February 28th, 2005
I am back on the road for a few days, and my rant is exclusively about that ridiculous excuse of a car stereo in my rental car.
For controls, it's got a button marked, "CD" and a slot to slide the CD into. Er ... except for the volume switch that's it. So the entire range of control I have over playing a CD in this car is: 1) Play CD, 2) Make it soft or loud. I get the feeling that if the makers of this car thought they could get away with it, they wouldn't have even bothered with the volume control.
The thing is, whoever "tuned" the stereo at the factory made sure that the bass is boosted so much that you can irritate the people in cars around you (at least at intersections) at even moderate volume levels.
Now, it was tolerable when I blew down the I-5 playing the Beatles. I suspect Paul McCartney was always boosting his bass so everyone else could hear it, anyway ... but Carly Simon with shit-kicking bass drums and bass lines just sounds silly. And J.S. Bach's Magnificat was ... well, not at all magnificent. And me with no way to control it! Very frustrating!
Now, I am sure that I am not the -um- intended audience for this car. I mean, it is one of those sporty-looking, but ultimately stupid and powerless little Pontiac thingies. Appeals to people who aren't exactly sophisticated. Looks sort of like a sports car, has acceleration from 0-40 Km/H like a sports car—and then you can floor it from there-on and it's got nothing to give you, and the seats are just the right amount of uncomfortable to make you think you are in a sports car—until you take a corner and side-roll practically into the next lane.
So, the audience for the car I am currently driving is the type of person who does not consider playing his stereo loud enough for other people to hear it as an irritant. In fact, he wants you to hear his music; he thinks that he is educating you, he thinks that if you can hear his music you will suddenly like it and, by extension, be in awe of him.
Beh ... he is the type that could care less about the pure sound quality of his rap music ... just as long as he can feel the *boom*boom*boom* of it. Because then he can think he is cool.