Car Stereo

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Car Tunes

Radio? We don’t need no stinking radio. But we need to keep an eye out.
- By Ken C. Pohlmann
- Posted February 29, 2012
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8-track tape, cassette, MiniDisc, DAT. They all have two things in common. You don’t find them in new cars anymore. And, like lots of other technologies that have come and gone, car radios have easily outlasted them. Actually, add CD to that list. Within a few years, that’ll be gone. But is AM/FM radio on the endangered species list too?

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Bluetooth Hits the Road

Five new devices let you stream music wirelessly to your car stereo — for a song
- By Doug Newcomb
- Posted February 23, 2012
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If you like listening to music in the car, things just keep getting better, thanks to an explosion of technology that allows more options for taking your tunes on the road.

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Get in the Hatchback: The Ford Mobile Studio Unveiled

And a talk with Don Was and Krish Sharma about compression in modern music
- By Geoffrey Morrison
- Posted February 17, 2012
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Ford has built a mobile recording studio into a 2012 Focus with the help of legendary producer Don Was, engineer Krish Sharma, and car customizer “Mad” Mike Martin.
At the LA unveiling, I got to see the studio in action: recording a band and playing back the mix. As an added bonus I got to talk to Was and Sharma about how dynamic range compression/limiting is ruining modern music.

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CES 2012: Aha!

Aha Adds Honda, Subaru and Kenwood
- By Ken C. Pohlmann
- Posted January 12, 2012
When we first alerted readers to Harman’s Aha, we expected to hear a lot more about this streaming platform. As expected, Aha added fuel to its fires at CES.

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CES Press Day: Pioneer AppRadio 2

Pioneer upgrades with Android and iPhone 4 and 4S compatibility
- By Leslie Shapiro
- Posted January 10, 2012
At their Monday press conference the day before the CES officially opens, Pioneer focused on their car electronics line.

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CES 2012: OnStar FMV

Not your father’s Oldsmobile: More apps (and more cars).
- By Ken C. Pohlmann
- Posted January 10, 2012
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The Sound of One Battery Clapping

If a Volt crashes into a tree in the forest, does it make a sound?
- By Ken C. Pohlmann
- Posted September 23, 2011
- 3
Ah, the irony. Unwanted traffic noise is a bane of modern existence. Countless engineers have spent entire careers laboring to reduce vehicle noises from engine, exhaust, tires and aerodynamic turbulence. Most drivers and passengers prefer quieter cars; for starters, it makes it easier to listen to music.

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Harman Picks Up Aha, Expanded In-Car Streaming on the Way

Is your kid a Slacker? There's an app for that.
- By Ken C. Pohlmann
- Posted September 15, 2011
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Well, it’s official: the 1.65 million students of the high-school class of ’11 have set a new record. They collectively racked up the lowest SAT reading scores ever. Moreover, their score compared to the ’10 score represented one of the biggest declines in 20 years. So not only are today’s kids terrible readers, they are rapidly getting more terrible.

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Ford and the CD player: Heading to Divorce Court

If no one is buying CDs anymore, why should cars have CD players?
- By Leslie Shapiro
- Posted August 4, 2011
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It's a tragic end to a lengthy love story: Ford Motors and the CD player are breaking up after years of happy matrimony. Ford just announced that, moving forward, they will not be installing CD players in the new Ford Focus, with the rest of their models following suit over the next few years.

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King of the Road

The factory sound system in the 2012 Chrysler 300 SRT8 will rain hell down on any other puny "car stereo"
- By Ken C. Pohlmann
- Posted August 4, 2011
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From far away, you hear it coming. The sky clouds up and you notice that birds are flying away as fast as possible. Your glasses begin to fog up, and then tiny cracks appear in the lenses. Slower birds fall from the sky like rocks. The sheet metal on your hood buckles under the intense sound-pressure wave front. Women faint.

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Android on Wheels

With Harman's announcement of dashboard support, Google takes their show on the road.
- By Ken C. Pohlmann
- Posted July 21, 2011
Attention all you iPhone weenies: Brace yourself for a dose of reality.

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Road Gear

Car electronics let you do it all on the street.
- By Ken C. Pohlmann
- Posted July 14, 2011
I have two cars but only a one-car garage. As you might expect, my favorite car (a red 1968 Porsche 911 Targa) gets the garage. Plus, since it’s vintage, it deserves indoor parking. From a performance standpoint, that car is still impressive. It’s lightweight, with lots of horsepower, and since the laws of physics haven’t changed in the last 4 decades, it can blow away most modern cars.

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