Five Questions to Ask When Buying New Car Speakers

New car speakers can really improve the quality of your in-car stereo system. It can make the whole experience more pleasant and fun. It’s especially important if you spend a lot of time in your car, as many of us do.

Choosing new car speakers is relatively straightforward. By asking and answering the following five questions, you will help to ensure that you buy the best speakers for your car.

Question 1: How much money are you willing to spend?Clearly, the first thing that you will need to do is to work out your budget. If you don’t know how much you have to spend, you don’t know where to look. Setting your budget makes it easy to narrow down your search. There are hundreds of different types of car speakers UK, so anything that narrows the choices will help you to make the right decision. It will also stop you from overspending, or from being bullied by pushy shop assistants.

Question 2: Are you prepared to modify your car?

The next thing you want to consider is whether you're prepared to modify your car to accommodate new speakers. It could be that you find the perfect speakers, but that they don’t fit in the space correctly. In this case, you will need to cut into the car door in order to create the additional space.

However, if this seems like too much effort, or it’s too expensive, then you can instead choose ‘drop ins’. As the name implies, ‘drop ins’ are speakers that simply slot into the old speaker mounts. These speakers have generic sizes, and are standardised across the UK market. For instance, a common size is 6 by 9s (which are actually, 6.5 inches by 9 inches, but that's not as catchy to say!).

Question 3: Do you want to buy separates or coaxial speakers?

There are two different types of speaker boxes, so let’s look at each in turn:

1.Separates (also called component) speakers: here, the tweeter (which produces high frequency sounds) and the woofer (which produces low frequency sounds) have separate cases. Effectively, they are two completely different speakers.

The benefit of separates is that they produce a far better sound quality than the coaxial speakers do. However, they have a big draw back when it comes to car speaker UK: they take up a lot of space. if you want separates, you need to have space in the car to accommodate them.

2.Coaxial speakers: here, the tweeter and the woofer are found in the same speaker unit, and effectively appear as a single unit.

The benefit of this type of speaker is that they fit comfortably in the car. However, they aren’t as high quality as the component speakers, and you can end up with some distortion and refraction at higher volumes. Nonetheless, modern versions are very good, and they remain the most popular choice for in-car speakers.

Finally, there is a third type of speaker, the subwoofer. This is always an adjunct to the woofer and tweeters, and isn’t necessarily essential. However, without one, you won’t hear the very low bass tones. The major issue here is that they are large, and very few car owners will install them because they take up too much boot space.