Car Audio Central - Ultimate Car Audio Forum and Community

[quote="JeremyC"]And we can blame the car makers for some of the slowdown.

Back in the day you could install a deck in a car for 20 bucks. 10 for the dash adapter, and 10 for the wire harness adapter. Now everything is integrated, so a dash kit cost you 50 to 100 and the wire harness adapter that keeps your door chimes is another 75.

And..

Factory radio's do sound better today than they did 10 years ago. I test drove an Audi S4 with the Bang & Olufsen stereo, and it sounded and staged really well.

You could tell it was tuned for the average listener. The mid bass was way over tuned, (probably to make up for the lack of a true sub) but the imaging from the drivers seat was very well defined.

No its not a replacement for a full on morel / genesis stereo, but it would satisfy 99% of the people that listen to it.

The point is, the economy has changed, and the factory radios have gotten better. So there isn't this big push to swap everything out like there was 10 to 20 years ago.[/quote]

Ah yes, the integrated stuff. I hate this trend, where if you want an aftermarket deck you have to replace most of the fricken dashboard.

And we can blame the car makers for some of the slowdown.

Back in the day you could install a deck in a car for 20 bucks. 10 for the dash adapter, and 10 for the wire harness adapter. Now everything is integrated, so a dash kit cost you 50 to 100 and the wire harness adapter that keeps your door chimes is another 75.

And..

Factory radio's do sound better today than they did 10 years ago. I test drove an Audi S4 with the Bang & Olufsen stereo, and it sounded and staged really well.

You could tell it was tuned for the average listener. The mid bass was way over tuned, (probably to make up for the lack of a true sub) but the imaging from the drivers seat was very well defined.

No its not a replacement for a full on morel / genesis stereo, but it would satisfy 99% of the people that listen to it.

The point is, the economy has changed, and the factory radios have gotten better. So there isn't this big push to swap everything out like there was 10 to 20 years ago.

ya pretty much what Glass said, so many companies went the flash and furious route and just over saturated the market and it just killed it.

But we're still here, and I have no plans on shutting the forum down. We still have the Off Topic area to chat about various things, just need to get more members starting threads.

yeah it is pretty much dead. eCoustics is, too and that place used to get more posts in a day than I could keep up with.
I guess car audio is just in a lull at the moment.

In some ways I'm not too surprised considering the marketing direction many companies have taken, focusing more on the fast and furious chromed out cheaply made mass-produced garbage, and less on high quality, high performance gear. A person can only see so much neon lighting, and chromed flame designs before wanting to hurl.

this used to be a really active board. i stopped in a few times over the last 3 or 4 days and nothing is going on......