Hey all,

I dont know if any of you have read the latest edition of InCar Mag but it has 17 different system ideas from most of the major brands in the car audio business. My favorite is the Clarion one and it consists of the following:

Clarion Sound System
www.clarion.com.au
Head Unit: VXZ646
Changer: DCZ625
Rear Monitor: 2 x VMA5894 (New Item)
Front Speakers: SRS1685
Rear Speakers: SRR1685
Subwoofers: 2 x XW1200
Amps: APA2160 (4 Channel)
APA4320 (2 Channel)

It costs roughly $5000 but it's well worth the money

Most people in the biz that I've spoken to would recommend mixing and matching brands.. just because brand X makes top amps doesn't mean they know how to build a decent speaker, and vice versa.

On the other hand, there can be some benefits to keeping the same brand in some cases.. for example my home audio setup is entirely JVC (except the speakers, which aren't) mostly because they all support the fancy CompuLink interconnect and I can control the whole shebang with one remote.

Car audio is a little different, though.

Anyway, it probably is a nice setup none the less. Keep in mind though, you'll need to budget a fair bit more for installation, particularly for something that complex.

i personnally cannot see the point in having 2 rear monitors. Sure, one in the dash is fine, but unless u have a show car spend it on bigger and better components.
I wouldnt stick 2 one brand either, just let your ears decide on each component and ur eyes as well obviously when it comes 2 screens. dont get pulled in by cheap gimmicks such as flashy lights and "cool" displays, look at what ur really getting. This is why i choose alpine for my h/u, it had much more options, presets, features and etc, and i wasnt paying for a little racecar 2 drive around my screen :nuts:

$5000 looks like a bit of a rip for that much gear.

Wouldnt the 2-160 be 2 channel and 160 w rms (2 x 80)
And the 4-320 is 4 channel 320 w rms (4 x 80)

Not that much power for subs esp for that price.

I guess it's all retail anyway.

i personnally cannot see the point in having 2 rear monitors.

Unless he's got kids, or frequent passengers. I can see how having some screens in the rear seats could be great for the kids on those long trips.

also, i dont exactly find the need for a cd stacker, with the advancments in technology these days, mp3's are all u need. Buy an Alpine h/u, then the money u dont spend on a stacker can b spent on an iPod which can be hooked str8 up 2 ur h/u anyway. :nuts:

Unless he's got kids, or frequent passengers. I can see how having some screens in the rear seats could be great for the kids on those long trips.

yes, good point, and i do agree with u on that, but really, it is just a wank factor in most cases.
although, so is my boot display :D but that didnt cost very much 2 do

Cd stackers are still worthwhile. Mp3's as with any compressed music is just that... compressed quality.

Probably 75% of my music is mixed too. So both my iPod and mp3 headunit put annoying skips in there... in between tracks even if the cd has no pause in between.

Im surprised that Apple havent put a simple buffer in to stop that. By far the biggest issue I have with it.

I use my 12 stacker whenever Im not using the iPod. Also good when mates have cd's on them. Cos i cbf putting them in and out of the headunit.

Dude I think for that money you could do better, especially with sound quality. Why dont you assign say $2000 on the audio ( amp, splits, sub, rear fill ) and $3000 on the rest ( dvd player/ headunit, screen(s) )?

Cd stackers are still worthwhile. Mp3's as with any compressed music is just that... compressed quality.

Probably 75% of my music is mixed too. So both my iPod and mp3 headunit put annoying skips in there... in between tracks even if the cd has no pause in between.

Im surprised that Apple havent put a simple buffer in to stop that. By far the biggest issue I have with it.

I use my 12 stacker whenever Im not using the iPod. Also good when mates have cd's on them. Cos i cbf putting them in and out of the headunit.

These days there are also a bunch of CD stackers that will take mp3 cds, which is the next best thing to having a hard drive full of the buggers in your car somewhere (enter iPod, stage left).

IMHO, the thing about MP3 encoding, assuming it wasn't done by a complete idiot at some ridiculously low bitrate (<128kbps) or sampling rate (<44KHz), is that in the majority of cases you'd have a hard time picking it from the original recording without a trained ear - especially in a noisy on-road situation and without very high fidelity speakers.

That makes them perfect for ICE.

As for the pause between tracks - you can probably put that down to file system access overheads and the snarfing of the id3 tag. The nasty old ID3V1 standard puts the tag in the last 128 bytes of the file which means the MP3 player needs to open the file, seek all the way to the end to check for a tag, then come back again before it can start playing the track.

yeah u still have the problem with mp3 stackers...

I cant beleive they havent ironed out little problems like this, it is a big problem for me. I hate the half a second skip between songs.
Sometimes even with my mp3's I'll burn them onto cd as cda's and throw them in the stacker.

also, i dont exactly find the need for a cd stacker, with the advancments in technology these days, mp3's are all u need. Buy an Alpine h/u, then the money u dont spend on a stacker can b spent on an iPod which can be hooked str8 up 2 ur h/u anyway. :nuts:
I guess that's fine but if your right into audio you would already know MP3 has clipped highs and lows and sounds nowhere near as good as a CD. But then you really need to be into audio and you probably wouldn't pick it up.

Alpine head units come with a special feature (MX - music expander I think) that is especially aimed at re-creating original sound from MP3 recordings, not sure what it does to the sound but it does make it better.

I was always told that a single-CD head unit was preferrable for good systems because for the money you get a better quality drive system, less chance of failure as less moving parts and they are much less suseptible to jumping/skipping due to either road conditions/suspension or very loud bass! It's also one less cable to worry about!!

Alpine head units come with a special feature (MX - music expander I think) that is especially aimed at re-creating original sound from MP3 recordings, not sure what it does to the sound but it does make it better.

Unfortunately, you can't recreate the sound from an MP3 because it simply doesn't exist any more. There's no way to know what you've lost.

As far as MP3s clipping highs and lows, I'm not sure that's really fair. Particularly given that CD recordings have a sampling rate of 44.1KHz anyway so you're already restricting yourself to sounds <= 22050Hz ;)

MP3 does some very clever things to preserve the fidelity of the original recording, minimising audible artifacts, while achieving a 10:1 compression ratio.

Ogg Vorbis is better, but good luck finding a head unit that'll decode it :) WMA is just rubbish IMHO.

Excuse the ignorance but what does IMHO mean?

Mods, im not hijacking just would like one answer then continue of the thread...

Thanks

In My Humble Opinion

cthulhu is spot on... You can't recreate it cos it's gone... Like those stupid movies that increase the resolution of video images to find a criminal. Once you've pixelated it you can't get it back.

Thanks :D, Now I know