I recently bought a WagonR and a week had not passed when I found myself searching for the perfect sounding system. In the process I also visited Sony world in Aundh(Pune) to check out the price of the models.
I knew that the gray market prices for car audio systems were considerably lower than the billed ones so I finally landed in the Bhandari Auto showroom on JM Road(Pune). This guy has an excellent system installed in his audio room to demonstrate all the music system and speakers and how they sound in different combinations just by the touch of a few buttons.
He showed me CD systems from Sony, Alpine, Kenwood, Pioneer, Blaupunkt and Nippon in combination with speakers from the same companies. Frankly speaking there was not much difference to distinguish the quality of a CD player since all these were good quality systems and the difference was audible only when he switched from a low wattage (1-2 way)round speaker to a high wattage (2-3 way) oval speaker.
As I researched before going to buy the system, to know about the RMS (Root mean Square) power of a speaker/amplifier is utmost important. The comapnies fool the people by caliberating their speakers/systems in terms of PMPO (which is Peak Music Power Output).
In reality your speakers never run on PMPO because it is simply the peak power that your amplifier/speaker can support for a fraction of a second without bursting or getting short. It is a multiple of RMS multiplied by a factor anywhere from 4 to 70.
So generally if a company claims that the speakers are 500W PMPO, the RMS is most likely to be below 100W. It is the RMS which the system actually delivers. Now since the CD systems are generally 52X4 (4 channels of 52W each) you might be temptmed to think that an overall speaker capacity of 220W should be enough. But that 52W is RMS and not PMPO. So your CD system would actually sound good and realize its potential on speakers who are caliberated at least 200W PMPO (there is no guarantee so do check out the RMS rating of the speakers too or else you might end up damaging your speakers and amplifier in your CD system short).
After all that gyan acquisition I was able to reason out why the Sony system was sounding better on a pair of (6’’x9’’) 350W PMPO Nippon speakers rather than the 200W PMPO Sony xplode speakers while the layman sense suggested that the 200W speakers should be more than enough. The actual power of those Sony speakers would not have been more than 40W.
The front speakers however can’t be so big. One, because there generally is no provision in cars to have big speakers in front. Second, 6’’x9’’ oval speakers in the rear are more than enough to blast your ears if you really require them to. So I went for the combination of Sony CDX F5500 (simply because I have utmost faith in Sony and I liked its looks) + 2 Nippon 3 way (tweeter, speaker and woofer) 6’’x9’’ oval 360W PMPO rear speakers and 2 front Sony Xplode 2 way (tweeter and speaker) 4’’ round 120W PMPO speakers.
From the above discusssion it is evident that 120W PMPO front speakers can in no way be enough to support a 52W RMS channel. This is achieved by balancing the output in the CD system to put more load on the rear ones and less on the front ones.
Now about the player. CDX F5500 is a wonderful system with the above combination and I can hear all sounds from low frequency drums, bass guitar to midrange husky voice of Brayn Adams to high frequency flutes so distinctly that I always am searching for an excuse to drive my car around even if I have to go 100 m.
The features include DSO (Dynamic Sound Organizer which makes one believe that his front speakers are placed much above the dashboard (even though they might be placed below it, 3 band Graphic qualizer (of course there are preset modes), 18 FM and 24 AM station storage, handy littlte remote.
It remebers the point where a particular song has been swiched off and resumes from that point next time it is played. Its compatible with CD changers, has a removable (anti-theft) front panel, is nice looking (specially recommended if the plastics of your car are black).
This sure has been a good buy and I would urge all readers to experiment with a lot of speakers and go for high end ones to really enjoy this system to its capacity.