Caska Car Audio. Is It A Good One ?

nissan_fan · September 12, 2010

Hello there,

I am thinking of installing a Caska Video system into my car. However I have several questions and hope that someone with experience will answer them.

1. What about the quality ? Is it worth the price-performance ratio ?

2. How much will it cost to me?

Thanks.

Gayan Weerakoon · September 13, 2010

I dont know about caska but what ever you do dont go to Advance electronics to get anything installed. I went there last month they took the whole day just to install a amp into my car and they used the cheapest qulity of cables and speaker wires. When the bill came they over charged me for everything i was so fed up i just paid the bill and told my self ill never go there again. After using the stereo for 2 days it stoped working and i knew it was becaused of the cheap cables they used i went to Pet#o this time got everything with good cables and now its working fine. Dont be fooled by thier big advertisments in the hitad they are not professional at all. If you guys dont belive me go and check the quality of cables they use to install amps speakers etc and then see what Pet#o has. You will never sight advance again poor cheap quality service.

SeanD · September 13, 2010

Gayan Weerakoon said:
If you guys dont belive me go and check the quality of cables they use to install amps speakers etc and then see what Pet#o has.

Copper is copper.

YALA · September 13, 2010

SeanD said:
Copper is copper.

i dont think its that simple...think there is some truth to the quality of the wires used.

Elvis_Pil · September 13, 2010

Not exactly true. when it comes to car audio the speaker wires make all the difference- something to with the gauge and quality. If you dont wanna spend on the expensive stuff they will use the simple speaker wire. You get entry level to advanced speaker wiring kits off the shelf. And stuff like the amp powering cables- need a high gauge special wire- that costs Rs 1000 per meter

SeanD said:
Copper is copper.

MkX · September 13, 2010

Elvis_Pil said:
Not exactly true. when it comes to car audio the speaker wires make all the difference- something to with the gauge and quality. If you dont wanna spend on the expensive stuff they will use the simple speaker wire. You get entry level to advanced speaker wiring kits off the shelf. And stuff like the amp powering cables- need a high gauge special wire- that costs Rs 1000 per meter

Yes based on the quality of the wires, speakers your sound experience will totaly be changed. I have come across some chinese headsets that fully looks like OEM Apple still made in china, headphone but incapable of producing some sounds that the song had in it. Copper in not just copper.

Gayan Weerakoon · September 13, 2010

What im trying to say for the same price you pay at Pet#o they give you better quality cables than Advance. Also the staff working there are not professional at all and poor quality of service. For the AMP they coupled two 20AMP fuses which by far is not enough.....

Watchman · September 13, 2010

MkX said:
Yes based on the quality of the wires, speakers your sound experience will totaly be changed. I have come across some chinese headsets that fully looks like OEM Apple still made in china, headphone but incapable of producing some sounds that the song had in it. Copper in not just copper.

Did you know that apple actually manufactures in China? I've seen pleanty of iPods to iPhones to MacBooks that say "Designed by Apple Califonia, Assembled in China"

Not denying that there arent cheap chinese knock-offs though.

Elvis_Pil · September 13, 2010

Actually thats the story of China- the big brands outsource their MFG to the China plants, and those guys rip off the technology and produce under no brand or a fake brand

Dilesh said:
Did you know that apple actually manufactures in China? I've seen pleanty of iPods to iPhones to MacBooks that say "Designed by Apple Califonia, Assembled in China"
Not denying that there arent cheap chinese knock-offs though.

Elvis_Pil · September 13, 2010

Really? what was the 'same price' you paid?

Gayan Weerakoon said:
What im trying to say for the same price you pay at Pet#o they give you better quality cables than Advance. Also the staff working there are not professional at all and poor quality of service. For the AMP they coupled two 20AMP fuses which by far is not enough.....

Ripper · September 13, 2010

Gayan Weerakoon said:
What im trying to say for the same price you pay at Pet#o they give you better quality cables than Advance. Also the staff working there are not professional at all and poor quality of service. For the AMP they coupled two 20AMP fuses which by far is not enough.....

a single 20A fuse can take 240watts... so i'm assuming once it's "coupled" it's 480watts.

If your amp doesn't go beyond 480 it should hold...If it's over 480 then the installers have effed up on very basic electrical stuff

Gayan Weerakoon · September 13, 2010

My Amp is more than 480W so it was def not enough....

