Just managed to get a car (yay) but it has a poor radio in it, I am just wondering what you all would recommend for a basic radio / CD (has to play MP3s) head unit, does not have to be amazing, just work and sound ok. (not an audiophile ). I was recommended Alpine, but open to other ideas.
alpine is pretty expensive but verry good had a sony first (xplode series) verry hapy with it but someone stole it a while back :'( now a kenwood, still happy with it, but the quality of the sony was better, kenwood feels kinda cheep
thanks i shall now search eBay for some kit, next I need to get some better speakers... Ah well that will be another thread soon
stay away from anything with the sony brand in car audio i had a blaupunkt in my dash for a while - only reaosn i swapped it was for a becker nav and apart from lcak of ipod support (I have a drive & play for that) i cant fault it
well it doesnt have to be at all expensive or good -- just make sounds lol -- its goin in a nova (it was free before you complain )
I stuck one of these in my nova last week, along with some 2 way 6x9 xplods. I'm fairly happy but i'll be replacing the dash speakers and their cabling soon, and I'm considering a small sub. The head unit seems great for <£100 delivered though. When you fit whatever head unit you deiced to, the plug in the dash will be an ISO one, but you'll need to swap the lives over (vaux swap over the switched and perma lives), the harness that came with my sony allowed me to swap them over easy as pie, but I had to take the glovebox out to get my hand around the back when I was fitting it to pull the cables out of the way (mark 1 dash). The glovebox went straight back in afterwards. Make sure you replace the standard speakers and cabling, even if you only use cheap(ish) ones, and I think most of the wiring to the rear of a nova goes under the sill by the passenger side door(but I was lazy and ran my new cable that side anyway).
Sony car audio is good, it's not NEARLY as bad as it used to be. Alpine, JVC, and Blaupunkt are the higher end. If you have stock speakers, you can look for lower-output setups though, 45Wx4 is probably an excess considering the car
no sony really are not good - not in the slightest, sony honestly should not even sell car audio - for the size of the company the R&D they put into car audio is a joke to put it simply, everything is built down to a budget and tbh sounds crap - a cheap 80 quid jvc deck will wee all over a sony - same with speakers the only sony that would go near my car is the old sony c90 without the built in amplifier and i hate to say this but there is no way in hell ANY headunit will do 4X45 watts - you will be lucky to get 10watts if that i wouldent class blau as high end there midrange - my old one was high end but that was a good 9ish years old i think (motorisation still works perfectly)
I was thinking of getting this: Alpine CDE 9827RR http://thebassbin.co.uk/shop/product/products_id/793.html with one of these attached: Alpine CHA - S634 http://caraudiosecurity.com/shop/product/products_id/407.html Would that work? easy to do? easy to change between the CDs in the changer? (as in will the buttons along the bottom of the head unit work to change the CD?) on a random note : www.buzzons.co.uk/temp/car for a couple of pics etc.
*AHEM* Kenwood, and for under $100. So Blaupunkt isn't high end, but yours was, and it was 9 years old?
definitley stay away from sony..cheap amps and crappy laser eyes are their stock in trade alpine is definitley a better bet and the prices for them have come down a lot so they are definitley affordable
trust me when i say this take any 4ch amplifier - open it up - look at how packed and crouded it is in there with large transfoerms etc now look at the amplifier stage on the headunit there is no way in hell that headunit will give you 45watts RMS - not at all, i very very very much doubt you will get more than 12ish watts RMS but even then it will sound shite yes blaupunkt are mid-range IMO - lovely units, they used to be high end, mine was a really old blau i bought 2nd hand but now blau have moved to the midrage to mid-high end units - still cracking units but no exactly the top of the range
You can get 45W RMS from a headunit without the need for any step-up circuitry without any distortion or sounding "shite". Above about 65W you'll need step up circuitry like you'll find in a separate amplifier. I did some measurements with my Sony headunit - fed in various waveforms and got undistorted outputs while the equaliser was set to flat. Managed 35W fine, and clipped at around 47W... The amp in my Sony it is the same one as my girlfriend's £140 Alpine .
i will honestly say i ahve yet to find a headunit that has any sort of half decent amplifier and there is no way in hell i can see you will get anything more than 15ish watts i have yet to come across a headunit that does not distort the speaker output toe buggery
Sam is right 35 real watt form a headunit in your dreams! They are weak as hell. More like 9-15 WRMS if you are lucky. Have a look on ebay there were some great JVC deals to be had out there.
Not much help but they do that on absultely every peice of buget audio eqipment like cheapeo home hifi they never do what they stated, my freind had a explode sony unit didnt seem to bad to me, but i anit no expert