Eclipse Audio and Sound for $1500

Hey.
I'm completely new to this forum as well as to car audio... and I'm here to find out any information I can that will improve the sound in my car or decrease the price I pay for it. I'll start by describing my background a little bit, it may clear some things up.

I'm a musician (student still) as well as a recording engineer (also a student still). I'll be turning 17 in a month and I want my Jeep Cherokee to have superior sound quality. I'm pretty demanding of quality sound. I'm going to want the crisp/clear highs for cymbals and harmonics as well as tightness of the bass drum and guitar. I listen to mainly old music - if I had to pick a category, it would be classic rock. I do like the more full/tight sound of some modern rock, however. In my car I'll be listening to Zeppelin, The Dead, Pink Floyd and modern stuff perhaps The Black Crowes, Blind Melon, and Oasis. I want the car to sound as good as the music should, and I'm more often than not going to listen to the music as it was mixed. If I feel more bass or treble is desirable I have no qualms turning up either, but what I'm saying is I generally listen to music flat. If you didn't already get the impression, I am not looking for boomy distorted bass to impress my rapper 17 year old friends. Instead, I want supreme sound quality through the whole frequency spectrum. I want clarity and depth.

I'll be paying for the system. I figure I'll put $1500 iinto it. I really don't want to spend more than that. A $1500 guitar amp can get you very far, I would hope the same goes for car audio. Considering the premier audio packages car manufacturers offer typically run for $500-700 and sound good (but definitely not good enough) to my ear, I figure $1500 should be an immense improvement in sound and should please my ears.

I first went to Best Buy to see what they had - completely unimpressed. Then down the road to P.C. Richard, there the car audio guy created this setup for me:
Alpine SWS1241
12" Box
Rockford 300x Amp
Alpine CDA7892
Rockford Fosgate HPC2206 speakers (4 of them)

This was in their car audio place, I didn't hear anything in the car. This came out to around $1100 w/o installation or cables. Assuming they didn't have any hidden amps for the interiors or anything, it did sound good to my ear. Almost good enough. There were problems, however.

I was a bit worried that I was buying 4 identical speakers to reproduce the same frequencies, the lack of crossovers got to me. But the Fosgate interiors gave me the quality of mids I wanted, for the most part.

I went to another place, specializing in car audio, named Sound Dimensions. They told me it might be a good idea to amp my interiors, and pushed a brand called MMATS. They did not give me any specific model numbers or anything, but did say components MMATS speakers in the front and some type of coaxials in the back. I didn't hear anything in their sound room as they were re-doing it. But they addressed my concerns about crossovers and different interiors.

I went to a place American Soundcraft as well, they pushed a brand Boston Acoustics I think, and I was entirely unimpressed by their setup. They wanted me to purchase a 5 channel amp, which I did A/B vs. the face powering the interiors and did improve sound quality, but was very expensive and not to my ears worth the extra cash. I did not appreciate anything w/ Boston Acoustics. I have some model information...

600 KDC-X65OD Kenwood Amp
199 KRC-316 Kenwood CD
299 Boston Acoust. RC520 Comps
129 Boston Acoustic FX57 Coaxs
199 Boston Acoustic 10" Generator sub in enclosure

Those figures do not include labor/cables either which were almost 600 if I remember correctly.

Lastly I visited another car audio specialty place by the name of Audio Planet. Its staff pushed the brand Eclipsed but also spoke of MTX and some other brands, and seemed incredibly knowledgable and honest. He did not give me model names and numbers but told me if I came in with $1500 I would get taken care of. He also played me some Fosgate speakers which sounded nice (their sub especially). He told me to research the store and Eclipse on the Internet, so here I am. If anyone lives around my area, the Audio Planet is in Long Island NY on Rt. 110.

Now, we finally get to my questions. Am I going to get the sound I want (as best as I could describe above) with $1500. What can you guys tell me about Eclipse and Audio Planet (I'm more than up for reading about it as I understand I'm a newbie and reading will be the best for me). The Audio Planet guy, Mike, told me to read the specs on all the speakers/amps because that's the only way to tell their quality. All the stores told me that the sound inside the soundroom wouldn't sound like in a car.. but my question remains, how do I know if my $1500 is going to be worth it.

