Questions...on Jags

I'm no expert on car audio, but I have had an interest in HiFi in general for many years.

In every HiFi system I have ever encountered, the greatest increase in sound quality came from better speakers. This is why my home HiFi has a relatively low-cost SONY 400-CD jukebox, an up-market QUAD amplifier and eye-wateringly expensive (for me) KEF speakers which currently sell for around $9000.

This is because it is relatively easy to get the audio input right, it gets harder to amplify it accurately and it is very hard to then turn the amplified signal back into sound accurately.

It is even harder to get the speakers right in a car, because it is a very hostile environment for audio.

Without doubt, others will pour scorn on my choice of components, but they match my ears. You can only judge the results of HiFi systems by using your own ears! (This is especially true for the speakers. If you are into vinyl LP's, then the audio pickup and pre-amplifier become problem areas. You won't come across this in your car, though)

One last point - the requirements dwindle with age, as your hearing degrades, losing its sensitivity to high frequencies steadily from the age of around 13. There is hope that this process will be reversible in the not too distant future, so invest now - your system requirements might start going up again.

Almost certainly your son's ears can hear better than yours. But in the end, you need a system that plays your style of program best. I doubt that your tastes in music overlap significantly (though I was a great fan of Handel, Vivaldi and Mussorgsky at the age of 15).

Modern electronic components make it relatively straightforward to get excellent CD quality cheaply. Because of the car's motion, the CD drive needs to be robust (the one in my car just failed, after 10 years, for example) but you'd be wasting your money upgrading the CD if the speakers were incapable of delivering the sound you want.

The biggest impact is that you're in a car. Not only are the acoustics of a car terrible, not only is it impossible to place speakers sensibly, but there's a load of mechanical noise from the engine and suspension and wind.

The usual solution to improving sound quality in a car is (a) lots of soundproofing to keep the other noises out (Jaguars do well here), (b) lots of speakers (which tends to be what the high-end sound systems) to get round the acoustic deficiencies of the cabin, and (c) turn the volume up because louder sounds better.

Processing the sound source also helps - compressing the volume range, and emphasising frequencies that otherwise get masked by engine, suspension and wind noise. I have some old sound processing software for copying vinyl to CD that comes with a "car" filter. IMHO you get some of the same effect with MP3 compression - that removes "background" sounds to reduce the size of the file, and I find the results are more listenable than the original in a car. But it's not HiFi.

I'm not sure what's the standard sound system on the XJ8 you are looking at, but it's quite probably Alpine. Don't forget that luxury cars start at a higher level, so their standard sound systems are lesser cars' premium systems. On the current XF, for example, the premium sound system is AFAIR a B&W setup at several £1000 extra.

You remind me of the system I had in my first car, a Panasonic, IIRC. Like many youngsters, my sound system cost more than the car.

It had two automatic sound processors. One just compressed the volume range, so there were no really quiet passages. The other controlled the overall volume such that it was louder when the ambient noise in the car was louder (being a cheap car, making it move caused lots of ambient noise!).

The latter processor is what I've missed ever since. No having to turn the volume down when you stopped at traffic lights was sheer bliss!