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Question About Amps


Ivanfbi

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I have a question. Does it make any difference, what kind of cd player you use, if you are not powering them with a buildin amp, but an aftermarket one, as long as you have 2 preouts?

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there are many things that matter on a cd player:

pre amp voltage

distortion

frequency response

defect tracking

anti-skipping

what kind of format it reads

display quality (especially important on a mp3 player)

expandability (cd changers, xm radio, etc)

so...having said that, here are the brands that i would say fall into the "quality" manufacturers category, though some i have had issues with, but they are all to be considered good brands:

sony

pioneer

alpine

eclipse

jvc

panasonic

kenwood

clarion

mcintosh

nakamichi

denon

rockford fosgate

blaupunkt

now, within this list, some in my opinion sound better, some look better, some are more realible, some are more affordable, so look at your budget, and what you need and pick the ones you want.

my favorite brands from personal experience:

best price/performance/features brand: JVC / Arsenal

Best Sound Quality: Denon

best Cosmetics (higher line JVC aresenal)

Most well rounded: Alpine Pioneer

but like i say, they are allgood brands basically...

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NO no no, I don't want an aftermarket cd player, I am going to use the stock SC-811 with the changer, and two amps( both Kenwoods, from previous car) powering speakers(I think i will go with Infinity) and subwoofers ( 2 Infinity 10's, 2 JL 10W3's or 2 R-type Alpines) so I was wondering, if the system sound is going to change a lot if i am going to go with an aftermarket one.

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The aftermarket headunit will definatly change the cleanliness of the sound output towards the amps. Right now off of your stock hu you're basically running about 1v of current into the amps. Compare this to the higher JVC and Eclipse lines which run about 5v. This is going to be a very large amount of difference in the sound quality overall. With the stock headunit, you keep the nice clean look of the interior but you're choking off the sound quality by leaps and bounds not to mention all of the nice features you're missing out on. You couldn't go wrong by getting rid of the stock head.

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NO no no, I don't  want an aftermarket cd player, I am going to use the stock SC-811 with the changer, and two amps( both Kenwoods, from previous car) powering speakers(I think i will go with Infinity) and subwoofers ( 2 Infinity 10's, 2 JL 10W3's or 2 R-type Alpines) so I was wondering, if the system sound is going to change a lot if i am going to go with an aftermarket one.

Change in terms of?

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when you say "aftermarket one" waht is this "one" a aftermarket cd player? amp? speakre?

either way, if you do your system as you listeed above, your big bottleneck is going to be that stock headunit, you can take the bset sepakres int eh world, best amps int he world and put it through that stock headunit of yours, and it still wont sound very good...

b

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when you say "aftermarket one" waht is this "one"  a aftermarket cd player? amp? speakre?

either way, if you do your system as you listeed above, your big bottleneck is going to be that stock headunit, you can take the bset sepakres int eh world, best amps int he world and put it through that stock headunit of yours, and it still wont sound very good...

b

Agree.

If you use high level output from any HU (maybe except for Clarion DRZ-9255, priced at $1200 MSRP, they don't have high level output on their HU) and convert it to low level signal to feed in the amplifier input, there will be great distortion and signal loss (too much signal process).

Even best HU in the market has <0.1% THD on its audio amplification part, AKA: high level/speaker output (most good/decent HUs have >1% THD). However, distortion <0.1% is not noticable to the human ear, but distortion >0.1% will be noticable.

Read this scenario:

If your HU has <0.1% THD on the speaker output and you feed it to an amp that has much less than <0.1% (let say 0.02% THD), the original distortion from the signal is also processed and amplified (you won't get <0.1% THD anymore, you'll get >0.1% THD).

Thus, If you use whatever HU' speaker/high-level output (including volvo) and connect to amp, it will be only louder but it won't sound clean or clear. Also, sound quality may get worse than without the amp.

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on a side note, i am happy that they brought the 9255 back, i used one briefly about 5 years ago, definetly one of the best sounding headunits have had...i wonder if the new one is macintosh designed too...

now if we can only get the updated version of the sony C90 c910 back, that would be great ;)

b

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on a side note, i am happy that they brought the 9255 back, i used one briefly about 5 years ago, definetly one of the best sounding headunits have had...i wonder if the new one is macintosh designed too...

now if we can only get the updated version of the sony C90 c910 back, that would be great ;)

b

Im not into sony for any CD-related equipment. Got bad experience with its CD-R internal drive, after a month it can't burn and can't read.

However, I chose sony for any TV-related equipment. I got 2 sony monitors and loved it. Little bit OT :P

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