Drive in silence or need some noise?

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Do you often drive without the radio on or must you have noise?

I am not a fan of silence so I always have the radio on.
 
98% of the time... I have to have tunes of some sort.

2% of the time, I forget to turn the radio volume up.
 
I am one of the odd ones that don't even car if the car has a radio, or any other noise making device. I like music, especially country and classic rock and roll, but just don't need it in the car.
 
Let me put it this way: I bought a car, it had no radio, it also needed major service: carb, oil, coolant, etc etc.

FIrst thing I did was get a radio and install it, didn't care about anything else, just had to get a radio in the thing.
 
My first car only had AM radio (Nova, gift from Dad) and my second car (CRX) was shipped from Japan with no audio deck and I refused to pay the dealer the ridiculous amount they tried to charge me to install even a radio...I got used to silence and never bothered to install anything in the Honda.
Once I got my Outback, I was thrilled to finally have some sound and played stuff all the time...bought the cassette deck interface for a portable CD player. My RAV6 had a CD changer and that was running all the time.
Lately I find myself putting music on and either not noticing it or finding it annoying a good hunk of the time...I do play stuff (Sirius XM or CDs) sometimes and really love it occasionally, but music isn't as important to me as it once was.
 
On most cars I'm constantly fiddling with the stations but with the dd, I usually enjoy a low volume.
I'd rather listen to the mechanical parts of the engine (valves, fuel injectors, exhaust).
That being said, I highly dislike rattles, squeaks etc.
Those sounds are highly disruptive to my "driving soundtrack".
 
I spend a lot of time behind the wheel, on relatively long trips. Most are about 6 hours in length. Sometimes 2ea 12 hour round trips per week. Plus my commute is an hour each way.

I enjoy audio books during most of my trips. I'm also a music lover, but for some reason, rental cars have awful audio systems and I find them intolerable.
 
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Enjoy the music up. I've moved on from filling the trunk with speakers and terrorizing subdivision at night, but music is still something I enjoy.

I used to find that playing music covers up a lot of sounds from my vehicles. Adding speakers was cheaper than repairing things.
 
Originally Posted by SevenBizzos
Enjoy the music up. I've moved on from filling the trunk with speakers and terrorizing subdivision at night, but music is still something I enjoy.
I used to find that playing music covers up a lot of sounds from my vehicles. Adding speakers was cheaper than repairing things.

Oh man, we were staying at a townhouse near Orlando last week and some jackwagon showed up in the parking lot at 4am with his stereo blaring.
Guess he liked the song because he shut the car down and kept it blasting for several minutes. Finally turned it off and several more minutes of BANG CRASH BOOM HAHAHA to get into his place.
I was too tired to get up and try to ID the guy and sure was not going to confront somebody in the dark and in a neighborhood I knew nothing about. I might have blasted something myself just before 8am when we took our rental out to start our day, but a guest in our place was still sleeping...certainly could have bothered other innocents in such an attempt at revenge, too.
A family at the same event was staying a few doors down from us and I asked them if they liked the early morning serenade...turns out they have a white noise generator they carry when traveling and weren't woken up. That's a darned good idea...
 
When buying a vehicle I'll always get the highest-spec system available.

And in my older stuff, well, I just finished cramming 10 speakers and 2 amps into my Carrera.
 
I started driving when some cars didn't even have radios and when they did, it was ONLY AM. The we would install a cheap FM converter from RadioShack for $10 or less, no lie!

Later I had to have great sound systems. I prefered Alpine and the music was always ON Classic Rock/Southern Rock.
Today, I like decent sound in which you can get in almost any vehicle today. Decent meaning, 6-8 speakers with good power. Most systems are pushing between 160-240 watts. I'll take just about anything these days and I like the music on the softer volume mainly JAZZ. But, I want the car to be quiet & good riding. No more of this loud & harsh ride just because it can handle the curves.
 
I've been through my share of Kraco and Audiovox units in the day, LOL!

I remember when I bought my first Pioneer deck (yes, tape cassette) in 1989 - I thought I was REALLY UPTOWN then!!

Now, I only listen once in a while.
My thoughts are loud enough!!

Life has become so complex - - -
I long for the simpler days of "youth".... I had so little to worry about or think about back then.
 
Originally Posted by Char Baby
...Today, I like decent sound in which you can get in almost any vehicle today. Decent meaning, 6-8 speakers with good power. Most systems are pushing between 160-240 watts. I'll take just about anything these days...


Not only are car systems sounding much better these days, but as we get older our hearing range drastically declines. Being older, we don't need those crisp highs and even as good of midrange that we needed when we were teens.
 
Depends. I generally just listen to my 2 way radios. If I have any music its at a low volume so I can hear the state patrol chatter over it. And then occasionally Ill turn the music up and drown all that out. Just depends on what I want at a given moment.
 
it's kind of funny when I ride my motorcycle I don't have any type of earbuds or music going but I find myself humming a tune or singing a tune while I'm riding
 
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