Car Audio Explained in Plain English: Start Here

Most car audio advice is about which speaker or amplifier to buy. Peter Steinbacher of Pssound, a UK installer whose cars have won national and European sound-quality titles, starts somewhere else. His order of priorities is speaker locations first, then installing those speakers properly, then tuning, with the choice of equipment coming last (watch). This series explains that way of thinking in plain English, one topic at a time.

Who is Peter Steinbacher?

Peter grew up in Hungary and came to the UK, as he puts it, "with a backpack". He started out working from a double garage at home while earning his living as a live sound engineer (watch). In 2014 he built his own Honda as a demonstration car, to show people what a car audio system could do, and documented every step on a UK car audio forum (watch).

He founded Pssound Ltd in April 2016. His website lists five national championships, the European multimedia title in 2018 and more than 100 awards for cars Pssound has built or supported (Pssound: Our Story). In January 2026 he also became International Sales Manager and Head of Education at Audiotec Fischer, the German company behind the Helix and Brax brands (watch).

What makes his videos so useful is that he explains the why. He walks round finished cars, opens up the door panels and dashboards, and talks through every decision: where each speaker went, what it cost, what went wrong and how he tuned it.

Why we made this series

The problem is the format. The best lessons are spread across hundreds of long build videos, podcasts and live streams, many of them over an hour. Most people will never sit through all of them, so the points that matter most, the ones few shops ever explain, stay buried.

So we went through more than 400 of Peter's videos, pulled out what he teaches on each subject, and rewrote it as short, practical guides for car owners. Each guide explains the idea, the reasons behind it and the specific tips and numbers that make it usable.

How to use these guides

• Start with the 41 lessons most people never hear. It is the quickest way to get the big picture, and every lesson links to the full guide.

• Each guide opens with a short version you can read in a minute. The sections below it explain the reasons.

• Every link jumps to the moment in the video where Peter makes the point, so you can hear it from him directly.

• Numbers and prices are given as he gave them. Prices are UK prices in pounds at the time of the video, so treat them as a guide to proportions, not a quote.

• Where his advice changed over the years, we give his latest view.

• These are one installer's methods and opinions. Other experienced installers may do some things differently, and that is fine.

The full series

Planning the system

• Part 1: How to plan a car audio system: his priorities, and why locations and tuning matter more than brands.

• Part 2: Which cars are best for a sound upgrade: what makes one car easy to build in and another hard.

• Part 3: What a good system really costs: budgets, value for money and where the money should go.

• Part 4: Choosing an installer, and doing it yourself: what to look for in a shop and what to expect.

The speakers

• Part 5: Tweeters: why the tweeter is the one place where the driver itself matters most.

• Part 6: Midrange: where the voice and most of the music live.

• Part 7: Midbass: the hardest part of any car to get right.

• Part 8: The front woofer: keeping bass at the front of the car.

• Part 9: Subwoofers and infinite baffle: deep, clean bass without a big box.

Installation

• Part 10: Fabrication and mounting: building strong, solid mounts and enclosures.

• Part 11: Deadening, rattles and road noise: what deadening does and what it cannot do.

• Part 12: Power, batteries and wiring: the electrical side of a reliable system.

Electronics and tuning

• Part 13: Amplifiers: what matters when choosing and setting up amplifiers.

• Part 14: DSPs, sources and factory systems: processors, music sources and keeping the factory look.

• Part 15: How to tune a car audio system: his tuning method, step by step.

• Part 16: Crossovers, EQ and time alignment: the main controls in a DSP, explained.

• Part 17: Rear fill, centre speaker and sound stage: making the music appear in front of you.

Listening, competition and the industry

• Part 18: How to judge a car audio system: what to listen for, and the test tracks to use.

• Part 19: Competitions and judging: how sound-quality competitions work.

• Part 20: Brands and products: his views on the gear he has used.

• Part 21: The industry, training and the Pssound story: how he learned, and how he teaches.

• Part 22: Home audio lessons: what car audio and home audio can learn from each other.

Myths and mistakes

• Part 23: Car audio myths and common mistakes: the beliefs he corrects most often.

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.