If I did not elaborate or wasn't descriptive enough please let me know and I will type whatever is needed to get the information I need. If I had to purchase the system today I'd go to Audio Planet and get the Eclipse gear w/ $1500 as that is my gut - but please, tell me what I should read and how I can listen and make sure the $1500 I spend will please my ears for years to come. Thanks in advance for ANY help that can be offered. And I apologize in advance if this was too long but it was typed in an effort to be complete and help you guys help me. THANKS.

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michael gav

I have a 94 Grand Cherokee myself.
Here is what i would suggest for quality. forget kenwood. nice features, lacking quality.
-Alpine or Eclipse source (your call on model/features)
-Audio Control equalizers/crossivers (EQL or pair of EQTs)
-JL Audio amplifier(s) the 500/1 is excellent.
-JL Audio sub-woofers. Perhaps a pair of W7 12" or 10" subs
-JL Audio XR series (top of the line) component separates up front (Q-logic kick panel molded modules for 6.5" mid/tweeter in frint, and 6.5" coaxial version in rear gate)
-sufficient power wiring for amp(s) and perhaps an Optima deep-cycle battery to help out.
stock alternator for that Jeep is only about 70-amperes. Consider a larger one if you can afford it at some point. $1,500 is entry-level for good car audio to answer your question. really good gets you in the $3k-8k range, and a lot depends on if you want it put in for you or if you do your own work.
This is the layout for my Jeep:
https://www.wickedcases.com/jeep/diagram-new.jpg
I was aiming for quality over SPL myself, but I do like to feel it as well. Particularly things like the heartbeat on Dark Side of the Moon, the bass line of Depeche Mode's Dream On, and so forth. Remember having god reserve power in the amps is ideal for high freq transience as well as sharp bass notes. Even if you don't like it loud, the power never hurts to have on hand. Jeeps have a lot of air to move, and a lot of road noise to overcome.


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-GlassWolf
Pioneer Stage-4, Orion, DynAudio, Fi

by the way:
MMATS is good. good subs.
Eclipse makes great source units and good subs too
JL Audio amps and skeapers are great as well
Kenwood I'd avoid Boston Acoustics is "okay"
MTX makes some very nice amps now
I'd recommend sound damping the inside of that Jeep too to reduce metal vibration and road noise.
You don't want to power anything with the CD Player's internal amp. use a 4-channel amp for the fronts/rears, and a mono or 2-channel amp for the subs.
use passive crossover networks (caps and chokes) for crossovers on the subs and mids/highs (not counting the components that come with a crossover. for those you just need a high-pass filter for the midbass drivers) and use some sort of electronic crossover as the splitter of need be between the sub amp and the 4-channel


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-GlassWolf
Pioneer Stage-4, Orion, DynAudio, Fi

Thanks GlassWolf - I appreciate you spending some time and helping me out.  First and foremost, it's a Jeep Cherokee (with the classic body style)... not a Jeep Grand Cherokee. The road noise/metal clank are still gonna be there, but if it makes a difference the rear speakers are on the rear roof and not the rear doors.  Also that changes some dimensions I guess, but I just wanted to clarify that.

I have some questions on what you wrote

"Audio Control equalizers/crossivers (EQL or pair of EQTs)" is Audio Control a brand? A device? EQL or EQT's models or brands?

You really think I need two subwoofers? I was thinking one 10" or one 12" max.

What's an alternator?

Do you think a 17 year old w/ some experience in guitar/recording wiring could wire the car well? If not I'll just let the place I buy the gear from wire it. The problem is, I anticipated more than "entry level" sound - if for $1500 the sound won't be a tremendous, and I mean tremendous increase from the stock system, then I'll just cry a river and skip it.  But I'm not gonna spend fifteen hundred dollars on something that won't satisfy my ears.

As far as quality vs. SPL, yes, quality is absolutely first priority. I agree with you also that sometimes the extra kick in the bass is desirable.  We seem to share good taste in music as well.  And if the amplifier is going to give me the transients in the highs, then I certainly won't neglect getting one.  And, for the record, I do like it loud - if we need a standard of comparison, maybe volume 4/10 on my 100 W Marshall JCM2000's Dirty Channel is close to the max volume I desire. But I want tone to improve with volume, not distort.

What type of sound damping? Expensive?

I could still go w/ MMATS stuff from the place Sound Dimensions, but I get the feeling my $1500 will go a lot further w/ Eclipse gear.

