Which One?

[ronnyboy696]

im going to finally do it. put a headunit in my car. ive only had it a year.

ive got my hu adapter trims ordered from toyota and Halfords. but im womdering what hu to go for.

ive got about £250 to spend. i want a mp3 compatible one because i want my ipod to plug in, but im not sure on which hu to go for.

what are your opinions on whats the best make. e.t.c

please help. i want it to sound good, and look good at the same time

oh yeah and wht size Speakers actually fit in the doors and dash?

[armoredfist2002]

dash Speakers are 10cm.

Door Speakers are 6.5" or 16cm, but you will need an adaptor for the door Speakers, or you can make your own.

I am not recommending any headunit because if you got it and didn't like it you'd blame me.

But pioneer and alpine are good units.

[Chuck04]

yea headunits are down to personal taste really, im a big fan of pioneer and alpine myself, they have some nice units out at the moment!!

have a look at :

Cel Direct

car audio security

Car audio direct

these will give u an idea of units about and prices

[Tara]

Hiya,

I'd recommend Pioneer too as its what I currently have - the sound quality is really good and I think they look better than Alpine. You can buy a decent one for around £120 that plays mp3's and if you want to plug your ipod in then the wiring is only an extra £20 although I think alot now come with the convertors in the package.

Tara :)

[viperroom_112]

Hey mate , I have quite a number of friends with different H/U , and after hearing a selection of different ones I have decided pioneer are the best ! I feel the lower range Alpine units look rather plane ! Whereas the pioneers have organic displays and so forth ! The newest unit I heard was the Pioneer DEH-P6800MP and what can I say ! It looks amazing and sounds even better , its on the market for £180.00 incl VAT

Bass Junkies

And it is one awesome unit with many Kool features , also Ipod ready :P I would highly recommend it !

[Woody27]

I just Bought one of pioneers new units for febuary '06 and i got myself a cheap but awesome HU! AUX in for my MP3 Player (not ipod so didnt get ipod connection one) MP3 CD player with two AUX outs for Amps and 4*50W Mosfet AMP :D Its DEH-30MP Looks really nice and smart! Does everything i want and i got it for £105 delivered with the Toyota adapter to DIN.

(For those wondering i have been testing it in my dads car :P)

[ronnyboy696]

ok cheers guys, thanks for your input. i get paid next week, so ill have a lok at the weekend. and ill let u all know

thanks a lot on the speaker sizes, i definately gotta change them

[Griffyn]

Hey ronny I have this in my car and imo is the best HU in the range for that price, hence why I have it :P

http://caraudiosecurity.com/shop/product/p...ts_id/3900.html

However I got mine on eBay last October for £190!

I apologize for really bad pictures as I still haven't updated them!

In my opinion Alpine stuff sounds best, but everyone prefers their music played a different way. But Pioneer and Alpine are very close though. (Had pioneer before) But the Alpine has some MX (Media Xpander) which makes the MP3's sound so much better if not all at 320kbps, which unfortunately not everyone encodes at! Also quite cool online you can put in your distance of Speakers so the delay times are calculated and then you put on a CD-RW or whatever and this updates on the HU so you get even better sound reproduction.

Sometimes I wish I had a bigger IPOD now as 20GB is alot, but not enough LOL. However use CD-RWs to make mp3 discs as well now if I cant be bothered to update my Ipod as Itunes is the worst programme ever!

Your best bet is just to go out and listen to some headunits in Halfords or equivalent, also you get to play around with them!

I had 13.5cm Focal Components before in the front doors, but now have the 16.5cm Alpine Type-R Components:

However as you can see I had to cut a hole in the door card as they window was hitting them on the way down even with the adapter! So I had to spacer them even more and so this caused them not too fit, but do love having the Speakers on display as there are nice looking IMO. Wasn't intentional but really glad I did it.

[ronnyboy696]

nice one mate. your stereo looks goos. and i like where you put your ipod.

yeah i just got a new 30g video one. i filled my 6g one too easily. the 30 g is amazing. colour an all. and plays videos , which are really good quality.

yeah im gonna go Halfords the weekend to have a buthers at the headunits.

thanks for the help

ronny

[Griffyn]

Grrrrr so annoying I got my 20gb Photo Ipod for £170 incl p&p......next day Apple said they are going to release a 30Gb Video Ipod......was gutted Altho does look cool tbh so cant complain.

Good luck with choosing a HU.....so much choice!

[jaxx]

buy alpine, dont even concider others

unless you can afford Nakamichi :P

[kimi]

unless you can afford Nakamichi :P

ooo quality stereos but they look so Boring !

