Car Audio Costs and Budgets: Where the Money Really Goes
How you split your money between gear and installation has a big effect on how a car sounds, and Peter Steinbacher of Pssound says most people get that split wrong. His view is that labour, not equipment, is most of the bill for a good system, so keep real money and time back for installation, materials and tuning. Past a buzz-free, well-tuned level, he says dearer gear buys only small, costly gains.
The short version
Labour, not equipment, is most of the bill, so plan installation, materials and tuning before you plan the gear.
A beginner who wants a 3-way front (tweeter, midrange and midbass speakers), a subwoofer, an amplifier and a DSP (digital sound processor) should budget at least £2–2.5k for new equipment (a 2021 figure), before labour.
A simple daily system takes roughly 8 to 14 days of labour; serious high-end builds run to 250–300 hours.
Once a car is buzz-free and well tuned, every further step up costs a lot more in both gear and installation.
Cheap, well-chosen gear that is installed and tuned properly can come close to far dearer cars: Eddie's Citroën (Eddie works with Peter at Pssound) used about $6–7k of equipment and finished a few points behind a winner with €50–60k of gear.
Whether it is worth it is personal, but Peter argues that at 2–3 hours a day in the car, a great system is good value.
Why labour is most of the bill
Peter says custom installation is the biggest cost because it takes time, and most people simply do not know what it takes to get a beautiful-sounding system (watch).
The classic budgeting mistake is putting almost everything into equipment. With £3–4k to spend, people put £3,900 of a £4,000 budget into gear and are then surprised that installation needs money too (watch). Peter's advice: "Always leave money for installation and material." He also quotes an owner's rule: set a limit for the equipment, but be ready for a bigger installation bill.
A modest shop job still adds up. A Helix V8 plus i3 speakers come to about £1.5k, but door soundproofing, full wiring and setup take at least 50 hours. That is over £3k of labour at UK rates, and more in the US and some other countries (watch).
Quick is not the same as proper. Many shops would put a BMW E91 out in a day or two as plug and play. Pssound's E91 took 8 days of labour and costs roughly £4.5–5k at UK rates. A quick version would be £2.5–3k but would not sound like this (watch).
A bad install makes you pay twice. The botched install Pssound stripped out had probably cost about €3,000, and the customer paid again for about two days just to work out what had been done and strip it (watch).
What a system costs
Peter's figures date quickly, so note the year. Prices are UK unless stated.
The floor (2021). A beginner who wants a 3-way front (a tweeter, midrange and midbass on each side), a sub, an amplifier and a DSP (the digital processor that shapes the sound) should budget at least £2–2.5k for new equipment, and mainstream brands are not needed. He would not go much lower, because very cheap gear is audible. Anything fancier easily doubles or triples the figure (watch).
Installed prices (2022). A simple system like the Audi A6 C7's (Helix M SIX amplifier, passive Steg 2-way, JL 12W3 sub, factory rear speakers, deadened doors) is roughly £2.5k fitted. Go fully active with DSP and add a custom box, custom speaker installation and A-pillars, and you can easily double that. Dream of more amplifiers and boot panels too, and think £5–6k upwards (watch).
The 2025 tiers. On a podcast (no currency was stated; the hosts were talking dollars), the rough tiers were: people think 3,500 gets something decent, 5–6 thousand might actually get you something decent, and anything really good easily goes above 10 grand. Peter said it is not a cheap hobby any more (watch).
The top end (2020). A Brax MX4 Pro four-channel amplifier is €5k (about $6.5k in the US). Eight channels need at least two, a sub needs another amp, and the DSP is another €5k, so amps and DSP alone reach 15–20k. Pssound's S-Class demo car, with over 300 hours of installation, is closer to £50k (a 2024 figure).
How many hours a build takes
Because labour is the biggest cost, Peter often quotes days or hours and lets people apply their own local rate. In 2022 he gave shop rates as £30–50 an hour in the UK, $80–200 in the US, usually €60–80 in Europe and a couple of dollars in India. Ask your shop what it charges, then multiply.
Simple daily systems (a VW Tiguan or Golf Mk8, 2022) take 8 to 14 days of labour, depending on soundproofing and how many amplifiers must be fitted and wired. The Tiguan took 107 hours, on top of work a previous shop had already done (watch).
Serious high-end builds, with a solid midbass installation, possibly a front sub and a boot build with stylish panels, get into the 250–300 hour zone (watch). The 2025 Audi RS6 C8 took 302 hours in four weeks. His rough plan for a big job is week 1 the front-end speakers and controller, week 2 sub box, amp rack and wiring, week 3 trim and finishing touches, then tuning.
His own Honda would take roughly 700–800 hours to build from scratch with what he knows now (his 2026 figure, though the captions are unclear; earlier he said 800, then 600–800), though the real total is more than 2,000 hours because he rebuilt it many times (watch).
US competition builds reportedly take 1,000+ hours, mostly spent on beautiful panels and custom interiors. Pssound's own 70–80-day builds are roughly 550–700 hours.
Hidden work and overruns add more.
