-power amplifier and a single driver, or two smaller drivers. Not to mention that the speaker enclosure takes up some room in the trunk. This is a working car; I use it to haul groceries home from the store and such so more room is better. I'm going to call them up tomorrow and see if maybe I can "trade down" to something a bit more sedate. I called today but neither of the guys who worked with me yesterday are in today; they'll be back tomorrow. I'll write about what happens in a later post.
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