Best Car Stereo

I've also heard good things about Focal Utopia line of drivers. They frequently go on sale on Ebay.

A little nastalga (is that spelt correctly?) for you motor heads. Did you know that Michael Kelly, owner and designer for Aerial Accoustics (10t) worked for ADS in the late 80's and was the chief designer for the great sounding 320i and 300i speaker. He left ADS around 90ish with another higher up (i think market director, correct me anyone) and formed Aerial and produced and marketed the Aerial 10t and received speaker of the year award in 96. BTW Eclipse has been around for at least 13yrs that i remember. Most of the manuf mentioned have been sold and continue by different companys that keep the same name. I heard that Boston is no longer making car audio products. Fun Hobby and also expensive, i miss it.

That's cool, I love Porsches, Alfas too. I recently bought a new car stereo and was really into car audio before home audio took my money away. I listened to a lot of speakers, seperates and coaxial, and found dynaudio to be the best, but it is pretty expensive. Your gonna need your money for spare parts!. For a little half the cost of dyn, boston's pro series are the best, and they are still doing car audio. I found quarts to be too bright, especially thier coaxials which use those terrible inverted dome tweeters. Their Premium Reference's are pretty good though, but don't let those sneaky dealers trick you into the Q series if you go that route. They're practically the same speaker, and very few can tell the difference in sound between them. McIntosh makes really nice amps, but the difference between amps in car audio is pretty small. Get a head unit that looks good, get it installed by the best person you can find, and you'll be ready to pick up some hotties.

I enjoy my car stereo a great deal and have spent considerable amount of money over 4 years( appx $9000 plus).A well set-up sytem consisting of 'high-end' components can deliver really great(but never close to the home rig in terms of sound stage and openness) sound.The tonal balance can come very close to the home stereo with an EQ. I have pioneer premier(similar to elite) head CD unit, Pioneer preimer EQ and DSP sound processor( that has studio,club,jazz club DSP set-up and also sound positioning feature that put driver in to a sweet spot with a delay built in. Front speakers are now JL audio 3 way component system, mounted in the door firing up and center, with 8 " mid bass JL audio woofer(all bass in Front), Rear fil are the infinity coaxials( my front infinity kappa componets blew up a year ago, I am glad i replaced them with JL components, very natural non-fatiguing sound) Trunk contain front firing 2-10" Cerwin vega Acurate image sub-woofers in a sealed box and a bazzooka 10" amplified tube subwoofer firing back in right corner increasing a bass-feel.A passive cross over control 100-200 hz bass in 8" mid basses in the front door, two giant capacitors provide reserve power for 3 PPI art series amplifires( heart of the system in my opinion). One A-600 for subwoofer, A-400 for front and rear, A-200 for mid basses. Optima battery aided by high power alternator powers the whole system. Oh yes the JL tweeter are molded on the lower region of A-pillers, at about 45 degrees. I have two additional MB-quart tweeter installed in the rear view mirror bring the soundstage at the eye sight. A multi-cd changer in the trunk also provide tunes a addition to the head unit. The sound in the driver seat is tailered to match the home rig curve. In summary sound is very transperent, dynamic, sound stage starting at about dash land going deeper in the wind shield( at times with good material)without being boomy at all(set-up with restraint)Doors and trunk has been deadened with dynamat. So for you car stereo buffs, I would highly recommend the PPI amplifiers and the JL components. MB-quart and Infinity tend to be very bright. The Cerwin vega accurate image sub-woofers also does a great job.WAIT! I forgot to mention two mid cabin mounted 4 " JL coaxial mid ranges run by a PPI A-100!! Cables: Did not spend much on them but they are adequately sized.

i tink canton makes about the best car speakers around - i have a set in my daily-driver alfa gtv6. but, i must confess that the alpine cd-player/head-amp has been sittin' on a shelf in the laundry room for ~5 years, and my ~90-mile daily commute is done w/a big hole in the dash where the radio is supposed to go! ;~)

doug *i "drive" when i drive* sedon