What should you pay attention to when upgrading your car's audio system for Tet to have a smooth registration?

At the end of the year before Tet, many car owners go to car beauty establishments to upgrade and re-modify the interior or exterior. One of the recently focused equipment change items on cars is the sound and entertainment system.

At present, the inspection centers are tightening the inspection work, requiring the originality of the car, so "tuning" the sound also has some influence.

An officer at the Registration Center in Hanoi said that the categories of audio and interior upgrades such as electric seats, seat memory, speakers, central screen, interior LED, windows, dash cam, HUD, carbon steering wheel, suction doors... are not related to safety, vehicle operating techniques are stillbe considered for registration.

However, in case the "modification" of the sound system causes problems, is different from the original design documents or affects the safety of electrical equipment, the system may still have to be "turned back".

To upgrade the sound properly, safely and meet the needs of "sound appreciation", will depend a lot on the skills of the car tuning workshop as well as the knowledge of the car owner.

Below are some necessary notes when upgrading car audio.

1. No speaker distortion that obstructs vision

Mr. Chu Van Thuong, owner of Scar Workshop - Hanoi Car Audio, a unit that has installed many sound packages for various types of cars, said: "Most of my sound-tuning customers have not encountered any problems with vehicle inspection. The reason is that if the sound system is installed according to EMMA standards, the first safety factor that must be taken into consideration is not to obstruct the view and not to affect the people sitting in the car."

EMMA stands for (European Mobile Media Association) - European Car Audio Association was founded in 2000, with the aim of creating a level playing field for car audio quality competitions in Europe, gradually becoming the top quality criteria to evaluate a car with perfect sound.

According to Mr. Thuong, in order for the sound in a car to reach the full level of sound quality, the speaker placement is very important. "The interior of large cars as well as small cars need to be arranged in the direction of the speakers like a theater sound with many different angles. Therefore, if you only care about the direction criteria and ignore the factor that obstructs the view, it is not enough. It is easy to be troubled by the inspector."

Additional speakers installed on the A-pillar of the Vinfast Fadil car.

With the A-pillar position, many workshops have integrated speakers, if the design is not compact, it can easily make the blind spot larger. Therefore, the criteria for installing speakers in this position is to fit the area of ​​the support column without being too bulky.

2. Ensure electrical system safety

Many people believe that upgrading the car's audio equipment with "non-original" audio equipment will consume a lot of electricity, making the generator work harder. However, Mr. Thuong said that most audio upgrade packages do not affect the car's electrical system too much.

"However, if the installer is careless, the wiring is thin, the wire is of poor quality, causing a short circuit or leakage into the car's body, it can easily cause the battery to drain when the engine does not start or increase the risk of fire or explosion. Some accessories used in the process of constructing the car's audio electrical system such as clamps, wire harnesses, cable heads, plugs, etc., if installed cheaply by the workshop, will also affect safety," Mr. Thuong added.

The power supply wiring system for the sound system from the battery is installed according to standards for insulation, wire spacing and an additional voltage level gauge.

3. Quality of the sound system "stripped" from the car

In addition to the speaker sets of familiar brands in the car tuning world such as DLS, Focal, Pioneer, Blam,... in the audio world, many people also like to find high-end speaker sets "stripped" or "removed" from luxury cars such as Bose or Mark Levinson.

Although the purchase price is not cheap, up to 20-40 million VND, the risk when installing disassembled parts is that the sound quality is not suitable because they are pre-installed according to the original car, difficult to edit if switching to another car model.

Not to mention if the speaker bracket does not fit, it will have to be remade, which is both time-consuming and expensive and can affect the space in the car.

DLS Performance audio combo set costs less than 15 million VND for many car models.

Because of the risks mentioned above, to "play it safe", many players and tuning workshops still prefer to use audio combo packages including crossover speakers, coaxial speakers and powered subwoofers. The advantage of this type of speaker set such as DLS Performance, priced at less than 15 million VND, is that it is easy to install for all car models from 5 to 7 seats, does not change the existing interior design and has a quick construction time.

4. Noise reduction for better sound quality

To improve the sound quality, before installing a new set of speakers, it is indispensable to soundproof the car. Usually with popular car models, the door panels do not have soundproof materials, when moving at speed combined with wind, it creates noise from the environment echoing into the car.

According to Mr. Thuong, sticking soundproof panels serves the purpose of soundproofing, in addition to normal noiseproofing, the purpose of sticking them on the door is to create an invisible speaker box. When the electric current passes through the speaker, the speaker membrane creates oscillations that create sound waves and these waves bounce off the door wall, creating opposite oscillations. If both have the same frequency, it will create standard sound, but if the bass range is lost (below 150 Hz), it will make the listener feel uncomfortable.

Soundproof stickers during sound leveling.

However, users also need to pay attention to the brand of noise-cancelling stickers because using the floating type on the market can easily cause the stickers to melt, smell, and affect health. Currently on the market there are some types of noise-cancelling stickers specialized for sound quality such as Damping X3 by STEG with Cadmium index of only 10 mg/kg (maximum safety standard level is 100 mg/kg).