Last month, we took a look at marine electronics including head units and amplifiers. It was a good primer to get into this cool mobile electronics category, but it’s also only half the story. I have said a million times – if you don’t have good speakers, all the expensive electronics in the world…

I’ll be straight up about this issue of Plugged In – we aren’t going to talk about anything related to cars. When I started writing Plugged In, it was my goal to never beat any single topic to death, and to expose the readers of RPM to as many diverse aspects of the mobile electronics industry…

It wasn’t long ago that automakers phased out tape decks in new cars in lieu of CD players. In the past couple of years, most of them have caught on to the iPod revolution and now include either a USB port or dedicated iPod connection to let the latest generation of music enthusiasts…

Last year, we took a look at how speakers worked, then at what separated the also-rans from the truly great products. In this installment of Plugged In, we are going to delve into the topic of subwoofers. If you ask the average guy or girl on the street what a subwoofer is…

Back when I got into the industry, a mere 22 years ago, the car alarm installed in my 1982 Dodge Aries (sedan version, don’t you know) included an impressive two wires and a knob to adjust the shock sensor sensitivity. We have come a long way, and now have security and convenience systems that can tell us the location of a vehicle, allow us to remote start a car from more than a mile away and even let us use our cellular phone to activate functions from another town,

What if your car could call for help? Imagine a scenario where a thief decides that no matter what you have done to protect your vehicle, they absolutely have to have it? Does this sound like Gone in 60 Seconds to you? It absolutely happens – specific make, model, trim level and colour vehicles are targeted all the time by

By now, all of you have seen car audio installations that incorporate what seems like large-diameter power wires. These cables can be nearly a half-inch in diameter for systems under 1,000W and nearly an inch in diameter for systems rated more than that. This may seem like overkill, but in fact, it’s just adequate for most systems.

A few issues back, we took our first look at subwoofers. This is a key subject in the area of car audio, since most systems, even some of the best high-end factory systems, often lack the ability to reproduce the bottom octave of the audio spectrum accurately. In this installment of Plugged-In, we’ll look at what you get for your money when you buy a high-end subwoofer.

While building a subwoofer enclosure might seem as simple as cutting a few pieces of wood and screwing or nailing them together, in actuality there are a lot of different considerations that must be evaluated to achieve a desirable result. I teamed up with industry veteran Matt Gordash at his new shop, Defined Designs in Concord, Ontario, to help walk us through the steps of how to construct a quality subwoofer enclosure.

In late April, Bill 118 was passed in Ontario. This bill bans the hand held use of electronic devices by drivers of motor vehicles in that Province. This is similar to bills that have been previously passed in Quebec and Nova Scotia, and is what will inevitably occur in most other provinces across the country. The intent of the bill is to reduce the number of car accidents that are caused by drivers who are not paying attention to the road because they are using unrelated electronic devices.