New toy for my RX.

[TheSubaruJunkie]

After When my last stereo was stolen, i replaced it with a piece of crap sony deck. Well, the sony deck isnt that bad.. .its loud and has a ton of nice features. But if I so much as stop too hard the damn think skips. And forget about speedbumps, you're not listening to your favorite song until you leave the mall's parking lot.

 

So i did some research and decided i'd get a MP3 deck that was worth its money. I found a Clarion DXZ845MC on ebay and picked it up.

 

This thing is packed FULL of awesome features. The one I like the best is its onboard memory. The deck has 128MB Of internal RAM and you can rip songs from CD to the deck and store something like 350+ minutes of music. Completly SKIP FREE!!

 

Here's a list of its features and better pix:http://www.crutchfield.com/S-6n6tkMsjeQn/cgi-bin/ProdView.asp?i=020DXZ845&search=DXZ845MC

 

And here are some pix of it in my car... with its screen saver enabled:

 

 

-Brian

[A DOG]

I have a clarion too. I have a DXZ545MP.

I love how it sounds and interacts. I also have a huge sound system in my car. check it out.http://www.sounddomain.com/memberpage/553883

 

All my sound stuff is at the bottom of the page.

[TheSubaruJunkie]

I was looking at the 545MP too. It was considerably cheaper, but didnt have all the features i wanted from the 845MC.

 

Now i gotta go get a sub and amp.

 

-Brian

[A DOG]

If you have nice front speakers I would get a sub and amp, but otherwise you need nice front speakers before you get anything else. Unless you want to hear bass and a little bit of treble. Car stereos are all about balance. I have front speakers and triaxial back speakers. So they are balanced with the subs. If you do get an amp you probably don't need over 600watts.

[TheSubaruJunkie]

I have 8x6's in my front doors. They're 220watt 3way pioneers and they arent too bad. I want to put tweeters in with a cross-over to add alittle more trebble, but I would like to have a 10 or two in the rear to add just alittle more bass.

 

My friend has a 975 watt 3 channel amp (325x3) that i might get. If i get that, i will get one nice 10 and 2 more 9x6's for the rear of the car.

 

-Brian

[erik litchy]

I have my mind set on either finding a stock cd player out of another subaru or going with a nicer one like eclipse makes.

[85Sub4WD]

Nice setups

 

Clarion at one time made the OEM audio stuff for Subaru (my radio is stock and has Clarion labels all over it)

 

I may upgrade the deck eventually, but I am first set on getting decent speakers. - I am a bit of an audiophile, and I really don't like some of the distortion that MP3's (and most other compressed audio formats) have. 256k are bearable, but 128k is like listening through the end of a toilet paper tube. I have no money (and little interest) in spending money on my car's audio - the car itself is so loud anyway, anything really high-end would be pointless

 

My one caution is to beware of snake oil - there is a lot of it in the car audio industry (and even more in "high-end" home audio).

 

Just look for:

 

an flat speaker response from 60Hz to 16kHz for car speakers - anything more is wasted money - most people can barely hear (if at all) above 16kHz, and MP3's kill anything below 60Hz - besides below that are VERY low frequencies, and a driver (speaker) that can go up to 16kHz will have bad things happen to it below 60Hz

 

low distortion - measured in deciBells (dB) - 1 or less is fine - the smaller the better

 

there are of course, other specs that can be taken into account, but overall that will get you a good speaker

 

Home audio is easier because you can have multiple drivers and crossovers, and really have good sound - it does get complex, but there are good, cheap electronics available (luck also plays a part).

[TheSubaruJunkie]

I can tell the difference with MP3 and CD Audio as well, but the difference is very minimal in my opinion. And 1 CD will replace an entire CD Changer.

 

I made a CD today with every Deftone album, every tool album and every APC album. Set them in their own folders and i can randomize them all, or go back and forth between folders faster than a CD changer can grab the next CD.

 

And If I want to listen to something in a higher quality, i always got the original CD or can burn a CD with higher quality MP3's (variable bitrate... etc)

 

I gotta get a good EQ cause this deck needs alittle help in that area, but visually and functionally this deck gets an A++ from me.

