single din discussion

/ I want to know what other installers think about the new decks coming out. With the digital age upon us, it seems as though manufacturers are aiming their designs in that direction. So my question is, if you have a customer that comes in and wants a hi-fi single DIN receiver with no budget and no added EQ what would you recommend? Pioneer's stage 5 receiver doesn't count cause it's hands down the best. Eclipse has given up on car audio and pioneer premiere is extinct so I would have to go with the kenwood excelon 900 series. What about everyone else? What happened to pre-amp only decks? Now you're lucky to get a deck with 4V pre outs

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I drink current, eat ohms, and bleed voltage

Amps have made a little progress in the clarity they are able to produce with a lower voltage in, and obviously cost of manufacturing is always a huge factor. In a down market some corner have to be cut in order to stay afloat. With that said, Alpine still has the best sound quality, but the worst feature list for the $$.

I am partial to JVC now. They are not the cheap (although the prices are very low) JVC's you remember buying at walmart and auto parts stores in the 90s. Very good SQ and features for the prices. Buy from an authorized retailer and get the arsenal line. Very reliable! I have had so many kenwood single dins go bad I don't even go near them anymore. Plus being able to show people the horrible distortion at volumes of 28+ out of 35 is enough to steer people away from them.

Yes, I know all radios do this but kenwoods are the worst, couple that with the fact i sent back 3 cases of 108's in one week...well you get the idea. I was not a fan of the 2010/11 pioneer designs. Decent build quality, but the face design was horrible. Think 1200. Fugly. lol

For double dins I like the kenwoods. Even had a DNX-5120 for 2 years before buying my current JVC KW-NT3HDT. IMO JVC is where it is at for now. Best all around company that is very consumer oriented, and listens to what we all want.

Just my $.02 :0)

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To master and control electricity is perfection. *evil laugh*

im also a big fan of jvc. i run the single din chameleon avx77. its by far the best overall radio ive ever had and one of the best ive worked with in the 8 years ive been installing. it has a built in 7-band eq that was good enough so that i didnt have to hook up my kenwood 9-band eq. they stopped making it this year so im selling mine and going for the new jvc kw-nt500 and these are supposed to be coming with a 13 band eq and digital time alignment. personally i cant wait. and that eq in in all the new navigation units whereas last years model only has a 7 band and i think that was only in the nt50hdt.

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Alpine.  I am excited that Blaupunkt is returning to the US market under new ownership.  We'll see if their new line is any good soon.

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i dont know. i guess i dont have enough experience as a user with alpine because ive never been impressed with their head units. but i love my pdx 4 channel.

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I extremely dislike the EQ on alpine decks which make me disagree with that they have the best sound quality. JVC's top of the line includes time alignment with a decent EQ along with the ability to turn off the high level amp off and Kenwood's top of the line single DIN has the same features but im a kenwood fan. @ racerjames76 this post is about hi-if single DIN decks not bottom of the barrel recievers. Up sell your decks. 108's are bound to break down eventually.

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I drink current, eat ohms, and bleed voltage

yea i actually forgot that my jvc allows me to turn the internal amp off. also a feature that is rarely seen these days. i am a fan of kenwood too but i wont ever buy one until they make their stuff so that i dont need an engineering masters degree to use the settings. im a professional installer with my own shop and i hate when someone brings me a kenwood to install because i end up reading the manual for twice as long as it takes me to physically install the unit. and thats just to set the time and basic sound controls. bluetooth is impossible.

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soundnsecurity wrote:

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i am a fan of kenwood too but i wont ever buy one until they make their stuff so that i dont need an engineering masters degree to use the settings. im a professional installer with my own shop and i hate when someone brings me a kenwood to install because i end up reading the manual for twice as long as it takes me to physically install the unit. and thats just to set the time and basic sound controls. bluetooth is impossible.

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lol...ill give you that. Kenwood is on of the harder units to set-up along with Clarions goofy menu access. BTW what happened to Clarion being a elite single DIN car radio manufacturer? Also does anyone make a deck with pre-outs higher than 5v like Eclispe use to. What about pre-amp decks only...extinct i guess.

