You just bought a brand new car. You know the car has all the bells and whistles. It has a brand new top of the line CD and MP3 player, it has leather heated seats, it has tinted windows, and even chrome lining the inside of the dash. However, when you go to turn on that new CD player and turn it up to feel some of thumping this top of the line vehicle has you are less than pleased. Do not worry; you are not the only one this has happened to.
You have to understand one thing about car manufacturers: they do not care a whole lot about the car audio system. Really, they throw in the car speakers wherever possible. For them typically the most logical places are the dash, the doors, and typically in the back of the car somewhere. As well, the placement of the car speakers is not ideal at all.
When you walk into a place to have your new top of the line custom car audio system installed into your new car, the first thing they will ask you is whether you want to have custom placement or factory placement. What they mean by this, is do you want to replace the factories old speakers with up to date speakers that will help with the sound. The other alternative is to do custom placement to make sure the speakers are in the ideal locations for you. Generally if you are looking for a better sound quality you will want to go with custom placement for the reasons mentioned above.
So where is the ideal location for your car audio speakers? Much like when you go to setup surround sound in your home, you want the speakers to be an equal distance apart. Those speakers in front of you being all the way across the room while the back ones are right at your ears will only allow you to hear those closest to you. Those in front of you are typically drowned out and you do not get the true feeling of surround sound. The same problem applies in factory installation of most car audio systems. The back speakers are so far in the back and the ones on the dash are so close to you the effect of getting good sound quality from all the speakers is almost impossible. Custom speaker placement typically moves those back speakers up to underneath the back seat. This will help with getting those speakers closer to an equal distance away from you.
Lastly, you will want to make sure that the speakers are lifted up above the floor somehow. Having speakers directly on the floor often leads to a dampening effect. This is one of the reasons custom boxes were developed is so that you could get the speakers up of the floor as high as possible. This will give a louder and more clear sound than what you would have with speakers just mounted almost level to the floor.