And, just to make sure, you understand in your model setup you told me to do JL sub, speakers, and amp? The lack of Eclipse just makes me want to double check. If the JL's will sound better for cheaper it's fine by me, but I'd like to make sure.

Again thanks a million - the more I learn the better my truck will sound, the less I'll spend, and the more advice I'll be able to offer others. THANKS.

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michael gav

Okay I knew it was a Cherokee Sport. Some have the rear speakers in the tailgate firing forward, some have them in that roof bar across the top firing down (lousy position really) In any event, you can find speakers that would fit there, maybe even using components in the back so the midbass driver fires down and you can surface-mount the tweeters in that roof-bar to fire in a more forward direction toward the passengers.
for LOTS of ideas, go to www.cardomain.com and go to the Cherokee owners. you'll see tons of pics of systems in Cherokees. (Grand Cherokees are a totally separate section even)

Audio Control is the company. they make electronic crossovers and equalizers. an EQL is a one-third octave EQ, I forget how many bands. The EQT if I recall, is a single-channel (so you need two for stereo) 30-band equalizer. These are not your typical in-dash slide-EQs. They are a flat box type you mount in the back (like under the rear bench for example) that you use to fine tune the system. you set them once then leave them alone. They use dials for adjustments, similar to the parametric EQ in my system. (Alpine 3401)
https://www.audiocontrol.com/caraudio.htm

If you use 10" I'd use two. a single 12" would do well, but you won't get a lot of "feel" from it. Remember a Cherokee has a LOT of air in the compartment you need to move. The smaller the interior of a vehicle, the less the sub(s) have to work to produce higher SPLs. I have a single 8" in my Jeep right now as I build the enclosure for my four 12" subs. That 8" works to fill in the missing frerquencies but it doesn't really "hit" the way I'd like. No real feel to it and if you try to turn it up to compensate, it just gets muddy and loses it's definition.

An alternator is the part of your car's engine that supplies current (electricity) when the engine is running. The battery is really only in the car to start the engine. After that current is generated by the alternator, regularot, and rectifier circuitry.
see: https://www.eatel.net/~amptech/elecdisc/

You can probably wire it yourself, however a professional will of course be able to do a better job since he (we) do this every day.
$1,500 will make a marked improvement in sound of course. I'm just saying don't be too shocked to find that it isn't "competition" level because the really high end stuff is much more expensive. Sometimes people spend $1,500 on a single component. If you think this is bad, try home audio or home theater, in which I also delve. In that arena, people can spend as much as $15,000 (yes, thousand) on a pair of speaker cables alone. one pair.

You should be able to do quite well for your budget if you research and shop around. Installation is the killer for cost really. My last car had about $5k in components, but after I figured my labor into it for insurance purposes it totaled about $8k.

Using an amplifier (and they do make multi-mode amps that can power all of your system at once.. fronts, rears, and a sub) you'll find an amazing difference in lack of distortion, available volume, and clarity etc. all the difference in the world there.

sound damping. any roofing supply place sells this mat you can buy on a roll that is for sound proofing ceilings and floors. You use that and it's much cheaper than what they target at the car audio kids. same stuff. you just lay 2" strips of it, 6" apart, under your floorboard carpet, under door panels, etc.. anywhere you get metal vibration. helps silence the vehicle. This is just an option of course, but it will help particularly in a Jeep.

MMATS is very good stuff, but the Eclipse Titanium subs are terrific as well. If you go with a single 10" or 12" you should be good with either choice.

Regarding JL, go with the subs you like. for the separates/component speakers for fronts and rears I'd look at the JL Audio line. Their amplifiers are also very good, as are rockford fosgate, MTX, and several others. If you want to save some money also look at spots like eBay, store.returnbuy.com and so forth to find deals on stuff. Alpine makes consummate amps as well, though not AS good as the ones I'd mentioned, they are still quite effective for the price. Over all though, amps made in the US have always been the best, hands down.



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-GlassWolf
Pioneer Stage-4, Orion, DynAudio, Fi

Hey might me a bit late, but as far as my opinion goes for good companies.  BA (boston Acoustics) is good if installed right, as is MMATS. 

As for overall fidelity of sound, which seems to be what you're going for.  I prefer Eclipse.  They're a lil more on the pricey side...but you get what you pay for. 

On a budget, you might wanna check out MTX.  Hell, do what I do...mix 'em up....MTX amps and crossover, Eclipse speakers, and try a kenwood source unit, or an eclipse...just an idea.

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