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I drink current, eat ohms, and bleed voltage

clarion is what i had before this jvc i have now. it was the first version of the line of single din radios with touchscreen controls but it wasnt a tv or dvd player. that was a great sounding deck too and i kept it for a long time in radio years. i had a basic kenwood before that and even that sounded good for what it was especially when i paired it up with my kenwood 9 band.

im with you on clarion though, the past few years have been kinda rough for them. their stuff has been really basic and generic. no frills or innovation to speak of from them in a while. although their marine radios are still top notch / really expensive.

i used to sell eclipse at circuit city, although we never were able to get our hands on any of their really high end stuff, i found that eclipse radios break too much and their security lock where you had to use a certain CD to unlock the unit if it lost power was extremely annoying.

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Alpines measure extremely flat and their higher end units have the best SQ currently available, IMO.  I am not a fan of JVC because every one I've ever owned has failed.  YMMV.  Clarion has very good SQ as well.

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soundnsecurity wrote:

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yea i actually forgot that my jvc allows me to turn the internal amp off. also a feature that is rarely seen these days. i am a fan of kenwood too but i wont ever buy one until they make their stuff so that i dont need an engineering masters degree to use the settings. im a professional installer with my own shop and i hate when someone brings me a kenwood to install because i end up reading the manual for twice as long as it takes me to physically install the unit. and thats just to set the time and basic sound controls. bluetooth is impossible.

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i hated the last few years of kenwoods, but since jvc bough them the menus are now easy for any one. Jvcs are probably our top seller. price for what you get is great. Alpine really isn't what it use to be, no more 4 volt pre outs, hell your lucky you get 2 set of pre outs on most models, not to mention the 50 + bucks extra for that alpine name. Sony has come along way since they dropped that whole explode thing. Just what i want a deck that says "explode" on it. Pioneer on all there affordable models has the ip bus cable taken off and a scaled back eq. I still love pioneer and the only thing ill ever buy.

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i dont have all the answers and neither do you. Yes im really bad a spelling, i get it.

mikeg74 wrote:

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Alpine really isn't what it use to be, no more 4 volt pre outs, hell your lucky you get 2 set of pre outs on most models, not to mention the 50 + bucks extra for that alpine name.

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Totally agree. Alpine has definitely took a nose dive. They don't have any current single DIN receiver that I would own/endorse.

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I drink current, eat ohms, and bleed voltage

Im gonna have to go ahead and crap on Alpine as well. The voltage output before clipping point is simply atrocious on the entire line. The clipping point in my experience is 27 on the dial with a voltage output of around 1.6-1.9 on the entire line. I was pretty disgusted when I hooked my scope up to them. I have never been a fan of JVC decks really but what I can say is you can wind those suckers right out to the max and the wave doesn't square off, I put in a pioneer today and scoped that, it was a double din mind you, but I had that dial to 39 out of 40 and got 3.9v without any clear signs of distortion, but for some reason that extra notch when you went to 40 made it look kind of hairy. I am also pretty excited about Blaupunkt coming back, hopefully its made some changes for the better on this time around.

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double-secret reverse-osmosis speaker-cone-induced high-level interference distortion, Its a killer

Ravendarat wrote:

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I am also pretty excited about Blaupunkt coming back, hopefully its made some changes for the better on this time around.

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Blaupunkt use to be the s&%# back it the day. I wasn't aware of them trying to make a come back as stated. Hopefully eclipse follows suit. I have my fingers crossed. I've never been a huge fan of JVC but I've been selling them for about three years and you can quote me " I have never had one come back faulty ( Base model to top of the line)."

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I drink current, eat ohms, and bleed voltage

I don't know.  I just installed a new Alpine CDA-117 with PDX-5 amplifier driving JL C5 components and it sounds extremely sweet. 

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DYohn] wrote:

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I don't know.  I just installed a new Alpine CDA-117 with PDX-5 amplifier driving JL C5 components and it sounds extremely sweet. 

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thats the magic of properly set gains

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soundnsecurity wrote:

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DYohn] wrote:

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I don't know.  I just installed a new Alpine CDA-117 with PDX-5 amplifier driving JL C5 components and it sounds extremely sweet. 

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thats the magic of properly set gains

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You know my pet peeve!  :)

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