Is car audio dying?

[Nophix]

I'm going to date myself, but I remember playing Top Gear on an SNES on an early LCD, while sitting at a car show in High School. It was great!

[soundstream15]

Everyone is right, the prob is..I wanna get loud but don't wanna spend a lot of money, well sir we got a prob! It doesn't work like that. Although Craigslist is a good idea for car audio at a cheap price, a lot of it is shit but ppl these days believe anything and when they say how loud it is, it's the best ect ect. When it's actually shit! But I don't think it's dying;)

[Achaleon]

Another thing or 2 I have noticed.. A lack of long term commitment. Meaning. I see alot of people start out with "holy shit i have to have those subs" Thinking they can go to best buy and spend 6 weeks worth of paychecks, install it in an afternoon and be at 160db overnight.

When they realize all the work it takes to do a 'cool' hair trick and break windshields they walk away from car audio all together..

OR

The rare event someone does have a passion for car audio but gets overwhelmed with all the info out there and gets flamed and made fun of for asking a 'basic' question decides to say F it and walks back over to his xbox to play a game with his friends that dont make fun of him. Not so much here on this forum as the mods are pretty strict about it. But ive seen some nasty forums/communities before..

[n8ball2013]

you know what else has killed it as much as helped it? The explosion of the internet. It made everyone an expert. You got guys who can't install their way to the garage in the morning as part of the face of car audio. You also have the experts whove never built anything over two 12s in a trunk telling guys who've done 160s what they should be doing. You never even have to leave your seat to see what 160s can do to a vehicle. before you had to go to a show to see that kind of thing. Now guys are afraid to go to shows because they spend hours running their mouth on the internet and are afraid of getting punched in it. Theyd also get called out for having a rag tag ass system and damage their internet rep.

[Herokight]

The problem i see today is the cookie cutter gear being pumped out of china and korea flooding the market with the basically the same gear only different casing as the next company.

I hate to say it but i sometimes prefer to go with the older known companies with a solid reputation for quality and reliability vs some of the other offerings out there that have yet to prove themselves over the long haul.

There is this. Many people are getting sucked into name brands. I was one of them until I got on SMD. I've tried explaining that to alot of people, but they won't ever listen.

I think i actually got a lot more sucked into car audio when I found out just how many things went into designing a good system. The first system I put together was a Type R 12 in a prefab on a Polk amplifier. That was about a year and a half ago. Then I heard my first real system back in June and I was no longer satisfied with my little system. I went online and started looking around, and I just got sucked in by all the different aspects that just went into a sub-stage. So I think for some people all the work may be a deterrent, but there are definitely people out there that are exactly the opposite.

The work involved is a huge deterrent for some people. I had many friends that thought it was so dumb that I spent so much time working on my car when they just threw a sub in and went. People don't realize that true results aren't easy to achieve, and not too many people want to put in the work to get those results. MOST people wnat an easy way out these days, instead of working hard and taking pride in their work.

I don't think it's necessarily dying. It does seem to have slowed, but think back to other hobbies you've had. Weren't there up and down cycles with them? I know it's happened in all of mine. I thought everyone had quit skateboarding, but it started to come back. I thought paintball had died out, but it slowly made a comeback. I believe between the diehard fanatics building ground pounders and the everyday novices just putting in small systems there should be enough people to keep it alive.

And on the being obnoxious thing, I only bumped really loud at a stop light once, and it was because the soccer mom next to me had her windows down/system up singing along with some shit. I didn't wanna hear it, so I drowned her out. She wasn't very happy about it.

[lolitskasey]

I go to to one of the riches high schools in the state, and out of 450 kids that drive (really nice cars) only 3 of us have good systems, I have the loudest with only 1000k, they think a good system is a only a nice head unit, so yes its dying.

There is a couple of people from alaska on this forum that have some pretty loud setups. Loudest i have heard up here was nates AKA (Mostar) i think he hit a 150 at the image audio comp last year. Alaska is just a small audio scene, maybe when i finish my setup i can scare some people with just 2 little 12s

[Aidan Hansen]

I certainly hope this isn't true. I want some more comps and etc.

[Skullz]

I don't think car audio has died nearly as quickly as some of the other hobbies out there have done over the last decade, but without a doubt it has declined to a point of concern. I was into RC airplanes for many years back in the 90's till we were forced from our field cause of new development and the new residents were not happy with the sound of buzzing engines overhead most of the day. It basically gutted our membership to nothing and forced us to find another field most of us were not willing to travel to.

[WastedTalent]

There is this. Many people are getting sucked into name brands. I was one of them until I got on SMD. I've tried explaining that to alot of people, but they won't ever listen.

I don't think it's necessarily dying. It does seem to have slowed, but think back to other hobbies you've had. Weren't there up and down cycles with them? I know it's happened in all of mine. I thought everyone had quit skateboarding, but it started to come back. I thought paintball had died out, but it slowly made a comeback. I believe between the diehard fanatics building ground pounders and the everyday novices just putting in small systems there should be enough people to keep it alive.

And on the being obnoxious thing, I only bumped really loud at a stop light once, and it was because the soccer mom next to me had her windows down/system up singing along with some shit. I didn't wanna hear it, so I drowned her out. She wasn't very happy about it.

I agree with the name brand things. I never knew of sundown, skar, dc, fi, aa, ect...until I joined here. Granted, i still don't have any of that but I know about them now. And I throw those names out to locals and "what the hell is that?" no one's heard of dc, the sub company. They always think that's the skateboarding DC. lol.

Idk if what you listed as far as hobbies came back. I mean there was the Tony Hawk explosion, and now it seems gone. Sure, it does still exist and still competitions and such but, it dwindled. There were video games, shows, everything about it. Now? X-games and that's it.

I did the same thing about the stop light. Lol. I had mine low, this girl next to me was singing along with her music that I didn't want to hear so I turned mine up. Not super loud but enough to drown her out. She turned hers up so I turned mine up and stock can't compete with what I have. She got pissed so she floored it. Well, I caught up and passed her. She wasn't happy about that either. Hit every damn red light possible and yeah. Good times...

[Aidan Hansen]

I actually went to the bank today and was making a deposit and all of the sudden someone asks in a mustang next to me with the top down about my team and we started talking right there and he of course had one 15 in a sealed prefab box on what looked like a infinity amp and he said he was getting 2000 watts to the sub and he turned it up a bit and I was thinking he's lying somewhere. However, he seemed to be nice and all which also reminds me there's allot of bassheads out there. They just haven't found out about the forums and etc.

I've seen allot of car audio in cars in town but yet never see them on the forums or at comps and etc.

Just gotta get the word out!