Car Audio

Head Units/CD Players/i-Pod/USB

One of the first and most important items in a car audio system is the head unit/CD / i-Pod player.

We deal with many manufacturers including Clarion, Pioneer, Kenwood, and Sony, however we tend to recommend Alpine for head units as its the brand we believe offers the best sound quality.

Alpine have always been known as the best car audio head units, the sound quality and reliability make them great value for money giving you years of listening pleasure.

We have head units on display in our shop, so you can touch them and get a feel for them and have a good listen before you buy. Some features you may like are:-

Full i-Pod control – Change and choose your music all from the stereo.
Hands Free – Make and Recieve phone calls effortlessly on the move
USB – Easy access to all your music on USB sticks
Line Out – Amplifiers can be connected for greater sound quality
Subwoofer Level – Easy to adjust the level of your Subwoofer

Give us a call on 01942 820174 for the latest prices.

Our experts can offer advise on the best way to make your car sound great, we will make sure you get the stereo that offers the features you need now and still leave options for future expansion.

Our philosophy is to “Buy good stuff once” so to help you we will offer an all in price with either Free fitting or fitting included. We even offer free removal (subject to deposit) when you change car, ask us for details.

Alpine offer full control of your Apple i-Phone or i-Pod.

When you plug an Apple i-Phone or i-Pod into your Alpine it will charge and give you full control of the following:

GENRE
COMPOSER
ALBUM
ARTIST
SONG
PLAYLIST

A smart feature is you can jump furthur into the alphabet by using the 6 presets, so preset 1 is the begining of the alphabet and preset 6 is the end. 2,3,4,5 are inbetween.

This enables you to easily bring your favourite music collection in to your car . With simple to navigate, on-screen menus such as artist, album, track-title, playlist and genre, you will find browsing through your collection very fast and easy.

All alpine products are made to a superb quality and have full speed data transfer with instant, glitch-free playback and control. Prices start from £140 fully fitted.

FM Modulator

This is by far the cheapest option to get music, from your iPod, to play through your car audio system. The modulator is hard wired into the cars radio and the music plays as if it was coming from a standard radio station. All of the functions are done by the iPod so it must be located in an easy to access position. We have brackets and chargers to fit almost any car. Prices start from £99.

Factory Integration/AUX In

This is a good option for people who want to keep their original factory installed car stereo. The functionality of the system depends on the car. The best advice would be to give us a call, either in-store, over the phone or via an e-mail beforehand. Prices start from £180.

Speakers

There are 3 basic types of speakers that we install:

Front Speakers
Rear Speakers
Subwoofers

Small Note: We sell replacement speakers for all cars. These are normally coax speakers that are full range music and replace the standard/factory speakers that are already installed. Prices for these products start from £20.

Front Speakers

Front speakers are for people who want excellent sound quality in their car and with brands like ‘Genesis’ (Made in England) and CDT (USA) in stock, we have the bases covered.

Consisting of mid range and tweeter components we can supply and install these speakers, in 6.5” and 5.25” sizes, to any car, modern or old. With the option of A-post positioning for tweeters, this creates a good sound stage and image.

We have all our products on running demos in-store. If however, you like your music loud, as well as clear, we have a brand called ‘Planet Audio’ from the US who also do mid range and tweeter components.

These speakers are also on running demos in-store, wired up to amplifiers to get the absolute max output achievable. Prices start from £130 and range to £2500 and above. Again, if you have any questions don’t hesitate to call in, ring or e-mail us.

Rear Speakers

Rear speakers are normally 6” x 9”, commonly called six by nines, these speakers are usually installed on the rear parcel shelf or a rear deck of a saloon car. These speakers can be used for sound quality as rear fill.

The best use of 6” x 9” speakers is for loud and clear music, in car audio they will make more output per pound than any other type of speaker. Again, all of our 6 by 9s are on running demos in-store, with prices starting from £50 and ranging up to £250.

We always recommend a shelf build for any type of parcel shelf installation. This maximises bass, sound quality and ensures better security for a vehicle. Question? Call in, ring or email us.

Subwoofers

In our opinion – the best bit! For the few people who don’t already know what a subwoofer (also called sub, bass-bin, bin, box, tube, bass-box and woofer) is, it is a large speaker designated with the sole task of outputting low frequencies for bass only sounds. The standard sizes of these speakers are 10”, 12” and 15”, although it is possible to have 8” subwoofers and even a massive 18”.

Note: we have 12 18” subwoofers in our demo van!!!

We highly recommend these are installed in a bass-box; subwoofers are again used for superior sound quality and extreme loudness.

For those of you into superior sound quality we recommend having one 10” or 12” subwoofer installed in a sealed enclosure that will give a smooth, deep and accurate bass line. However, for people (including the entire team here at K and M) who want loud, clear, and organ-shifting bass … you’ve come to the right website!!

We have no ethical, or for that matter any, limit on how loud bass can be or how many woofers you want or what size those woofers should be!

That said most cars can easily fit 2 x 10” or 2 x 12” subwoofers and some can even fit 2 x 15” subs, all cars however, will easily be able to fit one 10” or one 12”. Prices vary with different sizes, powers and brands. Our prices start from £40 (Planet Audio ZR-10) and £60 (Planet Audio ZR-12), but we can give very good advice on what will work best in your car.

