Car audio systems have transformed the way we experience road trips, daily commutes, and long drives. From early AM radios to modern high-tech sound systems with Bluetooth and voice control, in-car audio has come a long way. In this video, we take a deep dive into the fascinating history of car audio, exploring its evolution from the 1930s to today.
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00:00Hi guys and welcome to DriveSpark, I'm Prameet and today we are going to talk about car audio
00:17systems. Now everyone wants an audio system and everyone wants to listen to music when they are
00:22traveling. But have you ever thought that when was the first car audio system installed and back in
00:29which year? Today we're going to talk about the history of car audios and let's look at how far
00:35have we come. And as I mentioned that the first car radios were put into a vehicle back in the
00:421930s. Now there were two brothers named Joseph and Paul Galvin, now also known as the Galvin
00:49brothers. So they first installed their $130 car radio system back in the 1930s and that was coined
00:57as the Motorola. Yes, it is the same company that went on to becoming the biggest telecommunication
01:03network we all know of today and that is Motorola. Now bear that in mind that $130 back then in 1930s
01:11is almost close to around $2,000 today that is not cheap and that was a luxury back at that time.
01:19The vacuum tube radio was powered by a single battery and required quite a powerful nearby
01:25AM signal so that you can pick up the hits of the day.
01:32Now let's fast forward to 1950s and that was a time where the phonograph was invented. Now
01:38Motorola worked solely on the FM radio waves which were never perfect for sound qualities.
01:43It was until the 1952 when the FM stereo for the car was invented by a German company
01:51named Blaupunkt. Now all these names you must have obviously heard, again Blaupunkt being a
01:55very famous brand as of now. So followed by the AM and FM radio system in 1953, this dual-purpose
02:02radio would continue to be a standard treatment on vehicles for decades and even today most of
02:08the cars though they have Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, Bluetooth, whatever latest technology you
02:14want but they will definitely have an AM and an FM radio inbuilt. Now Chrysler was the first
02:21manufacturer that introduced that in-car phonograph for playing records back in 1956 and it went into
02:29partnership with Columbia Records to produce the 7-inch vinyl records that could play from a
02:35turntable that slid out from the dashboard. Well however it was not a very innovative method
02:42because the record would skip as the vehicle moved or if there was a jerk in the vehicle. So
02:47this was not a very practical solution but obviously they had it back in the 1950s.
02:56Now if you move to the 1960s there were the 4-track and the 8-track cartridge. Now to solve
03:01the problem of skipping records, created this cartridge technology that allowed music to be
03:07stored on a media and that would not skip obviously when the car was in motion.
03:16Now moving to the 1970s and 80s that obviously we all know that was the era of cassettes and the
03:23cassettes was first introduced in 1964 and it at least took them a decade to bring the 8-track in
03:30the vehicle. So in 1964 the cassette was invented in almost in 1979 when Sony Walkman was released
03:38which was the standard media of choice. Now in the late 70s it also saw a major improvement in sound
03:44you can buy high quality aftermarket speakers but as there was no standard across vehicles
03:50they were relatively difficult to install and you could also get a great car experience
03:56but manufacturers eventually realized the importance of a great car audio system that we
04:01all know and we all want today in our vehicles and to the in-cab experience of multimedia
04:07speaker system and amplifiers were born because of that. Now coming to 1980s and 90s we have the
04:16compact disc players or also known as CD players. Sony and Philips they both pushed CD players as a
04:23replacement having excellent crystal clarity sound and obviously they had it like a default
04:30player in almost all cars. In fact some cars even had a four to six CD changer where you can just
04:38store put in four to six CDs and you don't have to change the CDs they will automatically rotate
04:44and change so that every time you want to listen to a different CD so you could do that without
04:51even changing the CD of getting that out. Now coming to the 2000s the mp3 player was born again
05:00it was using an onboard hard drive which could store hundreds and thousands of music files movie
05:06files and that you could choose at will again with a very crystal clarity sound and it became
05:13more common to simply plug in your phone via USB and just listen to the music and streaming down
05:192010 where obviously streaming media that is your online media that is your internet
05:26through the internet you can just download some apps and simply play unrestricted music from your
05:33vehicle. So this was the complete history about the car audio system and once again let me tell
05:44you that the first car audio system was introduced in 1930s and that was obviously the Motorola. So
05:52yes if you found this video interesting please give it a thumbs up share and subscribe to our
05:56social media channels. I'm Prameet signing out see you next time thank you so much for watching
05:59take care be safe and drive safe.