ICE and brand manufacturers

[HDi fun]

What is your perception of ICE brands? Who do you associate with high performance and high quality hardware?

This is my list of what I perceive as quality brands:

Clarion; Becker; Blaupunkt; Alpine; Nakamichi; JBL; Harman-Kardon; Bose

List of not quite so keen brands:

Sony; Pioneer; Aiwa; Kenwood; Grundig

List of dislikes;

Sharp; Harry Moss; Audioline; Sanyo; Alba

These are all mainstream makers - anyone know of some more esoteric ones?

[Prince]

I want all my ICE components to be Alpine as I know they are top quality. My headunit is Alpine and I couldn't be happier with it...it is ready for Alpine speakers (currently Pioneer as standard), Alpine subs and Alpine amps!

[waynne]

You missed off JVC - Which i've been impressed with. Also Sony would go in the quality section IMHO. The XPLOD range especially - nice and easy to use with solid buttons and clear interface.

Kenwood however feel a bit plasticky and the top lip of the casette opening broke off the pull out head on mine (not impressed!)

[paulgolding]

alpine make superb headunits, but when it comes to speakers and amps there are better.

I have always wanted a jl audio sub. The 10w6 has dual voice coils that you can run in parallel to halve the ohms

Yes it's loud but the emphasis is on musical quality so it doesn't just boom, it's "musical bass" !!

Phoenix gold sell quality amps. Genesis and some more expensive denon too.

Speaker wise, I used to have mb quart or infinity.

At the moment I have a kicker dual coil square sub with kicker amp and Diamond audio components for the front driven be a second kicker amp. However this will probably be up for sale soon as the new car has an upgrade stereo.

[HDi fun]

I'm glad someone else has used the word 'musical' in the same sentence as the word 'bass'.

[Prince]

I hate it when you can hear someone's system rattling...or as soon as they turn it up it distortes.

[HDi fun]

Clipping is a problem with bass if the power rails can't cope. It's also pitch and timing that lots of bass systems struggle with.

[DETHTATS]

I would have to agree with paul, jl audio is a better brand. I had a set of 12's in a bandpass box that would rattle the neighborhood windows with only a 500 watt amp!

[blacklineninja]

I've got my eye on an In Phase head unit. Are they any good?

[herb]

brands i have used and would recommend if you like cheapish and good quality
head units sony, jvc, alpine, clarion,
components infinity, jbl, sony,
6x9's mtx, infinity, sony, alpine,
subs mtx, jl,
amps kicker, sony, alpine, jensen,
power caps stealth,

[lee172]

I would recommend JVC / Alpine for headunits in terms of qualtiy music , Alpine offer a few headunits with a good 4v output, inphase headunits are not very reliable neither are clarion in my experience.
components...Kenwood / Orion although im running pioneer in my car which arent too bad
Subs/Amps... Deffo has to be Directed/Orion i have one 15" sub in my car and im gettin 142.8 db on the spl tests. Jl subs sound good with a lower power amp, you cant really put alot of power into them.
I have heard that mtx are good but have never used them myself

[Rawdawg]

i have seen MTX square 15" kickers, which when mounted with the correct MTX amp for the subs, sounded great, pound hard, a friend of mine had them in his truck, and it would shake your car to his music if you were within half a mile of him,

however, i have had good luck with Rockford Fosgates for subwoofers, maybe they arent around you guys, not sure, but personally i like them, Alpine head units for sure, A+++ quality, love em,

i have had a Sony Xplod full system including 2 6.5" rounds, 2 6x9" s, and 2 12" octagon subwoofers, wired to a couple of 800watt amplifyers.. the system sounded good, the subs pounded clean and hard, the speakers were clean, everything sounded good together, if i saw that for the same deal i got before i would seriously consider buying it again.

to each their own, but as far as im concerned, if you've got a system that sounds clean, seems reliable, and isnt going to cost more than you really want to spend on an audio system that doesnt do anything but go thump thump, and play the same tunes a cheap system can.

__________________________
Performance before paint in my views

Dawg

[prevtec]

i use sony all the time
i find for a normal cd player, it takes the bumps pretty well
i would have to really connect with a pothole for it to skip

in saying that the gf has a panasonic cd player and the sound from the speakers are better than mine, and its not down to speakers as i have the same 1s in my car

[Rawdawg]

odd.. maybe more eQ settings on hers? not sure.. but yeah, for a normal deck i've liked it, you really have to do dammage to something on the car for it to skip, , but would definatly go for an Alpine system, and would probably run 12" rockford Fosgate subwoofers,

[HDi fun]

"in saying that the gf has a panasonic cd player and the sound from the speakers are better than mine, and its not down to speakers as i have the same 1s in my car"

That's the old acoustic minefield. Speakers are a very small part of the equation. Where they're installed, how firmly mounted and in the case of bass drivers how much air volume behind 'em makes more difference than the drive unit itself.

[Loz]

I bought a very simple Blaupunkt setup for my car just so I have something to listen to & It's a lot better than I thought it would be. very chuffed

[HDi fun]

My car has the factory audio kit with no changes at all. Head unit is car specific Clarion (model RM2 I think). There's a slight earth problem which really winds me up when it manifests. Changer in boot (factory) is Clarion. It's a bit slow and clunky but it's bearable. The whole lot is fed to jbl speakers via Harman-Kardon power amps (again, standard).

So it's staying in place I'm afraid.

[turbonutter69]

In my car currently I have a Sony CDX GT929U Cd Mp3 player. With some Al[ine SXE-1750S components up front running off the head unit. I have some Vibe QB69's in the parcel shelf. They are running off a Toxic T1100 Amp. And in the boot I've got two 12 inch Audiobahn subs running off a Juice JA1200D mono block amp. Everything but the 6x9's sound good. I intend on replacing them soon as I really don't rate them at all.

[I2EBORN]

What do you guys think of FUSION?

Any good?

I've also heard alot of bad things about sony which i didnt really expect because they have such a strong background in sound and vision technology.

[waynne]

Its probably fair to say that every manufacturer have turned out a duff unit. I had a Sony and found it to be really well made.

I've never tried Fusion so can't really comment on this brand. Perhaps some of our other members have.

[turbonutter69]

Fusion is quality kit......

[c130fxr]

When I had my shop my high lines were Audiobahn, Panasonic, Kove Audio, and Resident Engineering, US amps (SPL stuff)
My lower lines were sony, pioneer, and some no name stuff.
Now as mentioned above everybody make a P.O.S but a pretty good rule of thumb when dealing with electronics is "you get what you pay for."

I had 2 shop cars one setup for SPL the other for SQ and of course both had the best stuff from my shop.

The SPL car real simple 84 Subaru gl-10 wagon 2 Resident Engineering XXX 15's in a 30 cuft box with 525 sqin of port tuned to 57hz each sub had 4 2000 watt US amps hooked up (1 per voice coil), 6 redtop optima batteries to maintain 14.4v for the 5 sec burp and a pioneer 'dead head' head unit. Best achieved was 168.5 db.

The SQ car was a 2000 dodge neon with a panasonic ghostface head audiobahn( everything) 3" in the front dash, 6.5" components in all doors, 6x9 in back deck and two 1208 flame-q subs in a custom enclosure in the trunk, power to mids and highs was supplied by two 4401 4ch amps and the subs were powered by a 1500hc bridged to a 1/2 ohm mono load so that approx 2800- 3000 watts were being delivered to the subs. Other improvements included 4-100amp batcaps and a custom spooled alternator to produce 225 amps @14.4v (necessary because when the subs hit a nice deep note the HC amp would draw approx 200 amps.