For those who know about stereos...
which is best:

1 Keenwod
2 Piooner
3 Blau Punkt
4 Sony

All info is greatly appreciated.

 

As far as which one is best, I'd say find the ones with the features you want in your price range and listen to them side by side.
The speakers and the acoustics in the car have more to do with the way it sounds in my opinion. I've got a Blaupunkt Lexington in my car and a Sony 10 disc changer and am very pleased with them. I like the OEM look of the Blau'(and I got a great deal on both)

Pete

 

I have blau CD player (santa monica).
2 - blau's in the front (35watt rms)
2 - Pioneers in the back (45watt rms).
They have NO bass, but sound great... If you're close to Decatur, AL i'll stop bye and let you listen or whatever...

 

I'm partial to the Kenwood stuff......

 

Alpine!!! (head unit)

Rockford Fosgate amps, and never buy "name brand" speakers - I find "little" companies make better speakers. Big companies tend to put out "generic" stuff, while newer, smaller companies put more work into outdoing the bigger guys. Try Altec Lansing or Acoustic Research. If you can find Polk car speakers, I'd go with them, they are bulletproof.

 

well i think pete said it already, the key thing is to figure out what kind of interface and features you want and select the unit that most closely matches that... sound quality differences are probably below the considerable noise floor of a car's listening environment.

personally, as far as electronics, i like the old sony mobile ES stuff better than anything else. it has the best features with the most intelligent, intuitive interface. they make great use of their display, providing tons of information and not a lot of pointless graphics and scrolling, flashing, blinking crap. However, the new Xplod (pronounced "explode") stuff maintains the cool features and most of the interface, but adds a lot of "cool looking" worthless graphics, as do most of those other brands. that is cool if you take the rice approach to stereo but personally i don't like stuff moving in my periphreal vision while i drive.

pioneer head units have some great features but i've heard the user interface is hard to master... lots of small buttons in weird places and you'll sit there with the manual for a week trying to figure out how to skip to the next track.

for speakers i think boston acoustics and eclipse are pretty sweet.... for amps... well i have a PPI (precision power) amp that is rock solid and a kicker impulse amp that sucks complete *** and that's about all i know. If RF makes their amps as crappy as their subwoofers (all paper) then they suck.

As for subs, JL Audio drivers sound awesom and their web page has tons of info about setting up bass. Eclipse makes some aluminum cone drivers that would probably blow you away if you can afford to power them.

Oh yeah, and most of the stuff i reccomended here, i actually bought myself for my other car after months of research.

Ben.

 

I have a Blau. Florida. with Cerwin Vega's all the way around. It has a nice sound.

 

Hi,

it's been a long time (and things do change) but back when working my way through school and doing about 1/2 installs and 1/2 internal component-level repair, I developed some pretty strong preferences -- mostly based on what units came back for repairs, repeatedly. I'd avoid Pioneer like the plague. Nak is top quality, but not a lot of glitzy features for the money. For generally good userinterface, features, and better than average quality and outputs, these days, I like the Sony ES units. The regular Sony are good units on par with most of what you mentioned, but the ES double the warranty, plate the output jacks, up the output amps/voltage and usually add a tiny feature or two, all for only a bit more money (10-20%) than the non ES-line equivalents. Highly recommended.

I too like Polk. I have an old set in my home that are larger than me, yet very musical, and now pushing 15yrs and going strong. I have their 4x6s in the pcar serving temporary duty until I can get some custom front kick panel enclosures built (they can accomodate much nicer drivers, and the placement gives much nicer imaging)

Note for you multi amp guys that still appreciate a small footprint in the car. Some of the higher end Sony ES are some of the few units with a true internal low level crossover (routes highs to the regular drivers and lows to the subs, with each frequency independently adjustable), not just an extra low freq output (most units still route the low freqs to the main drivers, which defeats half the purpose of separate subs (fidelity and lack of bass induced clipping in the mids/tweeters, vs simply very loud bass)

hope that helps someone.

Oh yeah, I like Infinity and JBL and a lot of the small no-name drivers best too, though there's some junk there as well. Polk is probably the most for the money in the mid to high end.

later
roger

 

I have owned both an the Pioneer gives you way better sound for your money. I plan on getting some Polk speakers.

 

I disagree. Maybe this was true for their older models?

 

I'm not commenting on head units, as quality of everything has gone down (the Made In China syndrome) - and I haven't been tracking which ones are still ok. I had a Clarion cd, old, 2-channel, made in Japan - very nice. Replaced it with 4-channel Clarion, made in China (amp powering other 2 speakers in that car had died), which is now in 944. Quality is less, skips more easily - predictable. Which is too bad - based on the older one, I would have recommended them in a flash.

Now, all that having been said, the real reason I replied on this thread is - ALTEC LANSING? LITTLE/NOT NAME BRAND? The mighty Voice of the Theatre? Ah, for shame!

T

PS - Does anyone know what happened to Altec, for that matter? Did they completely abandon the pro/PA market to JBL, Klipsch, etc, or what?

PPS - got curious. Altec did in fact go through a bunch of buyouts, mergers, etc - now all that is left is in fact PC speakers and so forth. Which is sad; I've always considered Altec speakers to be superior to JBL - I think JBL is the industry standard just because they are the industry standard. Which is interesting - I also found out in my research that JBL = James B. Lansing!

 

I have had a head unit from all the manufacturers listed. It is more the quality of speakers and amps than the reciever. Mostly, it is what you want it to do, what it looks like, etc.

I now have a Kenwood 715s reciever, Alpine V12 4 Channel amp, 2 MTC Blue Tunders for the subs. Speakers are Polk 4" Component set in the doors, 4X6 rears, and 2 8" Kicker Solos in the rear pockets.

It has a nice full sound with a touch of low bass, and a great punch.

All in all, design a system that does what you want.

 

tabor:

ok, my knowledge is somewhat dated. i did all my stereo component research 2-3 years ago when i built the system in my old car. at that time, pioneer had a really fat head unit with built in dsp to correct for the distance between each individual speaker and the drivers, seat, however, neither the remote nor the head unit were suitable for use while driving.

i haven't looked that extensively into head units since then, except to notice the trend towards more stupid distracting graphics that convey little or no information. maybe the new pioneer head units have a better interface or maybe you like buttons where i like *****....

 

That Pioneer head unit was recalled.. the DSP chips had problems.

The Kenwood DPH-8000 and 9000 are all very impressive head units if you want to drop over $500 on them.

 

I have the Pioneer head unit and love it but I do agree that the unit takes some time to get used too. But the sound is great and you have tons of possibilites, and a built in electronic cross-over and equilizer. For speakers I am using pioneer plates in the front and memphis plates in the rear and 2 MTX 8's in the hatch with a kenwood amp. I had kenwood 4x6 prior and they sucked and could not use the factory grills. Now it all looks stock again (except the deck but it does not have flashing lights)