No More Crackle Crackle

A year or more ago one of my car front speakers started to be not so good.  It would come and go with a crackling, but when it was bad it was really annoying.  At some point I switched the output all to the other side but I also, like a year ago, wrote on a sticky note "car speakers".  As in... look into this.

Having things on the back of my mind like that bugs me.  I'm the same with red notifications on phones or email or games or social media.  TAKE THAT AWAY.  But that stocky note sat for probably a year.  Bugging me.

So a couple of months ago I stopped in to talk to one car speaker place near me and they gave me a ballpark cost.  But there is another place that has a really solid rep and it's right near the mechanic I take my car to so when my car went in for a checkup I popped in and chatted with them.  They offered a repair or a replacement at varying cost and I said I'd get back to them.

It's all a little confusing to me and so I asked Jason for help as he's got more audiophile knowledge than I do and we decided a replacement was probably better long term than a repair so I went back in and booked an appointment but also got overwhelmed by what this second person told me about options.

I actually brought Jason when I dropped off my car and I felt annoyed by my own "bring a man to a car thing" but Jason pointed out it wasn't that (and I never felt that from the folks there to be fair) he was like "you're just bringing a sound person who happens to be a guy." 

So anyway, I spent WAY more than I'd thought (including putting in sound matting which Jason explained to me and I was like well damn, I kind of feel like I have to do that now, crap) and I went to pick it up at the end of the day and as I was driving away, I rolled down my windows and CLUNK. 

Yep, they hit something.

I was not a happy camper.  I get anxiety spikes around money and this felt like a lot of money for me (I hadn't saved up for it, it was more than I'd thought due to the labour and sound matting) and now it wasn't working!?

I kind of freaked out when I got home and told Jason and he was like "welp" but also "they'll fix it", I did some googling and figured they had somehow missed putting in something called "spacers" and so I called them the next day and they were like OH NO, let's get you in RIGHT AWAY and fix it and they were apologetic and confused why so and so didn't "check that" but they got my car back in and threw in some spacers and so long story short I have functioning front speakers in my car again and it's way nicer than dealing with crackle crackle buzz buzz.

The only now not great news is that I've discovered that some of my MP3s are NOT of good quality and now I can actually hear the difference on these improved speakers and it's like wow, I had no idea before but also OH NO do I have to go through my files and replace the crappy ones?

So we'll see how it goes in the next few weeks of driving, as in, do I really notice all that much or can I handle the occasional poor quality song?

The sound baffling by the way is actually one of the things I like the most, and wasn't aware was a thing.  Inside the car is that much quieter, and it's actually really nice.  Go figure!  (They also left me some extra for if/when I do my rear door speakers which... maybe I will, maybe I won't, we'll see how budgets and sound play out, you know?)