The power line they used for the AMP was so thin you wouldnt use it even for your house electrical stuff

Took it to Pet#o they used a nice BIG Thick power line and high quality Fuse and holder.

Ripper · September 13, 2010

Gayan Weerakoon said:
My Amp is more than 480W so it was def not enough....
The power line they used for the AMP was so thin you wouldnt use it even for your house electrical stuff

Took it to Pet#o they used a nice BIG Thick power line and high quality Fuse and holder.

if i may ask...whats the system you have machang!

VVTi · September 13, 2010

Quote
Speaker wire, like any other linear electrical component, has three properties which determine its performance: resistance, capacitance, and inductance. A theoretically perfect wire has no resistance, capacitance, or inductance. The shorter a wire, the closer it comes to this, because resistance decreases with the length of the conductor (except superconductors). The wire's resistance has the greatest effect on its performance.[1] The capacitance and inductance of the wire has less effect because they are insignificant relative to the capacitance and inductance of the loudspeaker. Larger conductors (smaller wire gauge) have less resistance but increased skin effect. As long as speaker wire resistance is kept to less than 5% of the speaker's impedance, the conductor will be adequate for home use.
Speaker wires are selected based on quality of construction, price, aesthetic purpose, and convenience. Stranded wire is more flexible than solid wire, and is suitable for movable equipment. For a wire that will be exposed rather than run within walls, under floor coverings, or behind moldings (such as in a home), appearance may be a subjective benefit, but it is irrelevant to electrical characteristics. Better purification of oxidizing materials such as copper is said to result in more consistent conductive properties throughout the length of the wire, but this is a non-issue in terms of its effect on sound quality. Better jacketing may be thicker or tougher, less chemically reactive with the conductor, less likely to tangle and easier to pull through a group of other wires, or may incorporate a number of shielding techniques for non-domestic uses.

Even with poor-quality wire, an audible degradation of sound may not exist. Many supposedly audible differences in speaker wire can be attributed to listener bias or the placebo effect. Listener bias is enhanced in no small part by the popular manufacturers' practice of making claims about their products either with no valid engineering or scientific basis, or of no real-world significance. Many manufacturers catering to audiophiles (as well as those supplying less expensive retail markets) also make unmeasurable, if poetic, claims about their wire sounding open, dynamic, or smooth. To justify these claims, many cite electrical properties such as skin effect, characteristic impedance of the cable, or resonance, which are generally little understood by consumers. None of these has any measurable effect at audio frequencies, though each matters at radio frequencies

This is what I learned while researching on how to set up a good high end stereo set up at home.

Quote
Quad have always had a very straightforward engineering view of their products, and insisted that all amplifiers sounded the same when used within their capabilities, and that speaker cable had no sound at all, unless ludicrously long and thin wire is used.

I got myself a a HK amp for 18K, a HK Cd Player for 3k (from an obscure shop in Kattuwa) and a pair of JBL XL1000s for 15K from the same shop... cables are from my old JVC mini compo and the damn thing sounds great.

next pay day, I am getting a Technics 12 band GE and if I find one a serviceable turntable. If anyone knows of one for sale, let me know.

Edited September 13, 2010 by VVTi

MkX · September 13, 2010

Dilesh said:
Did you know that apple actually manufactures in China? I've seen pleanty of iPods to iPhones to MacBooks that say "Designed by Apple Califonia, Assembled in China"
Not denying that there arent cheap chinese knock-offs though.

Yes.. most of the brands like Dell, Nokia, etc. I was referring to the Chinese fake headset identical to orginal. They say its original but materials they use, or resistance, gauge makes entire thing a different product.

SeanD · September 13, 2010

Elvis_Pil said:
Not exactly true. when it comes to car audio the speaker wires make all the difference- something to with the gauge and quality. If you dont wanna spend on the expensive stuff they will use the simple speaker wire. You get entry level to advanced speaker wiring kits off the shelf. And stuff like the amp powering cables- need a high gauge special wire- that costs Rs 1000 per meter

Too many theoretical factors to list here, (damping factor, resistance of the components, etc. etc.) but in practice, at audio frequencies, provided the the current handling capability of the wire is not exceeded, it will work. Cable gauge mainly comes in to play when driving longer lines in pro audio, not the short distances used in car and home audio. 18 or 16 AWG wire (roughly the gauge of the blue/brown twisted cord you see used in table lamps-- wire gets thicker as the AWG number reduces, other way around with SI units) will do the job for a car speaker application provided it is appropriately insulated, and not coiled (and hence more than a few feet long, driving impedance and potential for interference up, along with effects on the HF) somewhere between the amp and speakers. This does not somehow change just because the wire insulation has a label like "MONSTER" or has a 1000 rupee price tag on it, which is what I meant by my first comment What's more important that all the connections are properly made, and wire polarity is correct throughout the installation, which it seems the above mentioned shop may not pay attention to.

