[.ca] Car Stereo Cookbook (ISBN 0071448470)

Not very helpful for a beginner do-it-yourself:
This book covers a lot of basics, but it contains virtually no help with running your wires through your car, which to me seems to be the biggest logistical problem with installing car stereo, when you are an amateur. The step of wiring your amp to your car battery is explained in a line or two, with no hints on how to retrieve the wires on the other side of the car's firewall. It also is a shameless plug for Crutchfield, their name gets mentioned every second page or so.

Ian C. Purdie, VK2TIP's Review:
My review copy of "Car Stereo Cookbook", (How to Design, Choose, and Install Car Stereo Systems), is very well written by Mark Rumreich. It is published by Mc Graw-Hill who kindly provided me with my review copy. If you ever intend to spend serious money on a quality car stereo system then buy this book. The common pitfalls to avoid, as disclosed by "The Car Stereo Cookbook" will handsomely repay your modest investment. Car Stereo Systems usually require the expenditure of some really "serious" money to get the desired results, and unless your decisions are very informed ones, it is all too easy to get burned big time financially. I honestly recommend you definitely buy a copy of "Car Stereo Cookbook" to save yourself the financial pain.

Contains some helpful tips:
With a book of almost 300 pages I expected much more detailed explanations. The author introduces technical aspects but hardly ever explains what they mean ie cross over slopes. Set-up information is limited to wiring diagrams, you never seen any real installation pictures. And then there are diagrams for dual preamps head outputs but the pictures show one one set going to the amps. Then there is a huge chapter on subwoofers and the author gives no information on techniques for mounting the box to the car. The head installation was way to general. Good points made are setting up speakers for best ohm ratings (serial vs parallel), determining voltage with a multimeter, what power cable gauge to use. The book is several years old and seems out of date on some subject matter. There is also a lot of dialog on things that are obvious. Consider this book for tips, not as a bible for installing since you won't find too much on how to actually install anything.

good review:
Its a good book, you do need a little knowledge of car audio but not too much is required. I recommend it as more of a reference for experienced car audio fanatics or the amateur.

NOT FOR AMATURES!!!:
This book is certainly not for amatures. This book was so full of technical mumbo jumbo and wiring diagrams that I thought I needed a degree in electrical enginering to understand. This book is NOT for beginers. The true content of the book is there but it's garbled and hard to, for an amature to understand and I personally have installed a stereo in my own car and was very confused. If you can interpret electrical diagrams and can deal with the lack of color, pictures, common language, clearly defined definition, you may enjoy this book but if you dont then definetly look elsewhere