The Crazy SQ Mercedes E-Class had 190 terminations (cable ends), each braided, heat-shrunk and labelled to EMMA competition spec. One person needs about two weeks, roughly 80–100 hours, for that, not counting running the cables (watch). Under time pressure Pssound skips braiding, but never proper termination.
Estimates slip. The Mégane was planned as a simple 7-day install and became roughly 14–15 days of work in 9 calendar days. The VW Caddy, planned as a one-week solo job, took two weeks.
When extra money stops paying off
Peter does hear what expensive gear can do, as long as someone can install and tune it. The hard question is how much more you must spend for how much gain. His marker is a buzz-free system at 7–8 out of 10. Beyond that, returns diminish (each extra pound buys less), and you need a lot more money for both installation and gear. Cars that score 9/10 typically take 400–500 hours of installation plus an amazing tune (watch).
Tweeters. The Micro Precision 7-series tweeter is £599 a pair and the Z-line is £1,800. The Z-line is on a different level, but for most people the jump is not worth it.
Speakers. Peter's analogy for the Accuton Automotive set: a Golf R is fantastic, an M3 a bit faster, a Ferrari very expensive, and this set a Bugatti. Only people who really want it can say if the last step is worth it.
Chasing the most expensive gear guarantees nothing. Peter's warning, learned from the earlier hardware in his Opel Insignia build: "not everything that shines is gold".
Budget cars can compete. At the 2024 EMMA Euro Finals, Eddie's Citroën had roughly $6–7k of equipment at retail and finished only a few points behind the Master Limited winner, whose speakers, amps, DSP and cables cost €50–60k (watch).
Cheap gear that works, and where money is wasted
Peter says many people do not want to believe that cheap speakers can sound great, and he asks them to stop deciding by the price tag. He calls himself the opposite of an upseller: if you will hear little or no difference, do not spend.
In the VW T6 work van, Steg mids (about £300 a pair) and tweeters (£129 a pair) play far above their price (watch). Lee Dunstan of Platinum In-Car has a several-time champion car built on roughly $20 wideband speakers, and will not name the model. Jimmy's BMW E39 has no expensive amplifiers or DSP, yet Peter says it beats many high-end cars he has heard worldwide that use exotic amps and Accuton Diamond speakers.
A DSP amplifier is the best value. Many people do not take one seriously, but Peter says it is fine for about 90% of audiophiles. Only the other ~10%, with a different reference, need more high-end amplification (watch). It also saves labour: one power cable and fuse, no wiring between amps and no amp rack. See our amplifier guide.
Upgrade amplifiers last, once installation, speakers, source and tuning are maxed out, and not for paper watts: in a B-Class, 65 W versus 80 W per channel was not a big gap.
Expensive speakers cannot fix factory locations. In a VW Transporter, big money on speakers in the factory spots gets you little: you need a 3-way, fully active with DSP, plus a tune (watch).
Peter talked a Tiguan owner out of swapping his JL 13TW5 sub for a 13W3: an expensive sub sells second-hand at a big loss, and a bigger sealed box was all it needed.
Plug-and-play parts can save money overall. Steg's Audi plug-and-play tweeter and midbass set costs almost double the generic Steg 2-way, but fits in about half an hour instead of custom rings and tweeter brackets. Customers often reject it, because they set the whole budget from the first price they see (watch).
Buying smart: second-hand, DIY and tuning
Second-hand needs experience. Used gear can cut the cost, but you have to know what you are buying, and Gavin of Subtronix warned that beginners can waste a lot buying and swapping amps that don't work.
DIY trades money for time. One owner's Nissan cost $10,000 including the car, and Peter adds a few hundred hours of your own time at least. See our guide to installers and DIY.
Pay for tuning. Peter says it makes no sense to spend tens of thousands on the most expensive amps and speakers, often with a lacking installation, and then refuse to pay 300 pounds or dollars for a tuning (watch). See our tuning guide.
Is it worth it?
Many people spend 2–3 hours a day in the car. At that use, Peter says an extreme high-end car system is 100% worth it, and cheap next to what some people spend on home hi-fi (watch).
He also points to habits: about £400 a month on cigarettes and alcohol is almost £5k a year, or £25k over five years, enough for an amazing system you can reinstall in your next car.
The car's value does not matter, Peter says. His own Honda was worth about £2k, but its system would cost about £40k and take about five months to build.
Cheap is relative. The Helix V8 only looks cheap where the minimum wage is more than its price; for maybe 80% of the world it takes half a year to a year of saving. His advice is to start saving a bit at a time rather than wait 20 years.
Common mistakes to avoid
Spending nearly the whole budget on equipment and leaving nothing for installation, materials and tuning.
Judging a system's price by its speakers alone: the E91 had modest speakers but more than 60 hours of labour.
Paying for expensive speakers in poor factory locations and expecting the sound to be fixed.
Rejecting a dearer plug-and-play part that saves labour because the budget was set from the first price you saw.
Buying used gear without the experience to know what you are buying.
Trusting the first time estimate, or refusing to pay for a proper tune after spending big on gear.
Watch Peter explain it
This is an independent, plain-English summary of Peter Steinbacher's public YouTube videos, written by VA3 Car Studio. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Pssound. The links jump to the moment in each video where he makes the point.
Part of our series: Car audio lessons from Pssound, start here
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