[Griffyn]

buy alpine, dont even concider others

unless you can afford Nakamichi :P

LOL......IMO Alpine is best (hence all Alpine install) even when you turn it on full it doesnt blow up, unlike some1s who had the £18k Harmon Kardon sound system option and the sub blew up He must have been gutted But he didnt look all that bothered which was worrying (was still under warranty I guess)

[jaxx]

unless you can afford Nakamichi :P

ooo quality stereos but they look so Boring !

to be honest i think they look 'sophisticated'... saying 'youve bought this becuase you appreciate sound quality, not daft flashy lights and F1 cars razzing round the screen'

id have a Nak at the blink of an eye if i had the money, they do sound phenomenal!

[ssk2]

Okay,

I know I'm going to be flamed but:

Sony headunits aren't too bad, I bought a Sony CDX - F7750 from eBay for £150, because it has 4 x 52W (2W up from the similarly priced Alpine unit) and MOSFET, played MP3s and had aux-in without any ridiculous adaptors (for the vast majority of sheep out there, who own iPods and nothing else, this isn't a problem, but an iPod interface is a bit redundant for anything else). It has 2 pre-outs (front and rear) and a sub-out.

For the speaker equipment I've gone with Alpine Type - S components in the front (16.5cm), Alpine Type - E 6 by 9s for the rear shelf (just to add some cheap depth) and an Alpine SWD-1600 underseat sub.

Cost about £500 in total, and as soon as I get a real job, I'll consider getting a proper sub for the back, but in all honesty I have enough bass.

[Woody27]

My Pioneer DEH-30MP has all the above mentioned and cost me £90 brand new from a shop rather than eBay aswell :D brand new this febuary and rocks! :D Really sexy looking and whats 2 Watts difference really going to make? Mine runs a MOSFET amp system aswell and pioneer usually rank higher than sony :P It rocks as far as testing in my dads car went :D Interested in your under seat sub choice though! may take that route! How'd you mount it?

[ssk2]

Velcro :). Fitted it myself, wasn't too bad to do, and it cost about £100 from eBay.

Hides nicely under the drivers seat and leaves you with lots of boot space.

Its not the bassiest thing I've ever heard but when you couple it with the 6 by 9s and uprated door Speakers, it is plenty bassy enough :D.

[Hexa-dB]

My Pioneer DEH-30MP has all the above mentioned and cost me £90 brand new from a shop rather than ebay aswell :D brand new this febuary and rocks! :D Really sexy looking and whats 2 Watts difference really going to make? Mine runs a MOSFET amp system aswell and pioneer usually rank higher than sony :P It rocks as far as testing in my dads car went :D Interested in your under seat sub choice though! may take that route! How'd you mount it?

I ordered one of those yesterday :D (partly based on what you said in another post)

I can't wait to fit it. According to the specs it can power a sub without a seperate amp too, so I may add a sub somewhere - hopefully under the passenger seat if I can...

[jaxx]

Okay,

I know I'm going to be flamed but:

Sony headunits aren't too bad, I bought a Sony CDX - F7750 from eBay for £150, because it has 4 x 52W (2W up from the similarly priced Alpine unit) and MOSFET, played MP3s and had aux-in without any ridiculous adaptors (for the vast majority of sheep out there, who own iPods and nothing else, this isn't a problem, but an iPod interface is a bit redundant for anything else). It has 2 pre-outs (front and rear) and a sub-out.

For the speaker equipment I've gone with Alpine Type - S components in the front (16.5cm), Alpine Type - E 6 by 9s for the rear shelf (just to add some cheap depth) and an Alpine SWD-1600 underseat sub.

Cost about £500 in total, and as soon as I get a real job, I'll consider getting a proper sub for the back, but in all honesty I have enough bass.

ive got a Sony MEXR5 for the MR2, i dont like Sony as much as Alpine but i cant plug my 20gig hardrive into an alpine unit and i aint buying a spazzy iPod

[Woody27]

My Pioneer DEH-30MP has all the above mentioned and cost me £90 brand new from a shop rather than ebay aswell :D brand new this febuary and rocks! :D Really sexy looking and whats 2 Watts difference really going to make? Mine runs a MOSFET amp system aswell and pioneer usually rank higher than sony :P It rocks as far as testing in my dads car went :D Interested in your under seat sub choice though! may take that route! How'd you mount it?

I ordered one of those yesterday :D (partly based on what you said in another post)

I can't wait to fit it. According to the specs it can power a sub without a seperate amp too, so I may add a sub somewhere - hopefully under the passenger seat if I can...

