A Car Audio Upgrade From Santa

Christmas time is just around the corner so that means you are going to have to
start shopping for the men in your group of family and friends. This time of the year is a great time to pick up some new car electronics for all those car audio nuts in your life. You may even be searching around the Internet looking for a new receiver for yourself. In either case there are many great products to choose from, but in today's car audio market there are many choices that can distract a buyer, and leave you utterly confused about what is the best head unit for you.

With so many new features and options that have popped up the past decade, finding the right choice for you can become time consuming, and frustrating. Today's market is no longer just CD players, they include whole multimedia systems. The functions available in car audio head units range from DVD players, GPS navigation systems, to even television.

I first want to give you a few parameters to check off for yourself, and also give you some ideas to narrow down your choices so you can be ready to pick the best head unit for your vehicle. But also keep in mind that your head unit or deck is the control center for your car audio system.

First things first you need to do is identify your price range. There are many, many units out there that are well over three, four, and even five hundred dollars, so if your not willing you spend that much then you will have to narrow down the features you are looking for to match your price tag.

Additional features that come with your car audio head unit is another area you will want to look into. If you are an iPod owner, then you might want a research a head unit that offers iPod playback capabilities. Another rather new and popular feature is HD radio. HD radio offers CD-like quality on FM stations, and FM like quality on AM stations. Although I would suggest you check and see how many HD radio stations are in your area before you settle on a unit with HD radio. A real quick run down other features currently available in head units worth taking a look at, are Blue tooth, MP3 playback, and size.

I don't want to skip over size of your head unit because this is an important factor to take in consideration before purchasing any head unit. Take a look at you vehicles standard factory head unit. All main car audio head units today come in either one of two sizes. The standard size for most factory installed vehicle CD players is called a single DIN. If your vehicles is made with an over sized receiver then you will want to look into purchasing what is called a double DIN or a 1.5 DIN receiver. Harnesses are also available to provide better support for your receiver if needed.

One last subject I want to touch on real quick before I go, is considering if you are going to build onto your car audio system after you purchase a head unit. Are you going to be adding upgraded speakers, sub woofers, or amps? These are all different areas that can be touched on later if you even decide to upgrade your car audio system further.

Now before I go I would like to share with everyone a great starter head unit for your audio upgrade. The JVC KD HDR50 carries with it many features including iPod playback, CD-R & CD-RW, and MP3 playback, and an iTunes tagging feature that lets you "tag" your favorite songs on the radio and then add them to your iPod next time you connect it to your head unit. Some other nice features include HD radio, which I discussed, and also Blue tooth, and even 30 different color schemes to choose from to personalize your receiver. The price also can't be beat at $132.36 on Amazon.