Originally Posted by SDFever

This is exactly correct. Further, one of the most common reasons people have bad experiences with Optima speciffically is simply due to charging. They do not like to be blasted with amperage after a long continious drain such as a stereo. It also takes them longer to bounce back if charging with an alternator vs. a trickle low amp multi-stage. If you're gonna use them for both, stereo and starting, then fire up the engines several times through out your day and charge them for a short while. That's another way to help keep them above the killer low levels like mentioned above.

If you're at the sandbar all day long running a loud stereo and you only fire up the engine once for 5 minutes, they won't last long at all even though you were still able to crank over.