After all, nobody told the speakers that the cord being used cos 1000 bucks a meter I spent many years in a related industry, and it never ceases to amaze how many millions of dollars are spent on cables in the wrong applications.

On a related note, the below study has been done in various forms over the last 50 years, it might interest you:

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari...-8&oe=UTF-8

Pericles · September 13, 2010

Elvis_Pil said:
Actually thats the story of China- the big brands outsource their MFG to the China plants, and those guys rip off the technology and produce under no brand or a fake brand

AFAIK, Apple stuff is manufactured by Foxconn

nissan_fan · September 13, 2010

SeanD said:
Too many theoretical factors to list here, (damping factor, resistance of the components, etc. etc.) but in practice, at audio frequencies, provided the the current handling capability of the wire is not exceeded, it will work. Cable gauge mainly comes in to play when driving longer lines in pro audio, not the short distances used in car and home audio. 18 or 16 AWG wire (roughly the gauge of the blue/brown twisted cord you see used in table lamps-- wire gets thicker as the AWG number reduces, other way around with SI units) will do the job for a car speaker application provided it is appropriately insulated, and not coiled (and hence more than a few feet long, driving impedance and potential for interference up, along with effects on the HF) somewhere between the amp and speakers. This does not somehow change just because the wire insulation has a label like "MONSTER" or has a 1000 rupee price tag on it, which is what I meant by my first comment What's more important that all the connections are properly made, and wire polarity is correct throughout the installation, which it seems the above mentioned shop may not pay attention to.
After all, nobody told the speakers that the cord being used cos 1000 bucks a meter I spent many years in a related industry, and it never ceases to amaze how many millions of dollars are spent on cables in the wrong applications.

On a related note, the below study has been done in various forms over the last 50 years, it might interest you:

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari...-8&oe=UTF-8

Thanks to you guys I learned hell-of-a-lot about cables and audio and much more. However my simple thread opening question is not answered yet. Could someone please answer that question?

lokulamaya · September 13, 2010

Gayan Weerakoon said:
My Amp is more than 480W so it was def not enough....
The power line they used for the AMP was so thin you wouldnt use it even for your house electrical stuff

Took it to Pet#o they used a nice BIG Thick power line and high quality Fuse and holder.

machan tell u the truth i dont know about Pet#o..but this advance fellows should be ashamed of them selves.they are charging high money for nothing..one of my friend took his touchscreen kenwood car set cause it had some flaws in the load unload bay..they took about 4 days to repair..but when we go their to pick it they said your work is not over..and we had to wait about 1.5 extra hours..then we thought enough is enough and went to their repairing section without notifying the first guy we talked to.. when we went thier we were just stuned..the technician had never touch the cover even..but to hide that he said machan i even replaced the ic and it worked once now it's not working..it was just a 8 pin small ic(Ic no is not a familiar one)..

so what to do we went home empty handedly. couple of days after our friend went again ..the story was the same..so he talked to boss and request the setup back...set was in the same faulty condition..do u know the price they have charged Rs 8500.. set was at the same fu**ing condition when we hand over to them... my friend was busy those days to sell his car..so he bear the loss and sell the car with the setup and had told the new owner about the real situation..for some reason the new owner was unable to find that IC here in sri lanka..and some how he was manage to get the IC from singapore(through his cousin)..really funny part was that IC was less than 1600 in sri lankan rupees..So we can understand how they do thier business.

So i will say this..

ADVANCE AUDIO..OR WHAT EVER SHIT..DONT SHOW THIS KIND OF RETARDED UGLY TRICKS TO OUR PEOPLE..U GUYS MAY CATCH UP THE WHOLE WORLD SOME DAY..BUT WHEN U LOOK BACK THIER ARE THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE HERE IN SRI LANKA WAITNG TO SPIT AT UR UGLY F*****G FACE... That's it...

