rate the following brands

Hey, please rate the following brands in terms of quality from highest to lowest. Elaboration, commentary, or other brand suggestions are appreciated. Focal Boston Acoustics JBL Infinity Kenwood Pioneer

The answer to your question is "it depends."  You've listed all mainstream consumer brands and as such they offer everything from low-end crap and higher-end decent stuff.  So it is impossible to say without comparing specific model numbers.  In general they are all decent brands.Support the12volt.com

nfrank89 wrote: Hey, please rate the following brands in terms of quality from highest to lowest. Elaboration, commentary, or other brand suggestions are appreciated.

You forgot Alpine. Eclipse. Even Dayton and Dual. (Kidding about the Dual remrk. [:P])

nfrank89 wrote: Focal

Over-rated, over-priced and over-sibilant. Disliked deeply by me personally.

nfrank89 wrote: Boston Acoustics

Over-rated, reaonably priced, and overall acceptable performance. The old G5 stuff was KICK***! Sadly they've fallen from grace, a bit. Better gear around for the fundage required for their entry fee.

nfrank89 wrote: JBL

nfrank89 wrote: Infinity

Thses two stablemates come from the same factory and design teams. Different appearances, inside they are nearly identical products, as far as the tech is concerned. The JBL is a little better as far as overall build quality, but as mentioned by others "depends" applies to these two more than all the others.

nfrank89 wrote: Kenwood

High-end Kenwood is REALLY nice stuff now. It took me MANY years to like anything Kenwood, and to this day, I still wouldn't have the low-priced or entry level gear.

nfrank89 wrote: Pioneer

Nothing in the basic line stands out for me as exceptional. The Stage4 stuff *is* really nice, if expendy...It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."

thanks for the responses. i understand that it depends but haemphyst pretty much gave me what i was looking for. all the brands listed are the better brands available to me via my distributors. there's a ton of conflicting information i've come across in my research on those brands so i thought i'd make my question as broad as possible, "over all" who offers the best high end stuff, who offers the best low end stuff, who offers the best middle of the road (speakers, subs, and amps) is what i really should have asked. I like kenwood and pioneer for head units although i've had some software problems with kenwood (bt945u specifically)

Pioneer is a very popular brand in the retail sector but be wary that they do tend to have a higher incidence of fault and may up your warranty overhead.  It's almost impossible to not offer them, but make sure you have a good return contract with your distributor.Support the12volt.com

DYohn wrote: Pioneer is a very popular brand in the retail sector but be wary that they do tend to have a higher incidence of fault and may up your warranty overhead.  It's almost impossible to not offer them, but make sure you have a good return contract with your distributor.

CPD takes care of all our warranties, 1 year+ :)

I have been selling Pioneer among others for over 20 years, the subwoofers seem to be the weakest link, We have VERY few defective units out of the box.  MOST problems are with poor installations by customers and involve the RCA outputs.  Sub bass drivers aside, Pioneer is by FAR our best sellers. R.I.P. Premier!

why dont they just make an external fuse to fix that problem... save themselves a bunch of hassle

They could put an external fuse, BUT the problem is people running the systems with amplifiers either not grounded or poorly grounded.  They could ground the RCA audio return to the chassis like other manufacturers, but the way they do it, there is almost NEVER a ground loop issue, provided the fuses are intact.

The problem isnt the fuses, the problem is the installer.