I’ve always enjoyed car audio for the pure joy of just cruising down the road and listening to some tunes. In my past, I’ve decked out a Honda with 1000 watts RMS of audio POWER. That was a bit of overkill and a surefire waste of money as a college student, but I do kind of miss it now. I’m not planning to do that again but I would like to have something other than Cds and FM radio as my inputs! Right now I’m using an FM transmitter that hooks up my phone over bluetooth. It works great for the daily commute since driving through the mountains blocks out most radio stations, leaving me with a clear signal locally. But on road trips, it’s a pain to swap through stations until I find something that works and then adjust it again as I enter a new area. It’s kind of just always shit unless I’m really avoiding developed areas. At best it’s inconvenient but at least it works.
Anyways, I’ve got a potential drive coming up from LA to SLC which is about an 11 hour trek in which I definitely want simple music playback. So I’m thinking about ordering an Alpine head unit from Crutchfield and being done. Having the option for preamp output down the road might be nice once the car and student loans are paid off. But for now, simply using bluetooth, usb, and Aux natively in the car would be great. Anybody have other car stereo head unit suggestions? I’d be spending around $100 on the Alpine but I’d stretch the budget if it was worth it.
And yeah ordering a nice catback from Perrin or something would be a MUCH better way to improve the “sound system” in my car. That boxer burble would definitely help me feel good. But I quite like having this as my “quiet” highway friendly car. That costs even more money though so I’ll wait on that one (impatiently).