Car audio is going through a change. It happened in living rooms across America five years ago and is now occurring in cars. Your vehicle is rapidly becoming a car theater. DVD, surround sound, video screens, PS2s, all these are becoming more commonplace in the featured installations of this magazine's pages.
The evolution we're seeing right now has had a direct hand in the resurgence of the center channel. Cars from the 50s and 60s only had one speaker and it was in the center. Today we have stereo, but we may be missing out on something.
The problem with stereo in a car is that you sit closer to one speaker than the other. The distance from your ear to the speaker is called pathlength. Differences in pathlengths cause the sound to seem louder on the left (if you are in the driver's seat) than on the right. As well, you get a myriad of phase problems.
Actually, the whole problem started back in the 50s when Bell Labs was researching the best way to reproduce sound from more than one speaker. At the time, everything was mono. Their research actually led them to take the center channel out of cars!
Changing With TechnologyNew format adds a twist to Sound QualityThe sound-off arena has sure made some great strides since the first national Finals back in the mid 1980's. The first finals spawned a new sport for the Mobile Electronics industry that not only shows off the best sounding vehicles with state of the art installations, but it has helped the industry grow in many ways. Events have become more than just parking lot events. They have turned into huge gatherings for manufacturers to sell their products.
At these events, anyone and everyone is allowed to proudly show off their wares and compete against one another. Year in and year out, competitors from throughout the country gather enough points to qualify for the Finals. This National competition forum has gone worldwide recently and brought over serious competitors from Canada and overseas.
The first few years experienced many changes in the rules and how vehicles were judged. The rules back in the day were very basic and if you look at what rules were then and what they are now, you will notice how the competition forum has matured. Rules for safety have been added and consistent changes in sound quality judging have made competing more challenging. The combination of the rules and the trained judges is how a champion is crowned every year. Of late no major changes have been made and competing seems to have gotten stale.