Who has the best stereo equipment?

[OBeer-WAN-Kenobi]

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......

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.

[Dipped]

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.

[hifi875]

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

[DOOM]

Originally Posted by hifi875

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

Did exactly what you told me!

[Sparks67]

Originally Posted by hifi875

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

My dealer told me the opposite. The cool feature that Kenwood Excelon has is the ability to update the receiver. Software updates are a cool feature that has been shown in home equipment as well. My Denon AVR-5308 has this feature and saved me from buying new receivers. The software updates is advantage because of smartphone updates. While Alpine you have to update the entire Chinese made head unit.

Also, if you have an ISIS system, then ISIS can be updated as well. I originally bought my ISIS setup in 2010 from a group purchase. I just got mine back from ISIS and they updated mine to the latest specs for ISIS Intouch.

Jeff

[hifi875]

Originally Posted by Sparks67

My dealer told me the opposite. The cool feature that Kenwood Excelon has is the ability to update the receiver. Software updates are a cool feature that has been shown in home equipment as well. My Denon AVR-5308 has this feature and saved me from buying new receivers. The software updates is advantage because of smartphone updates. While Alpine you have to update the entire Chinese made head unit.

Also, if you have an ISIS system, then ISIS can be updated as well. I originally bought my ISIS setup in 2010 from a group purchase. I just got mine back from ISIS and they updated mine to the latest specs for ISIS Intouch.

Jeff

yes it is nice that they can be upgraded, but they often quit working and lockup for no reason. Its fine if everything is working like its supposed and you want to do a software upgrade, but when the thing quits working as it should and you have to make a special trip back to your dealer to get it fixed, it is a pain both to the customer, because they don't know whats going on and its a pain to the dealer because we generally have to stop everything we are working on and fix it when the customer comes by. Then you look up the software upgrade and it will say it fixes this and improves that. well they should of figured that out before they shipped it.