The History of the Car Stereo

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CDs, Subwoofers, and Components
Beginning in the early 1980s, car stereos began to rival home stereos in their sophistication and sound quality. The first car audio competitions began around this time as well. Multiple speaker configurations began to take hold in earnest. It was common to find upgraded or custom systems with two or three separate (or "component") drivers per side in the front (pictured, below) plus rear deck speakers as "fill" to pull the image back and fill out the sound, and one or more subwoofers (pictured, below right) either in their own separate enclosures or mounted in the rear deck. In the 1990s, we began to see higher-end systems incorporate a genuine center channel to improve imaging; Chrysler included this in some of their upscale Infinity stock systems as well.


The move from tape-based systems to the compact disc was particularly significant. The CD brought improved sound quality that remained pristine for thousands of plays, instead of degrading over time—until scratches rendered it unreadable, of course. CDs also let you skip tracks back and forth instantaneously, instead of tedious fast forwarding and rewinding. Multiple-disc CD changers began to appear in the late 1980s, and let you store as many as five, six, or even 10 CDs at a time, and switch between them while you were driving. By the mid-1990s, it was common to find a CD changer in a given car's trunk or underneath the front passenger seat.

In fact, CDs were a step forward in all respects save one—customizability. For most of the 1980s and 1990s, CDs were fixed albums, like vinyl records; although CD burners were introduced early on, affordable consumer products didn't take hold until around the turn of the millennium. For a while, many cars offered CD player and cassette deck options, and sometimes both in a single, large receiver: one for ultimate sound quality and instant gratification after a trip to Tower Records, and one for custom cassettes and any old prerecorded tapes you still had lying around.

 One other note on aftermarket car stereos is worth mentioning here: Simply put, automakers began to make it tougher to install them. For many years, single-DIN, double-DIN, and a few other receiver sizes were standard, so you could easily swap in an aftermarket receiver, especially using the appropriate install kit from Crutchfield or another retailer. The same went for speakers in the front doors, rear doors, rear deck, and so on. But as automakers began to incorporate anti-theft systems, as well as custom upgraded audio systems, they also began to blend them into the dashboard using a variety of non-standard sizes and openings. Whether this was purely for profit, for interior style reasons, or just to discourage buyers from tampering with the vehicles, it has frustrated a lot of audio hobbyists over the years.


The Digital Music Revolution
It's tough to overstate how revolutionary the digital MP3 player was. Virtually the moment the iPod and competing models took off in popularity, sales and usage of the CD began to decline, and what remained of the compact cassette market disappeared almost overnight. By now, most of us are familiar with MP3 palyers, which store thousands of songs, make it easy to create custom playlists, and let you search by song title, artist, or album easily. But when it comes to cars, there's plenty of tension in this market. Even as people began to buy iPods and other players by the millions, it wasn't always simple to connect them to car stereos—and in some cases, it's still complicated today.


For example, by the mid-2000s, cars began to come with auxiliary inputs that connected to any MP3 player's headphone jack. But true iPod integration remained elusive for longer; after some early BMW and MINI systems, we're only now beginning to see more and more cars come with USB jacks that can read standard iPod and iPhone playlists, albums, artists, and songs, or even hook into iPhone apps (pictured, above). Even so, that leaves out the millions of people with Android phones, BlackBerrys, and other handsets. For now, stereo Bluetooth streaming, or sideloading music via USB flash drives or SD cards remain the best option in those cases.

The biggest problem for music in cars today has nothing to do with sound quality—well, aside from MP3 and AAC files, which are fine most of the time but don't match the experience you'd get from a proper CD or uncompressed audio file. Instead, the problem is access. In an increasingly fragmented world of tech, it's not always clear what sources will work in a given vehicle, at least without doing some research first. Buy a new car off the showroom lot in 2012, and you're virtually guaranteed at least an auxiliary jack for your mobile device, if not more. But more advanced integration varies by the vehicle and by the device, and it can sometimes get quite complex. Ask anyone who came away frustrated with BMW's iDrive or one of the earlier Ford Sync systems.

It almost makes you long for the days of the AM radio and two big dials for volume and station tuning. Almost.