Edited September 13, 2010 by lokulamaya

SeanD · September 13, 2010

nissan_fan said:
Thanks to you guys I learned hell-of-a-lot about cables and audio and much more. However my simple thread opening question is not answered yet. Could someone please answer that question?

I think someone said the company pays attention to their feedback on Autolanka, judging by a similar comment I seem to remember from some time back. Then again...since the service issues don't seem to have improved, maybe not! Pet#o is well known and is quite good I think, though possibly overpriced. My n16 had its audio installed at purchase by Gilbert & co, but the CD changer couldn't handle being installed right above the back wheel and died after about 7 thousand km. I installed my own front load player after that, but the wiring job seemed up to scratch. Not sure on their pricing though,

Elvis_Pil · September 14, 2010

yup this is all very good and copper will perform consistently under static conditions. However when it comes to car audio there are many factors to consider, as these will effect the sound quality if no handled properly. I mean at the end of it all you are running cables- that are twisted and bent in all sorts of ways, subject to heat & dampness, pressed against other bits of metal, then again you are loading these wires with high power setups- all these factors can contribute to resistance, which in turn reduces sound quality. So no I'm not keen on compromising on car audio wiring..

SeanD said:
Too many theoretical factors to list here, (damping factor, resistance of the components, etc. etc.) but in practice, at audio frequencies, provided the the current handling capability of the wire is not exceeded, it will work. Cable gauge mainly comes in to play when driving longer lines in pro audio, not the short distances used in car and home audio. 18 or 16 AWG wire (roughly the gauge of the blue/brown twisted cord you see used in table lamps-- wire gets thicker as the AWG number reduces, other way around with SI units) will do the job for a car speaker application provided it is appropriately insulated, and not coiled (and hence more than a few feet long, driving impedance and potential for interference up, along with effects on the HF) somewhere between the amp and speakers. This does not somehow change just because the wire insulation has a label like "MONSTER" or has a 1000 rupee price tag on it, which is what I meant by my first comment What's more important that all the connections are properly made, and wire polarity is correct throughout the installation, which it seems the above mentioned shop may not pay attention to.
After all, nobody told the speakers that the cord being used cos 1000 bucks a meter I spent many years in a related industry, and it never ceases to amaze how many millions of dollars are spent on cables in the wrong applications.

On a related note, the below study has been done in various forms over the last 50 years, it might interest you:

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari...-8&oe=UTF-8

Edited September 14, 2010 by Elvis_Pil

SeanD · September 14, 2010

Elvis_Pil said:
yup this is all very good and copper will perform consistently under static conditions. However when it comes to car audio there are many factors to consider, as these will effect the sound quality if no handled properly. I mean at the end of it all you are running cables- that are twisted and bent in all sorts of ways, subject to heat & dampness, pressed against other bits of metal, then again you are loading these wires with high power setups- all these factors can contribute to resistance, which in turn reduces sound quality. So no I'm not keen on compromising on car audio wiring..

Not really, but it's your car and your setup, so whatever makes you feel better

Edited September 14, 2010 by SeanD

Gayan Weerakoon · September 14, 2010

Bottom line is if you wanna get cheated go to Advance!!!!!

The two fuse holders and fuses and wires must have cost them Max Rs 300 they charged me Rs2000.....

Ripper · September 14, 2010

Oh well...absolute best thing to do is DIY

Do proper research, get the best stuff for the best deal and more importantly grow a pair and just get to it...

Planning on doing the truck slowly and i'm gonna do it myself

Elvis_Pil · September 14, 2010

for the 2nd time- how much did Pet#o charge you for the same job?

Gayan Weerakoon said:
Bottom line is if you wanna get cheated go to Advance!!!!!
The two fuse holders and fuses and wires must have cost them Max Rs 300 they charged me Rs2000.....

nissan_fan · September 14, 2010

Still my thread opening questions was not answered. Typical Sri Lankan behavior here. When someone ask a question, Sri Lankans tend to say what they know about related stuff instead of providing pinpoint answer or simply saying they don't know the answer.

I'll post my questions again. So that someone with knowledge can answer me.

1. How about the Caska Car audio, is it worth the price paid?

2. How much it will cost?

Cheers,

nissan_fan