How to Get the Most Out Your Current Car OEM Sound System Without Spending a Single Penny

Summary:

Cycle through your EQ while boosting and cutting frequencies to fit your needs.

Use the fader to get an even sound throughout your vehicle.

Not everyone has the time to disassemble their car, or spend money to install a whole new sound system in their vehicle but would like to get the most out of what they currently have in their vehicle. In this article, we will go through what you can do to improve your OEM sound system.

1.) Before You Start

2.) How to Use Your Equaliser

3.) Cycle Through Your EQ

4.) Adjust the Fader (MORE BASS!)

5.) Note on Audio Sources

6.) Conclusion

Before You Start:

If you already made adjustments in your audio settings, I recommend setting everything to zero so that you know how your sound system sounds when everything is "flat" so you have a level foundation to start on.

How to Use Your Equalizer

We will start with your equalizer. Generally speaking, OEM car stereos have three simple adjustments, Bass, Mid, and Treble.

A Jeep Cherokee's audio option's screen with the equalizer is shown here. The treble was too overpowering in this car, so the treble was cut. The mids were brought down as well for better bass response and the bass was boosted a little bit for more punch and depth.

The bass controls (sometimes labeled as low) control the bass. When adjusting the bass, it can be fun to crank it up all the way, but just be careful when you turn up the volume as you can damage the speakers as the radio could start to clip (which sounds like an awful knocking or loud distorted sound.)

Mid will boost (increase) or cut (decrease) mid-range frequencies. Mid-range frequencies are the frequencies between bass and treble. Mid-range frequencies are responsible for the majority of vocals, distortion guitar sounds, saxophones, and, believe it or not, plays a very important role for the kick drum to make them sound more punchy. Sometimes, OEM radios do not have mid controls (which I think is a sin,) but for the average listener, you can still make a noticeable difference with bass and treble controls.

The treble knob (sometimes labeled as high) is responsible for the higher frequencies of the sound spectrum. These would be responsible for cymbals, guitars, and the upper end of our voices. All modern cars have some sort of high-frequency speaker what we call a tweeter. These tend to be either on the dash or in the door trim panel.

If you are lucky enough to have a graphic equalizer on your OEM radio, this article does an excellent job walking through how to use it to its full advantage to make your system sound awesome.

Example of a tweeter in the door trim panel

THIS IS IMPORTANT:

When it comes to adjusting your EQ, if you have the ability to control the mids, you will want to try to cut frequencies and not boost them whenever applicable to prevent unwanted distortion or clipping at higher volumes. If you are a bass head, you would not have to set the bass level as high either and can keep it lower to help prevent the amp from clipping or distorting, increasing the life of your speakers.

Cycle Through the EQ

From there, cycle through the EQ boosting and cutting the Bass, Mids, and Treble to familiarize yourself with what each one does and see what sounds better to YOUR ears. Ultimately, it is down to your personal taste in how you want your music to sound. Feel free to continue to go through the EQ until you feel like you reached the sound you like.

Adjust the Fader

This, in my opinion, is the most important phase of trying to make your car sound better. The fader "moves" the sound from the front of the car to the back and vice-versa. When sitting in your car, close your eyes and listen for where the sound is coming from. Do you hear more sound coming from the front or the rear?

Modern cars with touchscreens have a very nice display showing how your system is currently set.

Since there are typically no tweeters near ear level in the rear on standard OEM sound systems, treble and upper mids have a tough time getting to your ears which in turn can make most of the sound may seem like it is coming from the front of your vehicle making the back of your car sound empty. In turn, this can make the sound not as full. If you fade the sound to the back more, that will start to fill the sound void and will seem more full to the people in the front seat.

That's why here at Austin White Audio we install separate tweeters and woofers whenever applicable to help create a much fuller sound in the vehicle where several other sources recommend putting in coaxial speakers since no one sits in the rear, but in reality, there is a major gap in the rear seating area that needs to be filled for the front seats as well. Check out how we design sound systems.

Example of a tweeter that was installed by us. After the tweeter was installed, the sound void was filled in quite a bit resulting in a very full sound that was not lacking any sound anywhere.

MORE BASS by Fading

For you bass heads! A great way to get more bass is to fade the sound more to the rear which will give the illusion that you are getting more bass since those speakers are getting more power and are getting driven to their full potential. Sony even based one of their radios off of this concept where you have the option to send only bass frequencies to your rear speakers.

Note on Audio Sources

Doing all of these things will only do so much to improve your car's sound system. One of the biggest deciding factors is where you are getting your music from. The lowest quality setting on Spotify will not sound good. Period. While it does save on data, it will not preserve quality. While this topic deserves its own article, having a higher quality source will usually improve the sound of your system without touching your radio.

Conclusion

By cycling through the EQ while boosting and cutting bands, along with messing with the fader to get a fuller sound, there can still be plenty of potential for your OEM sound system without spending a cent. Are there any other tricks you would like to share? Feel free to leave them down below for all of us to learn a few more tricks.