deck differences

neomagus00

well, since skydeaner wanted us (read: mac and pbd) out of his thread, i thought i'd provide an alternate one... i really have nothing to contribute, yet, so have at it...

PolkThug

neomagus00

for your reference:

PoweredByDodge wrote:

the head unit will affect the pre-amp signal sound in a few ways, the following is not all inclusive, but its the big hitters...

- quality of the laser pickup
- quality of the digital to analog converter (design, construction, and bits)
- voltage of pre-amplifier outputs (indirect relationship to quality - lower voltage units will result in the ratio of induced noise to true music sound to be greater than if the pre-out voltage were higher... however, speaking truly subjectively, this is not the fault of the head unit, but of the interconnects, the way they are routed, etc etc).
- signal to noise ratio of the head unit.
- stereo separation of the head unit.
- onboard bells and whistles (BBE, incremental divisions of bass/trebble/mid boost or decrease [the smaller the interval the better - if you had two identical head units, with identical levels of total trebble boost, say 8 db's max, and one had plus or minus 16, and the other had plus or minus 8, then the one with plus or minus 16 would be "better" because it would allow you to adjust trebble in 0.5 db increments rather than 1 db increments... "finer" fine tuning], adjustment of boost points, adjustment of boost curve width, etc).

other than that... you're grasping at straws when you say one deck is better than the other ... however... that is a lot of criteria above, and it may very well be that our friend here had a low end JVC model with poor ratings for the above, and then he migrated to an Alpine of mid or high end quality and saw much better ratings for the above. I would imagine that JVC's top end stuff is comparable in overall quality to alpine's top end (non F-1) stuff... personally I prefer the Alpine, but I honestly haven't looked at the specifications to be able to say one way or the other. My gut feeling says "Alpine's better", but that's totally opinion and personal bias based on everybody hating JVC over the years.

As far as the most important part of an audio system...

... there's no way to answer that.

If you're keeping a stock head unit and not getting amplifiers, then I guess speakers are the most important.

If you're doing a head unit and speakers, but no amps, then both speakers and the head are equally important because a good head with **** speakers is worthless... and good speakers with a **** head isn't much of an improvement over stock.

If you're doing all three - the "chain rule" still applies... all 3 are equally important.

I don't think anyone can say, "get the best head unit (or amp or speakers or whatever) that money can buy, and then spend whatever is left on speakers and amps". That's an assanine way of going about it.

What one needs to do is budget their money - say you've got X dollars and then go from there... figure out what kind of a system you want to build, and then realisticly divide the cash up among those areas... person A may compromise deck quality for better amps and speakers because that's their preference... persom B may compromise speaker quality for amps and a head... but in the end... the audio system is only as strong as the weakest link.

MacLeod wrote:

And sure, there are lots of differences in head units only you wont be able to hear them.

Take an amp with THD of .004% and one with .0004%. The latter is has much less distortion but its irrelevant because you cant hear anything below 1% anyway.

Same with the other aspects of the head unit. Sure one type of lazer works better than another but the differences will be inaudible.

PoweredByDodge wrote:

the following are audible...

- signal to noise ratio of the head unit.
...............with some decks as low at 85 and others as high as 110... ya.
- stereo separation of the head unit.
...............virtual crosstalk between channels can lead to a mono-type sound, or at least what sounds like a mono-sound.
- quality of the digital to analog converter (design, construction, and bits).
...............we already covered this one a bunch of times... the 24 bit Texas Instruments Burr Brown Division DAC's outperform the other one bit **** on the market... in an audible manner.

MacLeod wrote:

Yeah, you go out and buy a flea market unit there will likely be a difference but you wont hear a difference between a Kenwood, Alpine, Pioneer, Eclipse or Clarion.

Think of it like this. You shoot a person with a slingshot and itll piss him off and maybe hurt. You shoot him with a pistol and he'll be severely wounded and possibly killed. You shoot him with a 12 guage and he's dead as a doornail. You shoot him with a .50 cal and he's gonna be dead. You shoot him with a 30mm chain gun and he's gonna be dead.

