Miami Car Audio

With more and more vehicles coming from the factory, with radios that have features I say yes, but there are definitely some do's that you want to consider and some don'ts that you want to avoid, especially with all the advancements in head unit technology. I'mark, welcome to Car Audio Fabrication, and in the show we're together we learn how to master car audio and how to design, build, and install our dream car audio system. Let's talk, my opinion, on do's and don'ts for upgrading our radio in today's day and age. So the first do, do make sure that the aftermarket head unit is going to fit and be compatible with your ve I wanted to get this out of the way first because a lot of We definitely want to make sure an aftermarket head unit is compatible with our ve On the Crutchfield website you enter the year make and model of your ve Not only that, Crutchfield has done a ton of research to determine exactly what will also fit in your ve In my opinion, Crutchfield is the best website for doing your research on when it comes to making t I actually use them for a long, long time before they were ever a sponsor of the channel, before t If Next up, a don't. Don'the reason I mention this is I feel The reason it can be advantageous to pick a new head unit that does not have a CD player built in is a lot of times the actual depth of the head unit itself in the dash is a lot more shallow. This can be a great thing when it comes to installing the radio because a lot of times with all these new harnesses that we need to add in order to retain things So rather than having to kind of jam everyt Another t And when you get rid of the CD player, you no longer have moving parts. In my opinion, it just seems So the next don't for picking a new head unit, don't fall for deals that seem too good to be true. I mentioned t In my opinion, and from what I've heard from a lot of different car audio industry veterans, a lot of these Android based head units just aren't very good quality. It might be true, they might have a ton of features, but a lot of them seem to be very, very slow. A lot of them seem to have issues where they completely lock up. They seem to be slow on booting. There seems to be a lot more issues with buying these up and coming brands than buying from brands that are well known and established. In my personal experience, I've had good luck with manufacturers Again, I'm just giving Next up, a do. Do make sure that your new head unit has the outputs that you want to use. Many times when we're upgrading our car audio system, we're going to be adding things So that means that we might want some outputs, some RCA signal outputs, to send the signal from our head unit to our amplifier. To me, the standard is you want to have fronts, rears, and subwoofer outputs at minim But there is another very important output that I really, really wish more manufacturers would get on board with using, and that is using an optical output. The reason for t And having a single connection going from your aftermarket head unit to a DSP or an amplifier, that'somet Not only is it only one connection, it is also a significantly better connection. Staying in the digital domain between our source unit and our DSP or amplifier is somet There is currently one from Sony, and another company that has caught my eye is called Stinger. They've recently released what is called the L of 8 and Both of these head units are digital head units that offer a much larger screen size, more on that shortly, but they also have that optical output. So again, somet The next do, do make sure that you have to You have to Well, in today's day and age of having t You can also, again, check out Crutchfield. Crutchfield has a lot of different videos exploring and showing the details of each of the different head units that they sell. The next do, definitely do get an aftermarket head unit that has Android Auto and Apple CarPlay built in. If your car came from the factory with that functionality, that is great. You already know how awesome it is, but there are still a lot of new cars coming out that don't have that functionality. And it is really, really nice to have the ability to easily control all the functions on your phone, to be able to text message people by using your voice, to being able to use your phone's map functionality for navigation, and of course, being able to easily make and answer calls. It's definitely a functionality you want to have, but we're talking about new technology as well, Android Auto, Apple CarPlay. They've been around for a couple of years now. Somet With wireless, you no longer have to mess around with plugging that plug into your phone every single time that you get into your car. Simply get in your car, start it up, it makes the connection with your phone, and you are good to go. T Another phone connectivity type feature that you do want to pay attention to is some of these aftermarket head units now have dual Bluetooth or even more than two different phones can be connected at a time. And the reason that t Next up, we have another do. Do consider the options for how your head unit can match the interior of your ve If you watch my other videos, An easy feature to keep an eye out for to make it look By being able to change the LED color of those buttons, by being able to change the background on a larger double-dinned screen, this is nice and advantageous, makes it look Now with that said, what if you have an old classic car that you wanna update? There's options for that as well. There is a brand called Retro Sound that I find very interesting because not only do these look Next up is a don't. Don't If Even if you only do have that single-din size opening, there are a lot of new head units on the market that give you a very large floating screen. Because us h Obviously, it depends on the look you're going for. Even with the double-din size, you can still get a much larger screen, definitely somet Another do, do consider your security options for upgrading your head unit. And what I mean by that is back in the day, we know that a lot of aftermarket head units, they had a detachable screen, and that is still the case. There are still plenty of options out there that give us that detachable screen. So if we're in a questionable area, and we just want to make sure that we reduce the So there we have it, my friends. Those are my do's and don'ts for upgrading to an aftermarket head unit in 2020. Don't forget, next time you want to upgrade your car audio system, or maybe you're looking for the right head unit for you, definitely check out Show Sponsor Crutchfield at the link here on screen, or down in the video description. A special thanks to them, along with Mike Ron, Ali, Jerry, Marcos, William, and the rest of the Patreon members A big thanks to all those guys for making these videos possible. And as always,