Steering wheel volume controls and aftermarket stereo - ?

Then *I* must be REALLY old because I haven't heard of Penis Boy OR Glann Beck.

You'd probably like Glenn Beck. He's more of a Conservative than a Republican.

Tune in to your favourite AM station south of the border, 9AM to 12 PM.

He started on WCCC in Hartford CT back in 78 or 79. He was pretty amusing then, not heavy on the sophomoric humor, and definitely intelligent.

Somewhere along the way he found the way to make the most money is to appeal to knuckle-draggers.

The rub lies in "full rated power". What was the rated power? If it was like 400W, you're probably never going to go over about 25W. The extra is 'headroom' for the bass. We us a 250W/channel PA system, and it's about 5% THD, but we only hit about 65W. At levels like that, the THD is about .01% and isn't really audible.

Also, look up exactly what Harmonic Distortion is. It's not a big deal. Actual signal distortion is more of an issue, and now one ever publishes it. One of the amps that got stolen was a 100W/channel 4 channel amp with a total of 1% at rated power. I doubt I ever went over 20W!

I used to be a real spec freak myself (I have been in bands for 20 years, had some really poor audio equipment (Radio Shack) that had worse specs but sounded better than higher priced stuff.) Use your ear. The 1% amp sounded really good because it was attached to a high-quality head unit. I have MB Quarts in most of the cars, and they are REALLY good, but one of the best speakers I ever had was...Craig. You know, K-Mart stuff!

I have to admit I like clean sound, but again, bear in mind the output power. See if there are specs for like, half rated power and see what they are. And use your ear! @

And then there's Bose, who refuses to publish any specs at all... sounds nice though.

At those prices, they don't have to give specs.

I worked for an electronics company, and one of the guys was a tech at Bose. He said you wouldn't believe it. And security is *tight*.

One of the projects he worked on was the first audio system Bose made for automotive use. The "new" Corvette, back in 1982. Only Bose got a prototype in 1978...they couldn't say a word...