Hearing is Believeing with Reus Systems
Would you buy something you can’t even see? There’s a reason why audio components are called a sound system and not a see system, and a good sound system, like the kind we're about to show you is one you might even know is there until the first track starts playing. For the past 40 years, Reus, a Southern California-based car audio company, have been working with cars to figure out the true potential of the factory sound system while enhancing your listening experience. While Reus can take on just about any car project it want and have traveled around the world to install their systems, their main focus lately has been focused on exotic cars, such as a Porsche GT3 or BMW i8, to name a few.
A standard Reus System comes with speakers, a subwoofer, an amplifier and other components that they develop themselves, but as Reus’ Cliff Johnson says, “We don’t sell parts, we sell sound.” Cliff is talking about the process they take to tune each system to a standard and then dial it in to the customer's personal preferences. “What you’re buying from us is that clarity, that definition of the music.”
While other companies are caught up in offering glitzy and shiny features that have nothing to do with improving sound quality, Reus focuses on the performance and ability to hide their components. Their customers love great sound, but don’t want their car cut up in the process. By not butchering the cars, customers tend to have fewer problems and makes changing cars that much easier, especially with Reus' lifetime warranty. As a Reus customer, if you ever decide to switch cars, they'll swap your system over to the new car for only the cost of labor.
As you can see here, the custom subwoofer for the BMW i8 tucks away nicely in the passenger’s foot well and is thin enough that it doesn’t take away any legroom.
Rues added this inconspicuous knob on the driver's seat for on-the-fly, fine-tuning of the bass, depending on what type of music is playing.
We can tell you with confidence that a Reus system truly does sound great: the music becomes more crisp, the vocals feel "live", as if the artist is performing alongside you in the passenger seat...even hip hop sounds different, not completely drowned out by bass. We could go on and on...but you still wouldn't be able to relate to our experience.
Rick Reus, schooled us on more than just audio components; he taught us a thing or two about audio itself. You could have the best system in the world, but it wont matter if you are playing compressed, downloaded audio files. Compressed files lose the dynamic range in the sound, but a Reus System is designed to help you make the right adjustments and put that dynamic range back into the file, bringing the music back to life. Additionally, Rick says that WAV files or other high-resolution audio files are the ideal formats to listen to when using a Reus system.
“There is an optimal number of speakers for a car, and more is not better in audio,” Rick adds. The reason being is that speakers are still physical components and there’s always one speaker that will be slower due to timing alignment. To help illustrate this point, try this: grab a buddy or two and try clapping together at the exact same time. It's not as easy as it sounds. The same concept goes when you add more speakers to a system, so don’t be fooled when manufactures roll out that ginormous 21-speaker setup.
At the end of the day, Reus' primary goal is to get people to listen to better quality versions of the music they already listen to, especially since the majority of us already spend lots of time in a car on a regular basis. It just so happens their audio components help in doing a really great job of bringing that goal to fruition.
(Story/photos: Justin Pagtalunan & Jonathan Wong)
