Buy a Pioneer. Kenwoods are okay, and if you want some subs go will quality ones like eclipse.

 

if your shooting for sound quality, don't get a second subwoofer. also with the amp you have, you would need to buy two subwoofers and replace the one you have to get the same power output you have now. don't get two subs, in every install i have ever done, the sound quality is better coming form a single 12 then from dual 12s. however if you are shooting for volume and want the rolling thunder effect, then yea, get some new subs. also, instead of buying two new subs, your money would be much better spent on a new 4 channel amp for your mids and highs. i would recommend going with another MTX amp to match the one you have, but if matching equipment doesn't make a difference (the mtx amps are very nice amps, otherwise i would have told you to get rid of the one you have), jl audio makes some sick amps. my brother had a kicker mono amp and that thing was crazy, but i don't know if kicker makes any 4 channel amps (i would imagine they do). i actually was using a MTX 5 channel amp (model 895), running my kappa high and mids and a kappa perfect DVC 12. the sound was excellent. that was in my porsche, but i just converted it to a track only car, and am waiting to put all the equipment in the EVO.

 

oh oh oh!!!! i forgot you got the alpine 9831 deck! get am apline 4 channel digital amp!!! you can get the amp link form their webpage for free i beleive with the purchase of a deck and amp. what that will allow you to do is control the gains, crossover frequencies, db boost and it will also give you a voltage readout, all at the head unit. no more having to crawl into the truck to tune your system, you can do it all with the alpine head unit. this is one of the many cool features the deck you got has. do you have an ipod? cause they have an ipod link too...

 

Oh I see... then I won't get another sub!!!

 

Is this possible with my amp too??? Or do I need the alpine amp?
Your talking about that "I-personalize", right?

 

Go see my Friends at Competition Sound Works in Cerritos or All Star in Long Beach, they have been doing cars for all of us manufacturers for years and will they give you great pricing, as well as service. When you buy online, you run risks; most of us manufactures do not authorize online sales, one of the only authorized online retailers is Crutchfield.

Good luck

 

I compared that alpined deck side to side to a top end clarion pro deck and the clarion blew the alpine away in sound quality and options that it had. My dad has an alpine and my deck has 10 times the options and sounds 10 times better. I haven't been at all impressed with alpine lately cept for their F1 series which is out of 99.999% of peoples price range. I used to have an eclipse and it sounded terrific but lacked the options and the functionality I wanted not to mention Eclipse decks look like crap and don't have removable face plates.

 

compare apples to apples, and no clarion does not have 10 times the options or 10x the sound quality. the only thing going for the clarion is the 24 bit D/A converters. most other decks do not have that. i couldn't give a **** if my deck has a full face color change like the high end clarions, nor do i car about the music capture thing. the deck i have retails for 500 dollars and only has a 3 band eq! that just sucks. oh, and it is a clarion, and only a year old. oh, and no digital time correction like the alpines, and the clarion ce-net doesn't have nearly as many options as the ai-net does. clarions are over prices and are not worth the cost. now, don't get me wrong, i would put my clarion up against any sony, pioneer, jvc, any of that garbage, but an alpine of the same price range will blow a clarion away in features.


fborg: no your mtx amp will not work on the amp link, only the DIGITAL alpines will. also, the i-personalize takes advantage of the digital time correction, the parametric eq, and the hi/low crossovers. you make a file off the internet, burn it to cd, and load it into your cd player and it automatically adjusts the settings for you. you can save multiple settings and just load them up with a click of a button. the amp link lets you control the gain of the alpine amps from the deck, as well as the other features the amps offer. you can control 8 amps that way i think (not that anyone taking advice from me would ever have 8 amps in one car).

 

Mmmmh... Well ok maybe I'll get rid of my amp and sub later.

Do I need new cables if I go with a new sub and amp?

 

if you have 4 gauge cables already you will be fine with two amps. the 421 should have 4 guage to begin with so i'm guessing you do. i would get a cap and use it as a distribution block to the two amps. short grounds with 4 guage to a solid chassis and you should be good to go.