 

-Brian

[bushbasher]

I can tell the difference with MP3 and CD Audio as well, but the difference is very minimal in my opinion. And 1 CD will replace an entire CD Changer.

 

I have a cheap sony mp3 deck. Mp3s are cool but its tough with all those songs to navigate, thats my only real gripe. I've noticed too with mp3s that at low volumes you cant really tell the difference but when you crank it up the bass and midrange distorts more than cd audio. I have a set of german RFT home theatre speaker cabinets sitting in the back of my car wired to the rear channels and all 4 stock subaru speakers wired into the 2 front channels. Its a pretty crappy setup so I cant complain about mp3 quality at this point. The home theater speakers are perfect actually but not enough to make me feel immersed in sound.

[Ross]

I can tell the difference with MP3 and CD Audio as well, but the difference is very minimal in my opinion. And 1 CD will replace an entire CD Changer.

 

Does the deck play WMAs? THey seem to sound better for a lower compression ratio than mp3s (at least on my pioneer deck anyway).

[TheSubaruJunkie]

The deck does play WMA. I have yet to try it however and i dont have any WMA downloaded. Maybe i'll rip my CD collection using WMA to test it.

 

-Brian

[Zefy]

i wanted something of the sort for my car... so this is what i am working on... i got a palm Zire 72 for xmas... these palms are great! organization is a breaze and i can get the quality as good as i want it(right now i am running at 160k(not mp3... mp3's have a funny whinning sound that apparently only myself and my guitar teacher can really hear...anybody else here it!?!)

 

right now i have 21 full CD's(all orginal CD's!) on my palm across a 1gig card and a 512 card(SD)...

 

and when put into persective the palm is a way better deal... i have a music player, digital camera with video and sound, a day timer, a note pad, e-mail and internet surfing(using the bluetooth), a movie player, a person phonebook(with pictures!), a photo album, a gaming system, a full dictionary, and a nice calculator, a guitar tuner and tab writer...

 

if you were to buy all of these things seperatly you would be out over a thousand bucks... i just plug in my palm into my car stereo and i got a perfectly good sound system that i can take out of the car and walk around with...

i still prefer real CD's over compressed files of any sort... but until i get rid of my crappy deck i am sticking with this...

[Caboobaroo]

I am installing my older Clarion deck into my RX. Its the DX515 model but it sure bumps hard. I got it for free for fixing this chick's Volvo turbosedan and since she didn't want to spend an arm and a leg to install it, she gave it to me. I also had a nice old Sony tape deck in my Brat but I had the 10 disc CD changer in the dash where the glovebox was. People would look at the deck and laught because the CD changer blended right into the back trim on the dash.... talk about anti-theft:D

[TheSubaruJunkie]

Zefy, i wish my PDA was good enough to play sound. I have a cheap Sony Clie (list for $200, bought it for $30 from someone at work who couldnt figure out how to use it). It uses Sony memory sticks, which you cannot get above 512mb (unless you get the NEW sticks that wont work in my PDA). It doesnt have sound or video playback, and i usually only use it for a calendar, alarm clock, portable gaming or keeping track of little odd's and ends (works great for calculating gas milage on long road trips).

 

The Clarion deck has an AUX input that will make it super simple for me to connect a computer or auxiliary device to. I was thinking of getting a portable MP3 player to connect to it... but since it plays MP3's off CD that seems like a waste. So i think im going to locate a PCI GPS card for a spare computer i have, and install the computer in the car for GPS, MP3, DVD etc... (probably not DVD cause im too busy driving when im driving to watch movies).

 

I went pawn shopping yesterday and found 2 box's, both had two 10" subs but i have no idea what brand the speakers were or if they were any good. One box said "750 watts" on the front of it, but i dont know if that was per speaker or what. Also, both box's were enclosed and I'd preffer not to have an enclosed box... The price was right however. One box was $80 and the other was $90.

 

I might go back later and have them test the box's, i still have to locate an amp to power them.

 

-Brian

[Zefy]

TheSubaruJunkie, ya my buddy has a sony clie... his can play tunes but it isn't as good as mine... my rampage deck has a plug in like the one your taking about... i am debating getting a GPS card for my palm... the model above my PDA came with it for an extra 200 or something...

 

sorry for the hyjack...