Stereo / Audio System Brand - Poll

[E90400K]

Scott is a kid from the '80s, I'll bet on Alpine.

 

[smrpilot]

Scott is a rich kid from the '80s, I'll bet on Alpine.

Yeah, Francis. You got the '22 Bronco with the improved audio system after the first year blunders. Good for you.

 

[smrpilot]

I followed the Bronco gestation from the reveal onward. I was an original Reservationist (Sept. 2020). I lived the Bronco rollout and updates. The '22 Bronco did not get an audio upgrade.

I did as well. Day 1 reservation, and took delivery 12/21, last model week for the 21 model 2door. The first 2door to a customer at my dealership other than their demo Bronco (OB with the B&O). The later delivery's did sound better for whatever reason.

But the stereo was bad, the dealer agreed it was bad, but there wasn't a solution from Ford. So I paired up some marine grade 4"speakers, some bypass filters, a little jbl sub to stuff under the drivers seat and was good to go. Yes, the Bronco is loud and pointless to go overboard on.

 

[Dive Bar Casanova]

Used to be "No Highs or Lows, it must be Bose" but Bose' in out past 4 vehicles have been excellent.
Big complaints in the Blazer EV is the poor quality Sound system.

I've never had good experiences at aftermarket Sound shops and hope to avoid them with the Scout purchase.

 

[Dive Bar Casanova]

Scott is a kid from the '80s, I'll bet on Alpine.

Renown for eating cassette tapes.

 

[maynard]

Renown for eating cassette tapes.

I remember that!

 

[E90400K]

Used to be "No Highs or Lows, it must be Bose" but Bose' in out past 4 vehicles have been excellent.
Big complaints in the Blazer EV is the poor quality Sound system.

I've never had good experiences at aftermarket Sound shops and hope to avoid them with the Scout purchase.

That quote was from people who didn't know how to properly place 901's in their listening room and used them backwards facing. ???

 

[Dive Bar Casanova]

The Bose' in our Mazda 6 is fantastic and the Bose' in our 2024 Denali is fantastic.
Whats not kept up with others is our factory tailgate mounted Kicker.

 

[Dive Bar Casanova]

I remember that!

It was a golden age of auto stereo back then.

We had a Alpine dedicated to the product sound shop here in town. Alpine signs out front and dedicated displays and listening rooms,, all Alpine.
The mere mention of the cassette devouring the owner would go into fits.

He flipped his appointment book open trying to prove me wrong and on an entire page of customers half the work tickets were booked for eating cassettes and the others were for all kinda mulligans.

Caught with his pants down.

I had a Pioneer Super Tuner back then in my truck and it did as claimed. Really brought in the stations. Clarion was a big name too.

BMW stood for Break My Window for thefts of the Blaupunkt radios.

 

[Dive Bar Casanova]

That quote was from people who didn't know how to properly place 901's in their listening room and used them backwards facing. ???

Probably so, we've always liked ours. Never any issues and always sounds amazing.

My sister is a sound fanatic.
She collects old radios. Fantastic collection, every one with a story.

Also has that metal tubular speaker Bose was selling for years if anyone remembers.
I forget the name of it and can't Google up a pic.

One white Bakelite radio she has was for hospital rooms and only accepts Liberty Dimes to operate. Really cool.

Sister once worked for Ampex but was pink-slipped with an entire division because they saw no future in home video recording and sold their VHS and Betamax tech to the parent of Panasonic in Japan.

Then she worked for Xerox but was again laid off because Xerox saw no future with their Personal and office Computers and sold the PC Tech to SUN.

She then invested in this little coffee shop down the street that was going National. She is now known locally as the Fifth Beatle of Starbucks.

 

[E90400K]

Probably so, we've always liked ours. Never any issues and always sounds amazing.

My sister is a sound fanatic.
She collects old radios. Fantastic collection, every one with a story.

Also has that metal tubular speaker Bose was selling for years if anyone remembers.
I forget the name of it and can't Google up a pic.

One white Bakelite radio she has was for hospital rooms and only accepts Liberty Dimes to operate. Really cool.

Sister once worked for Ampex but was pink-slipped with an entire division because they saw no future in home video recording and sold their VHS and Betamax tech to the parent of Panasonic in Japan.

Then she worked for Xerox but was again laid off because Xerox saw no future with their Personal and office Computers and sold the PC Tech to SUN.

She then invested in this little coffee shop down the street that was going National. She is now known locally as the Fifth Beatle of Starbucks.

None of the Alpine CD players I installed in my older BMWs ever ate a cassette tape...

 

[Dive Bar Casanova]

None of the Alpine CD players I installed in my older BMWs ever ate a cassette tape...

All ours did.

 

[Jim]

My Nissan Titan has the Rockford Fosgate upgrade and it’s awesome. They still around?

 

[SchnauzerDad]

If I had a choice of "none of the above" I would have picked that. Actually the stereo in my lowly Fisker is really good. Probably the second best of any car stereo I've had across a ton of cars (Panasonic 3d system). The worst? The Meridian system in my wife's 2017 FPace. Sounded like garbage. Her new 2025 Fpace is still a Meridian but sounds way better.

I have some opinions, but that's all that means. But to reference some of that, I am a professional sound engineer, have owned a live sound reinforcement company for almost 40 years, have 4 patents in the sound industry and one of those is in high frequency dispersion in line arrays. I also custom design speakers for clients/venues/schools and churches and design them for whatever they want the speakers to do (mainly line arrays).

There are no speaker police when it comes to what's in a car. Brands means nothing except for very spendy systems like Naim, etc, where the huge price increase makes them put their money where their mouth is. In the Pro-audio world I can give examples of "high end" companies that use cheap drivers and I also can give examples of medium grade companies that use excellent drivers and everything in between. You just have to know what you're looking at and be inquisitive on what's inside. Bean counters are a large part of what goes into the final product.

Very basic here, you can almost assuredly bet that a paper cone driver is not going to be as good as a rubberized or carbon fiber cone. Audax and Faital make some really great woofers and HF drivers. And there's a bunch of Italian companies that make great drivers too. But since the general public doesn't know what's in the door, then the car company can put in whatever they want and hope you'll not complain. Since many newer cars have digital audio pre-amps and lot's of magic, they can just EQ the crap out of things hoping to polish a turd. And add reverb and delay effects to further color the sound hoping you'll like that effect.

What is unfortunate is expecting the sound system to sound good when you might be feeding it crap. The system really only has a chance (even having great speakers and amps) when you can use a real CD, or get into it via Bluetooth with high resolution audio, at least MP4 and/or direct USB connection (or flashdrive with the previous mentioned). Expecting a radio station to sound good with highly compressed severly tweaked audio is not going to be good. Or, expecting great sound with free streaming audio. You get what you pay for. Pandora premium is substantially better sounding (clearer highs and real lows) over their free stream, as an example.

There are way way too many things that can alter good sound, just trying to give my 2 cents in the shortest paragraphs.

Hoping they have an audio upgrade option for at least speakers with (waterproof) rubberized or carbon fiber cones.

 

[Jim]