 

Kevin I dont' know what model deck you have but the deck I have has a freakin ton of options and does have timeing correction it plays every format it has a touch screen it has dolby 5.1 capabilities you can even input the location of your speakers to adjust for timing as well as seating position not only for driver but also for passengers. and it doesn't stop there you can even input the size of your car (length width) to acount for air space and acoustics now tell me the alpine does all that.

maybe the one you got a couple years ago isn't quite up to par and I wont debate that but their new top end stuff is nice.

 

actually sentinal, that is what digital time correction is. you measure the distance between where you (and/or your passenger) sit, and this is converted to time delay on speakers. so when i said that the alpine has digital time correction, it is inputing the location of the passengers. now the alpines i bet is a hell of a lot easier to use then the clarions, because you can do it all online on your computer. and you can have multiple settings for multiple seating configurations. can the clarion do that? ok, and just so we know that we are not comparing apples to apples here, i am assuming the cd player you have is the clarions 945MP. at a retail price of 799 dollars. yes it has touch screen, and yes it has dolby pro logic II, but it doesn't even have the outputs for the 5.1 system. from what i can tell you need to buy the 550 dollar signal processor to take advantage of the dolby (don't know for sure on that one, because i could honestly care less about 5.1 in my car running cds. unless of course it were super audio cds, in which case the clarion can't play them anyway). also, how many cars actually have a center channel stock? the only one i know of is a mitsubishi eclipse (late 90's i believe).

now once again i am not in anyway saying that the clarion is a piece of junk, because it is not. in fact the last 2 cd players i had were clarions (my current clarion is only one year old, it is the 835MP MSRP 499.99 i beleive it was). i am saying that alpine offers just as many features (and although i would argue more, that is going to be a subjective decision), and a much better price point. for example: the alpine 9833 offers digital time correction, a bigger interal amplifier (60wattx4 vs the clarions 53x4) a better parametric eq (5 band fully adjustable frequency levels vs a 3 band 1/3 octave in the clarion), oh and the alpine is only 450 dollars, a difference of 350 dollars retail. that is half the price of the clarion.

and one last thing, if you really must use the dolby system, alpine does offer the processor just like the clarion, for a little more money (800 vs 550), you get a 31 band graphic eq in the alpine vs a 3 band in the clarion (which is worthless), and the alpine has 8 channel rca outs. also, the alpine must bet attached to one of the dvd players not the cd player i mentioned. but even then your still getting more bang for your buck.

 

(note* i list all prices as MSRP because i know you are really not stupid enough to pay full retail. i have never paid full retail on anything car stereo related, either buying stuff via my car stereo business i had a number of years back (thats when i got my first clarion at dealer pricing), or by ebay, which is close to wholesale in most cases, or when i worked at circuit city (and i never even got a deck from them, just speakers and an amp, and none of that is stuff they even carry. it was all accomedated from the manufacturer). either way i do know that clarions are marked up a bit higher then alpines are, and in most cases you can expect to save a couple hundred dollars or up to 50% off by buying via the methods i said.

 

it just looks better to say i have a (example) "pioneer system" which means all your componenets are the same brand......instead of a kenwood this... a sony that...it jsut sounds worse......my .02

 

but what is important the way your system sounds when you descibe it or how it sounds when you have it on?

Different brands specialize in different things. Focal makes (IMO) the best speakers on the market but they dont' do decks or amps like wise JL makes killer amplifiers and subwoofers but they don't make decks.

Get what works well together and what sounds good make sure you don't cut corners on wireing or connectors.

Kevin, the actual price you pay for the units is very close the clarion has a much larger "fudge factor" in the price I picked mine up for $475 the alpine final price was $399 and I agree you are stupid if you ever pay full retail price. Your also correct about the internal amplifier however on an upper end system few people actually use that. Most including myself get a good quality 4 channel amp and bypass the head units internal amp altogether. And yes you have to get an addon to run true dolby 5.1 sound out of this deck but it is set up to do it was my point. and the digital timing delay is also correct its just that the Clarion gives you more options with it than the Alpine. Even though the equalizer on the Clarion deck isn't that great they give you so many more options for how to setup the way it plays and has a ton more preset equalizer modes that it is just as capable as the alpine. Plus for 99 bucks you can get an external full equalizer that is made to run with this deck that will also boost the preouts to 8 volts.

As I stated before I compared these two decks side by side with all other variables equal and the Clarion just had an overall better sound than the Alpine.