Now you're talkin' !!



What do we get the winner?? Chicken dinner?

"the next nutcase" :rofl:

Mario, I went with the Kenwood DNN990HD.

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...while cruising down the interstate at 80mph. I've often wondered if the high end stereo was actually worth it on our cars with all the other noises.

My Nomad has (not my car anymore) a big killer stereo --- and on a long trip say from Seattle down to Reno for Hot August Nights --- it was used a lot... and with enough speakers and power -- YES you can overcome the other noises....


Having said that -- my last two cars have NO stereo in them at all. Of course in the roadster - it would be absolutely useless. I'm sure in the drop top '33 - that would also be the case.

The thing is -- with the new small really high quality headphones such as Beats etc -- and an iPod or even a cellphone now -- if you want some music on a long trip it's pretty easy just to slip those in and cruise.

I totally agree Greg. Before I started redoing my Chevelle, it had two JL Audio 12" W7's powered by a 1000/1 JL Audio monoblock amp. Midrange and highs were handled by Focal 3-way components powered by a four channel JL Audio 450/4 amp. So, oh yes...without a reasonable doubt, even with the 509 big block rumbling, you could hear it a block away. It was way overkill...way too much though. I'm gonna tone it down a bit when I do the stereo this time. I think I'm gonna go with 2 or 3 JL Audio 10" W7's. That'll still be plenty. I may even do 8" W7 subs.

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I'm about a month late with my answer (as usual), but a nice alternative to the JL Audio HD900/5 is the Alpine PDX-V9.

They are both 100wx4 + 500wx1, very similar in size and the Alpine is about $300 cheaper. I have the Alpine in my DD and am very happy with it. I run 3 older Alpines in the Camaro and they do the job.

I used to do SPL and sound quality stereo competitions back in the Late 90's and early 2000's. Both my brother (who also competed) and I were invited to Nationals but never went due to expense. I've got a couple of huge trophies but they didn't give out any good cash unfortunately...... :shakehead:

Anyway, at that time it was Clarion, Eclipse, Audiocontrol and Soundstream that were at the top of the heap and I wasted a whole lot of money on all four. Everything has changed as it does with electronics and I don't know my butt from a hole in the ground when it comes to the brands anymore. I can still tell what sounds good though. My ears still work.....LOL

My 4, 12" sub setup that won me a triple points competition is now in my living room as my home theater sub and my Soundstream 10.2 is down in the shop. I went to get my purple Clarion 6.5 components out the other day to test fit them in my Camaro and the cones have become brittle and cracked...really sucks since I loved those speakers. I even called Clarion about re-coning them but it seems it's not worth it. I've still got 20ft of 1ga wire laying about too.

I'm pretty sure some things still hold true. Get the best component speakers you can afford and a really nice crossover to get the right frequencies going to the right places. Don't skimp on Amplifiers either and check their RMS ratings, not peak. If you want to save some money you can go for a slightly cheaper head unit and sub woofers. Don't by junky ones or anything but a good x-over will hide head unit flaws by cleaning and boosting the signal and box design has more to do with sub sound than anything else unless you are running them to the limit. Back in the day, my philosophy was to buy cheap subs but the best amplifier I could find and beat the living crap out of them.

It's 2014 if you're really trying to step up you run an iPad mini as your head unit. Alpine and pioneer are trash. If you must go with a double din Kenwood is the only way to go. The features, tunability and Garmin navi in the Kenwood destroy alpine and pioneer. As far as amps and subs JL is still top of the food chain.

The kenwood stuff isn't nearly as reliable. Needs frequent software updates and doesn't have near the sound quality of the alpine head units. I am a dealer for both kenwood excelon and alpine. I'd rather have the alpine