from my experience i have found that whatever the guys at circuit city are pushing i wont buy and whatever brand they steer me away from is usually a pretty good deal for the price. they are all about sales and they will feed you all kind of BS.

 

bill owns all

never buy what they say, they are just going for the most profit even though they are greatttttt at sounding helpful

circuit city

 

If you want quality thats readily available, get either an eclipse or alpine head unit, and go with one of these brands for speakers, JL Audio, MB Quart, Focal, Rainbow. Alpine or JL for amps would be good as well, but its more important to have the quality head unit and speakers, then the amp.

 

alpine is and has always pretty much been the standard for high quality (re: competition) sound. I think its overpriced for my needs though and i choose pioneer because of brand loyalty more than anything.

i have heard a butt load of speakers and they are all comparable to each other for the most part. maybe im just deaf, but i think its mostly a brand war, and hey if you want to drop twice as much on your components, go for it. i would rather just get something that sounds decent and i half the price and spend that extra money on the engine or suspension. .

 

For head units, Most companies offer a good model or two. The majority of the affordable units have a S/N ratio around 92db. This sacrifices sound quality. A CD has a S/N ratio of 96db and you should look for a head unit that has this spec. Another note is that a S/N ratio of 120db is not better since it can't improve the CD, You only want to maintain the level of the disc. This goes for amps, xovers, eq's etc. Also, you can be sure that the internal xover, eq, DSP built into a head unit is crap and will be defeated before spec measurements to give better numbers.

Pre amp voltage is also important but the source impedance of that voltage is even more of a factor. Most advertise high voltage without giving the source impedance figures.

This was one of the reasons that I became a big fan of Zapco amplifiers. They include a balanced line driver with most amplifiers. This will quadruple the output voltage of a head unit if needed, lowers the input imepdance at the amplifier from 10K ohms to 600 ohms and the balanced cables have less signal loss than the best RCA cable you can buy. They phantom power, so no ground loops and you will never get induced noise with balanced signal. You can save $100 on a head unit and put that towards a better amp and improve the sound quality a great deal for the same money spent. If only other manufacturers would employ new input technology instead of using the same ancient, crappy RCA connection.

 

Amp technology is always cool, but really, the more bells and whistles, the more can go wrong.

Even better than balanced line converters, is an optical connection, which is what I'm going to shortly. better than the best RCA;s, especially if you're going to do any processing, since most processing is done digitally, if you can run an digital, optical link, there is no signalk losds, and you avoid the DA converters in between, so instead of having the CD, then a DA converter, then an AD converter in the processor, then another DA converter after the processor, you have the CD, the processor and one DA converter at the end.

For instance with ym Alpine H700, 1 DA converter is all I have to use, if I get a HU with an optical output (which I am, very soon)


On a side note if anyone wants one of the rockford/denon head units custom installed for a lancer, moulded into and dyed to match their dash, let me know, I've got one that I'm trying to sell so I can get an alpine with optical output. amazing sound quality, zero noise at all, and it looks amazing

 

Agreed, but costly and not for general use. There are not enough head units with optical output and the cost is much higher. Plus to take advantage of the processors capabilities you need more amp channels, more space, more current, more money. I've set up many "baby F1", original and new F1 Status systems and P9's, ODR and it is great stuff for .05% of the market (people like us) but not for the average consumer. I did a digital signal system in Phil Petracca"s Benz through the PC years ago and In Ira Senoff's Jeep with the old Alpine 5959S changer controlled by the stock head unit with an Apogee Digital EQ and 24bit D/A converter back in the day. It is much easier now to get those results with one little box. Look at how much smaller the improved F1 processor is.
The balanced line driver offers real world improvement in a world of marketing BS without any real cost factors.

Is that Denon/Rockford head the one with balanced out? If it is it used Zapco's simbilink balanced connector like some Soundstram (before they went to hell) and Rockford stuff.

 

Well said. I used the balanced mini din connections from my RFX8250 head unit to go into a Rockford EPX2 Symmetry, then into the Esoteric amp. Eliminated ALL noise. Not that there was much noise anyway with that head unit being such high quality, but your absolutely correct about the balanced signal being FAR superior.

 

Yes it is. It is a Rockford RFX-8250 Platinum 2000. It has front and rear channel 6 pin mini din balanced connectors. Since my amp didnt have the direct balanced inputs, I decided to pick up the EXP2 for its ease of connectivity with what I had, not to mention the tunability of it.

 

It's the 8240, it has the balanced outputs, yes. I love it, and don't really want to part with it, but I defnitely want optical instead of RCA

 

Why the EPX2 had balanced input but not output always amaazed me. THey had the balanced connector on the better amps - Power series and the 250 and 500M - but their big processor didn't let you use it.

 

I've got an EPX2 with the E14 card that I'm never going to use, the Rdat is messed up, so it's pretty much useless. plus the H700 does SO much more.

 

The H700 has a few compromises just like to P9, it mostly relates to space for data at the targeted price. The H700(1) is easier to set delay and has a far superior xover section. The P9 has +/- 12db eq section, but a good system setup shouldn't need that level of EQ adjustment anyway. The P9 also doesn't let you individually swap phase in software, you need to adjust it electrically. I do prefer the P9 interface for making adjustments on the fly, the Alpine controller used to be included and now is an extra item that is worth buying for heavy tuning sessions.

I bought my IASYS because of these products being released. Being able to accurately measure the time/distance, phasing by frequency, useable frequency response and amplitude by frequency really saves a ton of time when setting up a processor with that much adjustment. It got me 70% there in a few hours when normally I would be lucky to get 10% locked down by then. I had probably 150-200 hours of tuning time adjusting Phil's system by ear and spent maybe 10 hours ever on my car with a P9.

 

billace: to get a complete no compromise unit, you have to go with the alpine F#1 status H901 processor, which is insane.

you run DLS right? (if I recall properly) have you heard the nobellyums yet? or the TA2 amps? insane new gear.

I'll be running DLS all throughout my car this year again, 4 A3 amps, nobellyum tweeters, Iridium mids, secret dome mids, and my SP12 subwoofer, all off my H700. it's gonna be SWEEEEEEET.

 

I've used a lot of DLS, I was one of the first shops to bring it into the US. My first inventory was shipped from Europe before Pinny had the office in Fl. The Silver VC tweeter was the best I heard from them and the Iridium 6.5 was in the top 5 for speed, response and SQ (subjective) that I tested. I do think tube amps are a big waste for car audio or even elsewhere. if they were better than transistors 99.9% of recording studios would use them instead of transistor amps. A different harmonic of distortion (at much higher levels) with huge current draw doesn't seem the best way to go.

F1 status is a great piece of equipment if you have the tools, skill, and time to make all of those adjustments. I have seen many people have incredibly expensive mediocre systems and be beaten by simple system layouts because they weren't able to complete the investment the F1 demands. If you can get teh most out of it the results should be pretty awesome. I really do like it and was happy to see such a limited production system receive a ton of improvement. Thumbs up for Alpine.