What Does the Future Hold?
Car audio is a constantly changing animal. We have come a long way from the early days of car audio in which people thought it was an expensive luxury to enjoy sweet melodies while you drive. Nowadays, people not only expect to have audio in their car, but expect other features such as navigation, bluetooth, smartphone integration, video playback, and many other convenient features. So what does the future of car audio hold for you? How will newly developing technology affect your future purchases of not only car audio but for cars in general? These things don’t only affect you but they affect us as well!
As modern vehicles become more advanced, they are becoming more integrated as well. Vehicle manufacturers are starting to realize the importance and popularity of car audio and video and are taking measures to give the consumer that all-in-one experience they are looking for. The demand for watching movies on the go has had explosive growth with the decreasing cost of LCD monitors and DVD players. As a result, OEM audio systems are going to be more surround sound oriented.
Smartphones are another thing that are starting to change the car audio world as we know it. We have started to see the emergence of smartphone integration with the likes of Pandora and Aha radio apps being integrated into aftermarket receivers and even in some new OEM systems. Even more integration is starting to be present with the Pioneer AppRadio2 which can utilize other apps and functionality such as navigation directly from your iPhone. The future will definetly see more app integration in vehicles. Apple is even hinting at Siri integration in the near future!
All of this talk about vehicle integration might raise the question as to why anyone would need to buy aftermarket car audio equipment. Even though vehicles have become more integrated, they still usually have cheap, stock speakers, limited bass output, limited music equalization, and restricted sound quality all together. It will be a very long time until you can say that your stock sound system could over glorify that of a well-tuned, aftermarket sound system. This can apply to other realms as well such as Keyless entry alarm and remote start systems. The future of car audio is not entirely clear, but one thing is for certain and that is that people will always look to aftermarket when their stock system is not enough.