An example:

You have a 500W amp and are thinking of buying a 3000W 15” subwoofer, we may ask you what the sensitivity of the sub is or can we check what box size it is going to need. If the answer is 85 DB @ 1W/1m that fits into a 3.5 cubic foot box, then our answer would be that you should get a 12” sub (e.g. Planet Audio BB12) with 94 DB @ 1W/1m that fits into a 1.7 cubic foot box. When your amp is outputting 500 Watts, the Planet Audio BB12 will be 9DB louder, that’s 3 times louder to the ear, with less than half the box size. When it comes to bass, think about it, save yourself some time and money and let us do the thinking … because we do a lot of it.

All the subwoofers we sell have 12 months warranty. Five out of six of our in-store stands have subwoofers on them for you to hear, or feel, the bass. If you have any questions about subwoofers do not hesitate to call into the store, ring or e-mail us.

Amplifiers

The first thing to remember is that an amplifier is the heart of a car audio system. Now is the time to start saving up and buy a good one, not only will it sound much better, much louder and not have that annoying engine whistle that cheaper amps tend to have, it will also last a good amount of time longer. Most amps have a 5 year warranty, if they are supplied and installed by us (Planet Audio – 5 years, Genesis – 2 years).

Amps come in different styles:

2 Channels – these can power one or two sets of speakers or one speaker and a subwoofer.
Mono Block – these are used to power just one channel; bass!
Multi Channel – 4 or 5 channels per amp.

Multi channel amps are the most cost-effective way to power a car audio system.

An example

If you purchase a 2 channel amp (at £150 with cable at £50) to power two sets of speakers and then at a later date you purchase another 2 channel amp to run bass (at the same price). For the same power and amount of channels you could get a 4 channel, bigger and better quality amp, for £280 + £60 for cables that would do the exact same job.

We have, over 20 amps on running demo, either on our stands or in our vehicles

Amplifier choice, installation and setup is where a lot people make the most mistakes. When trying to get a good car audio system our sales team can help you with choices (to find the package that suits your musical interests best), help you with installation or we can install it for you and set it up, whether it be volume levelling or equalizer styles, we’ll try to best match the type of music that you are going to play and get the best performance from available equipment.

For a good quality amp, prices range from £140 upwards (for a 2 channel), £180 upwards (for a mono block amp) and £200 upwards (for a 4 or more channel amp). We offer just as much advice on amps as any other items we sell so please do not hesitate to contact us.

Cables

We stock all cables for amp installs, speaker fitments and sub boxes. Cable/wire is very important to a car audio system in regard to quality. Remember that cables carry all of the power and sound signals. Even the best system in the world will sound terrible if the wire used to connect components is of a poor quality, the system is only as good as its weakest link.

Accessories

We stock all wiring loom adaptors and all car facia adaptors, this means that we can install after-market car stereos to around 98% of cars.

Sound Deadening

This is commonly overlooked by most people when building a good/loud car audio system. We recommend that if upgrading the front speakers of your car that you first sound deaden the doors.

If when playing music in your car you place your hand on the outside door panel it will be resonating with the frequency of the audio. This is sound quality and energy from the bass being lost through your speakers vibrating the car as well as the air inside, this problem gets a whole lot worse if you have a subwoofer installed. Sound deadening prevents this resonation from happening, saving you energy and greatly increasing sound quality. Our sales team will be able to help you with any enquiries concerning the right quantity of deadening that your system needs. Prices start at £25 and increase with quantity required.

Audio Control Electronics

This is for customers that do not want to change the looks of there standard head unit, but still want to upgrade. Or for customers who already have good sound systems … and want to turn them into great sound systems.

For example: is your iPod stealing your bass? When you connect your iPod it automatically assumes that it is a pair of headphones that you have connected it with, this of course is stupid! For this sort of situation we would supply an epicentre, which gives new meaning to the words loud bass!

As audio control is a high end product, you really need to hear it in action. One of our demo stands has a range of EQ’s, line drivers and the one and only … epicentre!

Shelf Build

Shelf builds are a simple yet very effective concept. First we take the original parcel shelf from your car, then we strengthen the underside to make a strong mount for the speakers to lie (note: this also adds to the sounds quality as it allows better baffle), then we re-trim the top piece (the bit you can see out the back window) with acoustic carpet, which looks like standard shelf covering. Shelf builds supply you with all the sound quality and security that you could ever need from a parcel shelf. For more info on shelf builds don’t hesitate to contact us.

Bass Boxes

This is a science in itself … not magic just science; physics,

maths, nomagrams and computer programs. Of course we do have all of these things, but a good understanding of cars and car acoustics is what we pride ourselves on.

At K and M we have a separate dust room and wood work shop, fitted with dust extraction equipment, used to make bass boxes and other speaker builds. Our bass boxes are all hand made, and we have made thousands, to customer’s sub/car/music requirements. In our 14 years of service we have never, and I truly mean never, purchased a flat-pack bass box, or the more common term … flat ‘cr*p’ boxes.

We have all standard finishes for our bass boxes such as carpet, in light-grey, dark-grey and black. As well as this we have specialist finishes such as vinyl, leatherette, alcantara and, to order, we do real leather.

Box designs are another subject entirely, with styles such as sealed, vented and band-pass, this list goes on and we build them all. If you want very exotic or custom bass box enclosures, it is not a problem, just give us a call or drop in and we will do our very best to meet your demands.

The top and bottom of bass boxes is, if the customer likes lots of quality and loud bass then, from us, that’s what you get and if you get it wrong (e.g. flat ‘cr*p’ box) then you’ve wasted your money. Get all the bass you pay for!