Stereo Head Unit Poll

I am in the market for a stereo system. I've been lookin around at a number of manufacturers and the 3 that I have found to be most to my liking are Alpine, Kenwood Excelon, and Pioneer Premier. I like these brands all because of one thing, the higher preamp volt outputs (4-5v range). I would like all your thoughts on these makes and if you have any other makes in mind that you know offer the same preamp voltage range please let me know!

 

I'm all Alpine. I think Alpine has the best quality and has the best features

 

i voted alpine. i've had several and liked them all.

 

Kenwood DNX9960 FTW!!! Come on, it comes stock from Lambo!!

 

Subbed. I am also on the market.

Kenwood DNX9960 has my heart right now, but i really haven't done as much research as i should have on the others.

 

I love my Alpine.

 

Don't think you can go wrong with any of them. Personally I have typically used Alpine and Pioneer and liked the units I had from both. If I were to buy right now I'd probably go with Alpine.

 

My JVC headunit has been awesome so far. I have it color matched to the rest of the truck. It also has lots of options and comes with bluetooth. On Crutchfield they provide awesome support since its a signature series.

 

DNX9960 is very nice...lol slightly out of price range! I don't really have a budget on this per say but 1500 bucks is outside of what I do have!

BigRed, what unit do you have? And what are the preamp output volts? I don't really wanna go below 4.

I had a Clarion DXZ785USB in my other car before I got my truck. It had 6 preamp outputs at 6 volts. I had it hooked to a RF 550.2 powering the front speakers (Clarion) and an MTX 600 powering 2 MTX subs. It never once caused any issues for the speakers but I never had it up all the way because it got too painful on the ears. I beat the crap out my system and it kept sounding amazing....when I began my research for my new stereo I found out, to my disappointment, Clarion no longer makes that unit.

 

I currently have an older model Sony in my Tacoma, but in my old truck i had an Alpine... Loved it. It'll just cost you if u want all the other stuff like an auxilary input or bluetooth or something of that sort.

 

The aux input wont cost much extra lol I dont know why I put that, but yeah, Alpine all the way... Great quality, great features, easy to use...

 

HI THERE! I'd like to try and continue establishing myself on this forum as a bit of a car audio consultant.

So, I have personally installed 4 or 5 alpine decks, 3 of which were mine. The alpine decks are great. They have quality, they have great options, and usually have a pretty good interface. However, Alpine is expensive, and usually doesn't offer as many features packed into one deck as some others offer.

Kenwood, makes the deck I'm running right now, and honestly I've installed almost 20 decks in various peoples cars including my own, and this deck has the most options and the best interface out of all of them.

3-4v pre outs, ipod control on the deck, (OR ipod control by hand, still via 30 pin connector so it charges it) Aux in(on the back, no ugly hole and wire on your dash) USB in (on the back " ")

The browsing of the ipod is so perfect, because the button setup is identical to the clickwheel of an ipod. There's also 5 lines of text, so you can rifle thru quickly. The deck can also play CDs.

The interface is amazing, you can set a crossover for each individual set of speakers, hi pass and low pass, so that each speaker is getting the perfect range of frequency, and you can set the size of each speaker and sub, and the distance apart that they are so that it processes the sound in the appropriate way rather than just sending the same power to all.

You can even set the amount of airspace you have in your car, or if you dont know, set which type of car you drive (Car, SUV, Van, etc. etc.)

Premier is.... regular. Nothing special. You'd be happy with it, but you'd be just as happy with an Alpine or a Kenwood.

I would say the Alpine is a great deck, but most of the ones your looking at are probably missing a few options such as aux, usb, cd or something. For instance, the alpine IDA series of decks has wicked ipod control, but if your buddy brings a CD along to listen to, you're boned.

My deck is the KDC X794 and I've never seen one like it. And I do have a small car audio installation business.

Hope you can take something out of that! Sorry for the length!


EDIT: On an iPod touch, if you're in a playlist and you hear a song you like, you can click once to look at the whole album the song comes from, rather than going back out to artists, finding the artist, picking the album and then looking.


On my deck, while you're on a song, you can click "Search" and go to "Related Search" and then it gives you "By Album" (shows the tracks on the album the song is on,) "By Artist" (Shows you all the songs by the artist of that song) and "By Genre" (Shows you all the songs from the genre of the song)

This is handy when the only way to get to an album on a typical deck is to search the artists, scroll to one, pick the album etc.

 

I think it really depends on the exact model that you are looking at. In the last five years I have had a Kenwood, a Pioneer, an Alpine, a JVC and a Sony (in various vehicles). The JVC was the best of the bunch and the Sony the worst but you need to narrow it down and look at specific models and features and develop a price range in order to compare models.

 

Head Units I'm looking at:

Alpine CDE-103BT

Kenwood Excelon KDC-X794

Kenwood Excelon KDC-X994

Pioneer Premier DEH-P610BT

Pioneer Premier FH-P800BT

All these units are under $300, all have 6-4 volt preamp outputs, all except the KDC-X794 have Blue Tooth. The FH-P800BT is a double DIN, not that it makes a difference to me.

 

That Alpine one will bug you. It's only got 1 line of display. If you need to search through anything, including menus, it's a real pain in the ass.

And if you're going to get a double DIN, at least get one with a nice display, you know?

Buy a deck that you never have to replace. If you don't need CDs and you want Alpine because of the heavy bias in this thread, go with an Alpine from the iDA series. You could get the one with the nice LCD display for under 300.

 

I don't have any thing from or related to iPhone, iPod, i-anything. Blackberry FTW!!

 

All the alpines I've owned and seen sound amazing but don't last and have quirky problems. The pioneers I have had over the years sound on par have never died on me. My vote goes for Pioneer.

 

i disagree. the biggest issue with the alpine is the speed of the dial when you are searching. ie, selecting the an album. normally not a problem, but it can be a little slow when you have 50+ from one band.

 

i've never had an issue with my alpine

 

x2, they are very solid and you can always rely on them.

some people may think differently but its from personal experience.