It is getting higher the demand on a good sound in a car. Like some other sensory qualities, achieving a good sound is still treated as a black-box followed by the individual taste of tuning engineers. This study aims to define the attributes of a good car audio sound and the assessment factors affecting the sound quality. With a variety of surveys on professional listening groups and car audio installers, 26 most frequently used vocabularies are selected as typical presentations of car audio sound quality. After repetitions of listening tests with deliberately selected test CD, pre-recorded 15 different digital car-recordings, headphones replay system, and three different listening groups, it is proved that there are at least 5 different assessment factors which significantly affect the car audio sound quality. They are high fidelity, spectral balance, tonal accuracy, sound stage and acoustic fault.
