What do you like
 

so with all the choices of equipment out there - who likes what for decks, amps, speakers, and why?

i heart alpine

:D

I love my old Alpine 7904 :)

Pioneer screen or PRS-99 deck
Digital Designs amps
Digital Designs subs
Audiocontrol DSP
Streetwires power and RCAs
XS power cells
Digital Designs Components or Pioneer PRS

I may be biased. But these products work great for both SQ and SPL cars and won't break the bank!

Pioneer full line of good products
Resonant engineering for SPL
Kenwood for budget stuff
Image Dynamic for SQ

Vintage Nakamichi equipment. I love the TD 1200 Mk II and amps from that era.
Denon decks.
Streetwires (Esoteric Audio)
Alpine F#1 Status equipment (all of it)
McIntosh amps
Custom work (if that counted) anything made by Tim Baillie (he's like god)

as for why.......... well these things speak for themselves

i hadnt heard of digital designs before so i did a google search and found this on another forum:





Dammit... They got me! I'll just put up what I was feeling, and you all will SEE that they got me! ARGH! I started with the top woofer, read some of what sounded like the "Retroincabulator" of the woofer world, then I looked at the other products AFTER I started typing! Funny stuff!

First of all, I smell spam, and if this DOESN'T get locked or deleted, I'd be very surprised. Secondly, If they build their drivers like they proofread their webpages, they are CRAP... I cannot believe that ANYBODY with even half a brain can believe the drivel posted there. This "Swap-O-Rama", "trying-to-sound-more-technical-than-you", presentation leads me to believe that they are over-hyped, unreliable furry turds, just like Audiobahn. I want to think that the guys AT Audiobahn wrote this copy... I have no experience with them exactly, but I don't trust them... At all...

ddaudio.com wrote:
The Z series represent the pinochle of transducer archeology. The unique design dates back to the precocious era of unequivocal magnetism and the vector planar research of underwater acoustic proliferation. The open archeology concentrates flux lines in the magnetic gap while side lobbing interference cancels stray flux from entering the atmosphere. The result is increased efficiency over the entire bandwidth of collaborating bass frequencies. This allows the Z Series woofers to play amazingly loud with little wasted energy being dissipated as unwarranted heat, this means they get on it and don't get real hot.



Translation: The Z series represents the PINNACLE (pinochle is a card game) of transducer archaeology. (I expect they mean "TECHNOLOGY". Do they dig these things out of the ground? Are they magic woofers?) The unique design dates back to the precocious era of unequivocal magnetism and the vector planar research of underwater acoustic proliferation. (What? That phrase means ABSOLUTELY nothing... It's all mumbo-jumbo BS) The open archeology (probably ARCHITECTURE) concentrates flux lines in the magnetic gap while side lobbing interference cancels stray flux from entering the atmosphere. I think they are telling us that they are shielded... "Side lobbing interference"... Huh... The word is LOBING, and I think they are mentioning either a shielding cup, or a bucking magnet, here - the "interference".) The result is increased efficiency over the entire bandwidth of collaborating bass frequencies. (I have no idea what that means...) This allows the Z Series woofers to play amazingly loud with little wasted energy being dissipated as unwarranted heat, this means they get on it and don't get real hot. (ALL the power going into a woofer is converted to heat. Period. Whether as heat in the voice coil, (about 99% or more) or as heat in the air and the surfaces absorbing the sound, (the remaining <1%) it's ALL heat, eventually...)

ddaudio.com wrote:
The Z Series breaks new ground in rare earth magnetics, using newly discovered material, neo-demetrious iron proton (Ned), incalculably more strenuous than the other discovered rare earth magnet material. Ned is highly unstable and very difficult to modulate, yet alone saturate, so its use is mainly limited to noncommercial phase generators used in anti-matter plasma generation. Digital Designs has acquired the rights to use Ned magnetics in non-military acoustic weaponry and the peaceful development of humanistic cohesion through harmonizing wave generation. The unstable Ned blocks are held in symmetry by the side lobe interference which allows the use of the catchy monolithic block shapes from that cool 2001 space movie. These are spatially arrayed to over saturate the Permendur top plate imported from Switzerland in one of those really beautiful, lake filled mountian valleys, giving huge magnetic energy to drive the voice coils.



neo-demetrious iron proton (Ned) No such thing...
incalculably more strenuous than the other discovered rare earth magnet material. EVERYTHING is calculable...
Ned is highly unstable and very difficult to modulate, yet alone saturate, so its use is mainly limited to noncommercial phase generators used in anti-matter plasma generation. These guys are goooooood....
Digital Designs has acquired the rights to use Ned magnetics in non-military acoustic weaponry and the peaceful development of humanistic cohesion through harmonizing wave generation. Wow... Where can I buy these things RIGHT NOW?!?!

And right about here is where I realized I was being had... Merry Christmas, everybody! Careful, they'll GET ya! Reminds me of the Kicker "Heart Shaped" woofers for a Valentines Day joke one year... (I think it was Kicker...)

ddaudio.com wrote:
The moving parts of the Z Series have undergone a minute amount of scrutiny also, the cones feature newly contrived composite materials to handle the extra load lines emulating from the motor, the voice coils are spiral wound in reversing layer directions for optimum efficiency and the voice coil former is really strong. The combined technological oeuvre nearly eliminates all chance of spurious effluvium from occuring. The spiders also feature new technology never found on arachnid based suspensions, silkaleneotton. Genetically altered spiders produce a chemical blended thread of silk, polyethylene and cotton. This synthetic blend is superior to our other synthetic blend. The new synthetic blend is stronger than standard arachnid fiber, more flexible than polyunsaturated polyethylene, lighter than water (it actually floats) and yet so soft and comfortable. This material can stretch to 1.7 times its weight, allowing for un-presidential travel.




ddaudio.com wrote:
The new Z Series woofers have more Watts than any speakers we have ever built, so many Watts they got, that we thought of using a new slogan, Got Watts?, but that’s lame so we didn't. We tried to measure the exact amount of Watts a Z Series makes, but no matter how hard we tried to invent a machine to measure the speaker Watts, we could never do it, so they must really make lot of Watts.




ddaudio.com wrote:
We, at DD, strive to push the boundaries of a lot of things that are a big hassle to deal with. And why did we do all this... because we want to.



