MP3 Player Connectors

Image Gallery: Car Gadgets

Image Gallery: Car Gadgets A car audio system can make or break your driving experience. See more pictures of car gadgets.

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In 2007, workers in the United States spent an average 46 minutes a day commuting to and from work [source: Gallup]. That's almost four hours for the typical five-day work week. Working year-round, the average commuter could spend close to 200 hours a year driving to work. If you're going to be spending that much time cooped up in a car, you may as well enjoy it. That's where car audio comes in.

Whether you love classical jazz, follow current events on NPR or fantasize about head banging along with "Bohemian Rhapsody," "Wayne's World" style, a solid car audio system can make or break the experience. No music system is complete without a subwoofer pumping out the rumbling basslines and tweeters screaming out the piercing high notes. There's a world of performance car audio out there -- but even if you don't plan on spending thousands to deck out your ride with best-in-class stereo equipment, knowing the roles of each piece of equipment can help you get the most out of your car audio setup. And car audio is hardly just about the sound itself. As automobiles become more sophisticated, we've integrated new technologies like Bluetooth and smart phones into the audio experience. Once upon a time, we could only listen to a single album on a clunky 8-track tape; now we can listen to thousands of songs from a single iPod.

Here are the top 10 car audio components, beginning with the element we all know best: the speakers.

Speakers are the basis of any car audio system; without them, you'll hear nary a thing but wind, the hum of the engine and the bustle of traffic. With speakers, our cars come alive with music. They work by translating the electrical signals from an input like a CD into vibrations that our ear registers as sound.

Not all car speaker systems are alike. There are two primary classifications of car speakers: coaxial and component. Coaxial speakers are what you'll commonly find in a factory-installed car audio setup -- in other words, unless you've installed a custom audio kit in your car, it likely has coaxial speakers. A coaxial speaker consists of a woofer that produces low- and mid-range sounds and a tweeter that sits atop the woofer producing high range sound. Superior coaxial units will add extra tweeters to better reproduce the high range sound.

Component speakers are comprised of several separate units -- the woofers and tweeters are not built together into one part. Component speakers also utilize a crossover network to direct sound to the right speaker units, producing superior sound quality. The crossover network helps component speakers deliver better audio than you'll get from an average coaxial setup. Because of that advanced crossover network, component systems don't need as many tweeters as coaxials to produce high-quality sound -- a two-way component speaker setup is as good or better than three-way, four-way or five-way coaxial speakers. Not surprisingly, component speaker systems can be pricier than coaxial speakers. No matter which kind of speaker system you're interested in, there's a huge price range: Inexpensive coaxial and component sets can be had for $20 to $40, but high-end gear can cost in the hundreds of dollars -- or more! Look for some popular audio brands like JL Audio, Alpine and Infinity.

Subwoofers are responsible for reproducing the lowest, deepest sound ranges that add body to any audio mix.

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Now we come to the classification of speakers we love best:subwoofers. If you've ever been to a nightclub and felt the music pounding in your ears -- or if you happen to have noisy neighbors who party way too loud -- you know all about the power of bass. Subwoofers are responsible for reproducing the lowest, deepest sound ranges that add body to any audio mix. Music just isn't the same without a good subwoofer.

We learned on the last page that component speaker systems consist of individual sound units connected together to accurately reproduce the sound from a CD, MP3 player orradio broadcast. Component subwoofers tie into the audio package, enriching the low frequency sound with powerful bass. As with coaxial and component speakers, you can spend hundreds of dollars on high-end component subwoofers. Two other necessary pieces of equipment will add to the expense: To install and run a subwoofer, you'll need a subwoofer enclosure and an amp (which we'll discuss later) for your system. The enclosure will ensure maximum performance from your subwoofer, while the amp will give it the power needed to deliver that deep bass [source: Sonic Electronix].

One word of warning about subwoofers: There is such a thing as too much bass. Crank it up too high, and you'll hear (and feel) powerful vibrations that distort the sound of your music. Find a happy medium that enriches your music with bass but doesn't rattle your windows with overpowering low frequency sound.

One of the most flexible, useful modern additions to car audio is the wireless communication technologyBluetooth. Most mobile phones, especially smart phones, are Bluetooth capable. They can use the wireless protocol to communicate with other devices and transmit data.

To use a car's built-in Bluetooth capabilities, simply enable your phone's Bluetooth radio and pair the device with the car. Take BMW's Bluetooth options, for example: Once you pair a phone with a BMW car, you can browse through your contacts with buttons on the steering wheel and use the car's receiver display to access the information on your phone. During a call, your voice will be picked up by a microphone in the car, and the voice on the other end will broadcast over the speaker system [source: BMW]. In states that have hands-free cell phone laws, built-in Bluetooth is an efficient way to stay in touch while your cell phone remains in your pocket.

Your car may not have come with the luxury of Bluetooth built into the audio system. If you're interested in Bluetooth, that's an easy problem to fix: Both Bluetooth and our next car audio component can be added to a car with a quality receiver, often called a head unit or stereo.

Car CD players haven't quite gone extinct just yet, but they're slowly moving the way of the cassette as MP3 players and smart phones become our preferred way to play music. It's a natural evolution: These new storage mediums can hold far more music than audio CDs, and 3G and 4G data plans allow us to wirelessly stream music from services like Pandora. But MP3 players and smart phones have been designed with headphones in mind, which means car audio systems need a way to interface with these digital devices.

Luckily, many modern cars now include built-in connectors for these modern devices. We already coveredBluetooth, which can wirelessly link with some devices to play music or handle phone calls. Car manufacturers like Toyota offer optional auxiliary audio ports in their car stereos in the form of a 3.5mm (1/8-inch) mini stereo jack that can plug into anything with a headphone port [source: Toyota]. Others include USB ports that can also facilitate music playback from an iPod or similar device.

Don't have a brand new car with an auxiliary jack or USB port built in? Don't sweat it -- that's where our next car audio component, the head unit, comes in. With this one piece of equipment, you can dramatically improve the functionality of your car audio system