Almost all cars come with their own pre-installed speakers. So you may ask what is the point of changing them? Of course, if you just want some noise to keep you from falling to sleep when on the road, they might do just fine.

But practically, we tend to spend more and more time in our cars these days, sometimes even more than we can afford to spend at home, with our families.

Getting a better pair of car speakers is thus a crucial step when turning the car into a living space.

With car speakers there are two major problems to solve:

1. choosing the right speakers
2. assembling the speakers

Choosing the car speakers is very similar to choosing home speakers, except you have to measure the speaker-openings (front and rear), and buy the appropriate size. Plus, you must keep in mind how much power you can actually use for the speakers.

For one thing, you must avoid speakers with heavy magnets. You might think that heavier magnets mean better speakers, but in fact, speakers with heavy magnets cannot be powered by the average car stereo.

Another fact is that in a car you usually have the speakers connected directly to the car radio/player, and you don't run the sound-signal through an amplifier. When buying car speakers, ask the salesperson not to use an amplifier, as well.

Most users recommend component drivers as car speakers. A component speaker is a driver designed to reproduce frequencies in a specific range. In order to reproduce the entire audio spectrum you must use several component speakers. The advantages are a better sound and more installation options; disadvantages are higher cost and possible problems with time alignment (the difference in time it takes for high and low frequencies to reach your ears).

There is, though, a lower price option: coaxial speakers. A coaxial speaker consists of a midrange/woofer with a tweeter placed over the cone. The advantage is that all high and low frequencies appear to originate from the same location.

Whatever your final car speaker option will be, you have to be realistic about their ability to reproduce frequencies below 80 Hz. But for that, you can opt for a subwoofer. Car subwoofers are larger drivers, so you have to be willing to give up some space.