At least I truly HOPE they were kidding about all this!

Digital Designs are highly respected in their field. They are sold world wide and win competitions all the time. I was using DD woofers, tweeters & amplifiers the last two years in my award winning sound quality stereo system.

Yes, they do play around with the fabric of reality in their product descriptions. They are in Oklahoma. Related to Audiobond? No. Not even close.

Their woofers are hand crafted in Oklahoma. Their amps are manufactured in Korea. Their high end components are made in Germany. They make subwoofers that will take 21,000 watts each. I've seen it with a vehicle from Alberta that boasts Canada's loudest at 180+ decibles, using DD.

They are one viable option for great sound in your car. They deserve a listen.

^I can't speak for their mobile gear, but I have a set of DD near-field studio monitors that are super-tasty (from 'way back when they did more than just mobile audio).

Oh, they still do home stuff. Actually, that's where they started!

Really? I tried looking up these monitors when I got them and all I saw on their site was car stuff...

http://www.ddaudio.com/

Lots of really cool stuff here.

dynaudio, morel, micro precision for components.

steg, genesis, for amps.

The DD website is pretty hilarious. Some of their 'technical' explanations are just ridiculous and are 100% toungue-in-cheek. They are pretty sarcastic clowns.

As for the product, if you haven't used it or heard it, its impossible for you to comment on the quality. :)

personally i love hertz, audison + kenwood, have had other deck brands before and kenwood seems to come up top.

Dynaudio, JMLabs/Focal, Morel, Vifa. There's quite a few manufacturers of great components out there.
I still prefer to run them multiamped with electronic crossovers or make my own cus I have yet to find a crossover I like (within a reasonable amount of money) So Focal Berilium Crossblocks are out.
As for amps that's a more difficult assessment to make based on usage. My favorite old school ones are Phoenix Gold MS and ZX series. More currently Focal Fp and Audison amps and Zapco's Digital amps I loved the computer based tuning setup (unfortunately not available no more)
For head units I was always a fan of Denons, Eclipse 5303 (30 Ohm output impedance), Original Pioneer P series like the P1 ( had a pretty good auto tune function) and its successors, some of the fiber optic Alpines, Clarion gave us the 9255 as well.
Now the options aren't so good we seem to be stuck with mediocre video products instead of just great sounding decks.
I could go on for hours about my favs and where I see the market going but that's just 15 years worth of ranting.

ya i have always been a fan of audison - wicked good stuff. haven't tried any hertz stuff yet personally but i hear some great things about them.

love the comment on the old nak stuff - they did have some pretty nifty decks!

kenwood and alpine heads are what i always used to run.

digital designs? cant say i would really think an amp from korea measure up

For SPL digital Designs has some of the best amps out there.

Pioneer has a new "old school" deck out there that has a direct pipeline from iPods, surpassing everyone else. It's called a DEX-P99RS. Retail is $1399.99

Korea makes some of the better electronics out there.

Kenwood went through a restructuring a few years ago and now make some of the better head units on the market. Alpine has taken a different route.

Audison = nice.

I like Focal for speakers. I've experimented with a few brands but I always come home to the old 165V2 components. I've run 2 sets since 02-03 and never looked back.

I like Audison for amps. I can't afford audison though, and have found nice stuff from the early 2000s that works for me. For subs I don't care as long as it's got a lot of power and doesn't say sony on it or posts a "max power" rating. I have bveen running an old PPI 5 channel for a few years now and other than overheating on long road trips in the summer it's provided me with great service.

I like subs in general. I would love to run a 12W7 some day, but i've found the 12L7 to get pretty loud with 1000w rms into it. Right now I'm running a very nice Polk SR10 in a slut ported box from Soundsgood, and it's perfect for what I'm into right now. I won't run a Focal sub anymore!

Pioneer premier made the best HU I ever used (880PRS), but since I've picked up the new car, I don't have an opinion. speaker level input FTW.

There's a kit for your car....

We give good sluts!

Audison make good amps. I run the LRX 6 and 2.250 in the truck and I'm happy with them. I also run my subs off a Focal 1.800. Really happy with it, too.

I want some slut subs. Where can I get some?

At our next sound off June 27th. It opens at 10:00 and runs from 12:00 to 6:00

You've always got nice stereo's, let's see how they compare to others. We've got stereo fanatics from Oregon to Prince George coming to show off their stuff. It's probably going to be THE best place to hear the largest variety of high end stereo gear in the Lower Mainland this year. We're anticipating 40 sound quality cars competing. The event is free, unless you want to compete.
You'll probably be able to see & hear of of the gear mentioned in this thread.

I might just do that. Any chance there'd be a bikini or wet T-shirt contest like in the 90's sound offs? LOL

As for competing, I swore to the family I'd never to do that again. Represented BC/AB in the IASCA Finals. Had my share of fun. Every sound off back then had bikini contests. It was like mandatory. I do miss it, though.