Re: Hello, Green Horn reporting!
Humara;615084 said:
Hi Relag,
Welcome to the forum.You may be the person Im just looking for. Im thinking of doing up sound system on my bimmer. May need some advice from you on what are the essential stuff I need
Hi Humara, thanks for the warm welcome!
ok basically there's two way to setup an ICE system in a car, I'll try to put it as layman as possible:
Passive Setup:
- This is the most basic type of setup. Basically you'll just need a 2-channel amplifier to drive a set of component spkrs (tweeter + mid-bass). And if you want to have a subwoofer to give u the xtra Ommps, can use another 1-channel amp (also called monoblock) to drive the subwoofer, total requirement is 3-channel. Another way to do it is to use a 4-channel amp to drive everything (2-channel used to drive your left & right spkrs, the other 2 channels bridged them into a single channel to drive the sub-woofer).
Active Setup (2-way):
- Active setup is a little bit different. When I say 2-way speakers it means the component spkrs comes with a tweeter + midbass. Hence what u see is a tweeter sticking out onto your dashboard and the midbass hidding inside your front door panel. When running active setup, you'll usually need more amps or rather channel to drive the spkrs. In fact each spkrs is driven by per channel. Hence a 2-way setup (2 tweeters & 2 mid-bass) requires 4-channel in total. If adding a subwoofer, you'll need another channel so Total all in all is 5-channel.
- Another thing about Active Setup is that the spkrs will go thru a processor to do cross-over, time-alignment or time-delay, using EQ and all the function of the processor to TUNE the sound in order to achieve a well-staged and accurate Tonality effect for the driver.
Hope I have not confuse you up to this stage... haha, basically an active setup offers tunability to the sound while a passive setup usually doesn't as it's not going thru a processor. A well-tuned car can sound like a
Home Audio within the car; of cos you're need professional tuner to achieve that.
Do ask yourself how much you want to spend on ICE. A basic setup with installation (component spkrs + amp + woofer) can cost as low as $700+. A demanding setup can even go up to $20k-50k also or even more... depending on the equipment... However in my opinion, a decent setup with tuning capability should cost ard $3k. So ask yourself what is your budget and I can recommend you stuffs accordingly.
My setup cost ard $10k+ then. However like I said you need not necessary spent so much especially when you know how to do it and what you want to achieve. I didn't regret this setup as I've achieved the sound that I wanted. However I do learnt from the hard way previously of buying things blindly and not achieving what I want.
You can always contact me at ### if you need more advise. Can also come audit my car and hear for yourself that actually Home Audio Quality sound is achieveable within the car and its much much cheaper than playing Home Audio within the house... To me, listening to smooth quality audio while driving to work or home is a great pleasure and relaxation, especially in a well-insulated car like beamer is even a greater enjoyment, haha. Hence if you have the budget and enjoy listening to music, by all means ICE your car!
Ha, hope I've given you some idea. I do have some good lobang on sound system, dun be shy to approach me. Cheers!