When it comes to purchasing a car audio system, the most important factor is what you want your system to be capable of. Other key factors are your budget and what kind of music you listen to.
Let's say you just want a basic CD player to replace your factory radio and you are keeping the factory speakers as they are. I recommend a CD deck that has a pre-amp built in so that it can power your speakers.
If you especially don't want to spend a large sum of money, you don't need one with all kinds of flashy animations, screen savers and other features that you really don't need. However, it should at least have some kind of LCD display to see the tracks text or numbers and EQ.
You should be looking at a CD deck with at least a 3-band equalizer so that you can adjust the bass, middle and treble levels to customize the sound to shape the style of your music.
If you have access to a computer and CD burner, you might also be interested in a deck that is Mp3 readable. This allows you to burn a CD in data format which will allow the CD to hold several hundred songs.
Speaker Basics
If you have an old car, or you want to upgrade your current factory speakers, you may be interested in a speaker set. If you want a basic system, do not go all out and get speakers that need power from a separate amplifier unless you have the money.Most decks are powered with around 50W/channel, so speakers that have an RMS of 50W or less will be able to be powered by your deck alone.I recommend getting a whole component set with tweeters for the front and multi-element speakers for the back, because it is cheaper than getting them all separate.
Car Stereo Subwoofers
If you are interested in a basic sub woofer to get a lot more bass out of your system, then you will require an amplifier.A class D (mono-channel) amplifier is only designed to power a sub woofer. Class D amplifiers are less expensive and they put all their power into one channel. This may eliminate having to bridge together two channels. Try to find an amplifier with an RMS power equal to or not much less than you sub woofer's RMS. (RMS is the power that the unit can handle continuously.)If you have two woofers, then make sure that your amp can give the necessary power to both. You may have to connect them in a parallel circuit for the best results. As long as the maximum RMS power of your amplifier is equal to or over the RMS of the sub woofer you should be okay. If your amplifier is more powerful than your sub woofer, be careful with blasting it because you don't want to give the woofer too much power or she'll blow.
f you get an amplifier with more than one channel and it is for your sub woofer, make sure that it is bridgeable. By bridging two channels you can get double the power of one channel. That is unless one channel provides enough power to supply your woofer alone, which will be more expensive and is not necessary for a basic sub woofer connection.Try to match the other specifications of the amp and woofer like frequency response or sensitivity. This way they can both operate to the fullest.