Hehe you wont be dissapointed as its very nice to look at and performs! Im not sure if your right about a Sub output. The sub output it has im pretty sure is designed to go into an amp then a sub. The only reason its called a sub output is because it is a low pass filter allowing the low frequencies through to the amp to keep it receiving the right frequencies. Still there are no headunits out there that can power a sub straight so you aren't missing out on anything. (unless you run a sub off one of the 50W speaker outputs but then it would have to be a very low power sub!)

If you need any help with this HU at all i can lend a hand where i can!

Cheers,

Woody

[Griffyn]

No offense but to say you bought a sony headunit because it has 2 more Watts per channel is kinda silly. Every company has slightly varying degree of how they measure Watts. Plus Watts RMS is what you actually want to look at when you go buy Generally companies such as Alpine give more conserative estimates. For example my 600W RMS mono-d amp according to alpine when tested gives 660ish W RMS (cant remember exact figure) and my 4 channel supposed to give 75W RMS per channel gives 114W RMS (more than model above my amp ). Dont know how accurate that is, but thats what Alpine said and well is definitely loud and sounds awesome

Also if your going to buy a headunit for a better sound system you want stuff connected digitally. Alot of headunits have an analogue so you can connect any MP3 player but this won't have as good sound quality compared to the Ipod connectors as this is a digital signal so better sound quality. But if your running your Speakers off the headunit then I guess it doesn't as much. In my opinion its a pain in the ***** you can only do this with the Ipod! I have a 20gb creative zen touch which is really cool but had to get an Ipod (better than a cd changer so can't complain) but to be fair the Ipod has grown on me and prefer it to the creative now (the colour screen helps though!)

Alot of headunits have 3 pre-outs these days. But if one costs ~ £90 and another costs £200+ listen to the difference on the same Speakers and you will hear a difference. (This may not always be the case but I can hear a slight difference between the HU's but this is mainly due to the cheapers ones being the previous range).

Also loud music is not good when the sound quality is crap! Alot of people have loud hifis that sound rubbish and well I guess I am abit of an audiophile considering how much I have spent on Speakers for my car, pc and tv But well worth waiting that bit longer to get the best you can afford because then you won't be disappointed and things like car hifis are easy to transplant

[Hexa-dB]

Hehe you wont be dissapointed as its very nice to look at and performs! Im not sure if your right about a Sub output. The sub output it has im pretty sure is designed to go into an amp then a sub. The only reason its called a sub output is because it is a low pass filter allowing the low frequencies through to the amp to keep it receiving the right frequencies. Still there are no headunits out there that can power a sub straight so you aren't missing out on anything. (unless you run a sub off one of the 50W speaker outputs but then it would have to be a very low power sub!)

If you need any help with this HU at all i can lend a hand where i can!

Cheers,

Woody

I had to go and check to make sure I wasn't totally confused, so from the Pioneer site:

"Want to impress with mind-boggling power bass? Its Direct Sub Drive allows you to drive a subwoofer directly from your headunit, without an expensive amplifier."

:D No idea if it'll sound any good, but I'm not sure I'll ever get around to fitting a sub anyway.

Cheers for the offer of help too, I may well have to take you up on it!

[Woody27]

Thats mental! Im not sure of the details about that feature so will have to look into it! Cheers for mentioning that! I have the box here so will have a read of manual and see what i can make of it but cheers! Hope your as impressed with it as i am! Tell us when you get it!

[jaxx]

thats the sort of crap that Pioneer comes out with though, which makes me run a mile from them

unless its an active power sub theres no chance on this green and blue earth that a HU will run a sub on its tod, it cannot physically produce the amount of power

[ssk2]

No offense but to say you bought a sony headunit because it has 2 more Watts per channel is kinda silly. Every company has slightly varying degree of how they measure Watts. Plus Watts RMS is what you actually want to look at when you go buy Generally companies such as Alpine give more conserative estimates. For example my 600W RMS mono-d amp according to alpine when tested gives 660ish W RMS (cant remember exact figure) and my 4 channel supposed to give 75W RMS per channel gives 114W RMS (more than model above my amp ). Dont know how accurate that is, but thats what Alpine said and well is definitely loud and sounds awesome

It was one of the variety of reason I bought that headunit, but yeh, I do agree with you, its not much of a gain.

Probably just Sony marketing.

I was very confused when it came to buying my headunit, and I went for the one which had all the features I wanted, (if the others had them then it wasn't made clear!) and was in my price range, since I had little idea about brand effect.

But in the future, I may swapout the headunit, but not really a priority atm, going to uni next year! Maybe in my next car :-p.