Audio systems vs. yesterday’s radios

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DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour     


If you examine any promotional literature for new vehicles especially those whose demographics include the non-medicinal marijuana crowd, a lot of verbiage (what a stupid word!) is geared towards audio systems. It seems that in order to get the full impact of a song you have to have a 10,000-watt, 5 million amps, Super Double-Tweeter system that doubles the base price of the vehicle to the options column.

In other words you may have purchased a car with an MSRP of $15,995 (plus destination and delivery charges, or course) but the “available” audio package may add another $115,000 to the vehicle’s cost. But to those types it’s worth it because if they didn’t have a stereo system that can go down the freeway and break out windows like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie then they’re not getting their deafening decibels out of their audio purchase.

I thought about these things the other day as I was alongside some pimply-faced self-stroker driving some beater Honda Accord. As I sat at the stoplight, listing to his bass beat against my head, I had to find a Kleenex to try to stop the blood squirting out of my eardrums. I finally got home and since I was temporarily deafened and couldn’t hear the television and unable to be mesmerized by the picture I got to reflecting about vehicle entertainment systems.

As many of you know from reading my questionably-sane missives all these years I’m old enough to have had a teacup triceratops as a pet when I was a young lad growing up in Valparaiso, Indiana.

Furthermore, my family owned auto junkyards so I spent my formative years around cars that dated back to the Stone Age. We used to get a lot of over-the-road truckers who stopped in to buy car radios to while away their lonely miles on the road. There weren’t any fancy-assed “systems” back then. They bought a radio from a 1949 Ford that brought in only one kind of band, AM. Generally these truckers would only listen to hillbilly music in the first place so their needs were limited.

They’d steer their Peterbilts or Mack Diesels down the road while listening to songs about their wives sleeping with the plumber or the kid who mowed lawns because “their man was always on the road and they were lonely.” (Just the sort of “mood music” that’s soothing to a group who generally has a loaded gun with them.)

Then some manufacturers started offering radios with “slide bars” on them – the first examples of “seek and scan.” You’d push this bar and it would seek out a station and stay there. Technology was just coming to the radio. After that was the real revolution - FM. Stations were clear, offered a lot of music choices with limited commercials (advertisers weren’t all that positive of its acceptance) and would even keep its signal while going through tunnels. (I never could figure that one out.)

Then some manufacturers got clever and jumped on the transistor radio band wagon (pardon the pun). I recall that my family had a new 1958 Oldsmobile that had a removable transistor radio that could be taken to the beach or on a picnic or to just play background music while a spirited young couple was taking a chance on an Indian blanket, hoping they wouldn’t wind up with the consolation prize of a papoose.

Some of the big-name component manufacturers like Sony, Panasonic, Bose, etc., started developing speakers and other sound enhancements and the OEMs would tout those in their advertising and dealer brochures. Skip ahead to the current day and unless a customer specifies they only want a basic radio (define “basic:” a “basic” radio has AM/FM/MP3/ at a minimum) then they’d better be prepared to do some heavy-duty research on just what they’ll be getting in an enhanced system.

Do you see a pattern developing here? There are no “radios” anymore; they’re “systems.” Then, when coupled with things like satellite-based navigation, high-density satellite radio, pen pals from Mars and beyond Uranus, etc., the audiophile quotient has been multiplied several times over.

Truth-be-told I’m a major proponent of satellite radio. My only complaint is the increasing number of commercials on stations whose original charter (I thought) was commercial-free, nationwide radio broadcasting. But I guess the revenue is needed to keep the content affordable for the average Joe. But outside of listening to the Golden Oldies stations like the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, I generally listen to talk radio and news stations. I’m not going out on a limb to say that most people in my age group — and even a generation back — have the same interests.

Sure, I like seeing Fergie shake her tuchus on television but I don’t want to listen to the rest of the Black Eyed Peas shouting out a song on the radio (there’s that word “radio” again) when I could be listening to a program telling me what’s going on in the rest of the world.

Just like some oldsters like to brag about walking 135 miles to school and the same distance home, both ways uphill, so too do the same incontinent bunch like to discuss how few times they were able to tune into a radio station in their 1948 Buick Super and leave the channel knob where it was without constantly having to readjust to get a clearer tone every time the vehicle moved in a different direction.

Maybe it’s because us Piltdown Men don’t adapt to change very well. Either that or it’s just another “system” we’re fighting against. We’re old, you know, and get confused easily.