The point being, each one of these weapons outperforms the previous, and the chain gun far outperforms a 12 guage; but will the guy be any more dead?
MacLeod is offline Report Bad Post Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

PoweredByDodge wrote:

you're not going to get me to agree on this one.

there are audible differences between various levels of quality decks. entry level KW's, Pio's, Alpines, etc etc... all have differences between their same brand's top of the line... some have more differences than others... some may very well be inaudible, but many are audible.

PoweredByDodge

decks are made of wood
decks are very good

if i could
i surely would
have my deck
made of wood

MacLeod

^^^ I cant top that!

exalted512

when you get into the really top level head units, the thing i look for is the crossovers. How you can adjust the frequencies/slope...etc. If I wasnt in the middle of saving up for new amps, I'd pick up the new kenwood 25th anniversary radio...that thing is beautiful


and id differ with pbd in that, if you buy an aftermarket radio and have your stock speakers, its a vast improvement.

Priority number 1 for me is radio. A new radio with stock speakers will sound better than a stock radio and new speakers considering the radio and the speakers would be the same price(as in radio is more bang for the buck than speakers)
-Cody

PoweredByDodge

exalted512 wrote:

Priority number 1 for me is radio. A new radio with stock speakers will sound better than a stock radio and new speakers considering the radio and the speakers would be the same price(as in radio is more bang for the buck than speakers)
-Cody

I'll grant ya that. I guess if all you could do was like say $200 worth of stuff and you had to pick one thing, I'd pick a deck too. Makes sense.

audiobliss

PolkThug - LOL! Priceless!

I'd have to agree with PBD and Cody; there are audible differences in decks. This pretty much sums up my thinking:

PoweredByDodge wrote:

there are audible differences between various levels of quality decks. entry level KW's, Pio's, Alpines, etc etc... all have differences between their same brand's top of the line... some have more differences than others... some may very well be inaudible, but many are audible.

So, Mac - you're outnumbered three to one! You lose! :D:D:D

MacLeod

I totally disagree. You take the factory, dual cone, paper speakers and stick a super-duper $800 head unit on them, theyll still sound like factory dual cone paper speakers. They will be louder and probably blow from the extra power but thats about it.

Now you take the factory crap head unit making 10 watts per channel and replace those crappy OEM speakers with a set of DB components and while there wont be a lot of power there, the overall sound quality will be much improved.

Speakers define the sound of your system moreso than any other single component.

exalted512

egh, i disagree. Ive installed many head units(even the crappy pioneer 1700s or kenwood 128s) on the factory speakers and have a better improvement on cars that we just replace the speakers and leave the stock radio.
-Cody

PoweredByDodge

Mac, you're lookin at it backwards... give the deck all the opportunity to do well...

Equip it with a quality amplifier and quality speakers... then test Deck A against Deck B noting their various parameters... when the differences in specificatios become large enough (specs, not price), you'll hear a difference.

MacLeod

I agree with that, my point is that all the major name brand head units out right now have good enough specs that their differences will be inaudible.

I sure there are some crappy flea market brand h/u's out there that you can certainly tell a difference in but if youre dumb enough to run one of those, youre dumb enough to not notice its crappy SQ.

The only differnce youll notice between a factory h/u and good aftermarket unit (crossovers and EQ's aside) is more power and less distortion. Now the difference between a good aftermarket speaker and OEM speaker is night and day!

cam5860

If you ask me kenwood has the most advanced headunit on the market right. It has more features than you can shake a stick at.

MacLeod

Ive always liked Kenwood and have owned more of them than anything else. I probably wouldve bought one this time but Id never owned an Alpine and wanted to give em a try.

Alpine does seem to be lagging a bit in the features department these days. Theyre not stipped down models by any means but the new Kenwoods and Pioneers have a couple more nifty play pretties.