Having spent over a decade at Harman (Infinity's parent company) I can tell you after hundreds of speaker evaluations and true double blind tests that there are many brands that don't come close. Now with that said, I approach this from a scientific angle that correlates speaker performance measurements to subjective evaluation. So when I see people making claims that it is what you like/sounds good to you I cringe! From an insiders perspective I got to see the factories in asia pumping out garbage drivers with some highly "well known" names. Notice I did not say "top brands", because when you look at the sales data for the industry many of the so called "highly regarded" brands don't even register on the chart. On the other side of the coin one would suspect that brands that are more mainstream (sony, pioneer, ect.) are the big sellers, not so. In fact when I was with Infinity we held the position of number one in sales for several years 8 out 9 hole sizes (pioneer wins the 4x10) with a third of the distribution the number two brand Pioneer had. Number three brand was not even close in sales. That is the reality of the biz.

Remember brands that are "highly regarded" in the 12v industry typically came up through the retailers that are what we call "specialists" (this by no means is an indication of technical talent or audio know how - many are just as bad as mass merchants) and as such the brands take center stage and are promoted as being better because of who sells them. It is really a crock of ****. Where the brand is sold is a function of a marketing strategy and their ability to supply the market along with the financial and technical abilities to do so. Go down the list of those "highly regarded brands" and ask yourself, how many times has that brand been bought and sold, or worse gone bankrupt and sold off the name to someone outside the biz. The results will make you go cross-eyed! Polk is now owned by a company who's background is in alarm systems and remote starters.

The aftermarket audio biz has been in a steady decline for a number of years, while the OEM side has grown considerably! The downfall to the aftermarket is their inability to adapt even when they have a three year head start. The OEM side of the biz (which represents 70%+ of Harman's biz) is bringing significantly more advanced systems to the car that are outpacing the aftermarkets ability to develop radios, dsp processors, and infotainment interfaces that deliver a fraction of the features/benefits. With new legislation passed last week now every car produced starting with the 2018 model year will be required to have a backup camera. Bye bye radio, hello touchscreens in every dashboard! Now what does the aftermarket do? Like they have done in the past they will look to add interfaces and attempt to sell consumers new radios along with high priced dash kits and custom labor. It will not work! Apple has moved Siri into the car and OEMs are going the same for android and a multitude of apps. This is the last frontier before the start of these shops getting out of the biz.

We tried along with a few others to introduce add on multi-channel DSP processors that would allow installers to adapt and retune OEM systems (fact is that the automakers typically have last say in what the car sounds like as they have specific customer profiles they believe have preferences- in other words a great sounding system can be completely screwed up by the car companies), but what we are all finding out is that the aftermarket dealers have not got a clue! It's not a knock on the installers it is knock on the industry's failure to leverage those closest to these systems to bring a significant effort to bear to educate those in the small shops around the world.

There are so many variables to producing a great sounding speaker, and there are measurements that deliver a speaker that a significant cross-section of the population determines to be "good". What sounds good in a display board is not likely to sound the same or even as good when installed in a car. Nuisance variables such as the automotive interior, correctness of installation, and even factory EQ built into the DSP driven amplifiers all impact the final sound. I can tell you I have seen thousands of Infinity and JBL installations that the owners and installer boast as being "good" get a failing grade on the installation and the resulting sound quality because of that one factor, and I am not referring to backyard DIY people either. I have had to fix $10,000 installations because the installer thought it would improve the system by wiring speakers out of phase because he read in some lifestyle magazine that some car owner who placed the tweeter in the corners of the windshield did it and he made it into the magazine, thus I should do that all the time. Or having to rip apart very well done fiberglass trim panels to rebuild subwoofer enclosures that not only were too small, but built from substandard materials or worse yet flexed with every note. The real pain comes from seeing the thousands of amplifier installations and purchase decisions that are bring made blindly. More Power! More Power! is the battle cry along with "can you stuff those amplifiers somewhere out of the way?" by customers. Even installers proclaiming their custom masterpiece featuring 4 amplifiers under plexiglass is awesome, yet the run time on the amps on a 80 degree day is 12 minutes...that won't even get me to work before the system is compromised or shuts down.

So when you choose products look at the application first, then go and listen to them with similar conditions you will deploy them with. Don't listen to the speaker with a 50x4 amplifier behind them if you are going to use the radio to power yours. Be critical and make sure all eqs, bass treble, loudness, and crossovers are turned off. Bring your own music and for all that is holy use material of high quality both in recording/ripping and content. If you are ripping your music at 128kbps STOP! Don't bring in the latest bass cd either because that woofer is not going to do a good job filling the store like it will do in the car. Don't think every car stereo shop is a hip hop pleasure palace, remember your music is not everyone else's music of choice. There is no need for foul language blasted for your enjoyment while others in the story seek to shield their kids.

Great Car Audio is about the faithful reproduction of the art that people worked countless hours to produce. They sat in front of high quality studio monitors and headphones (NOT BEATS ) to make the decision in the mix, they played that back on other good quality and not so good quality speakers to see what it could sound like to the average consumer, and then proclaimed it finished. They delivered the live show with big arrays of professional grade loudspeakers and tens of thousands of watts to drive them. All to trigger an emotional connection between the music and the listener. If your system is not making that happen for you, then something is very wrong!