Hey, no one replied to my last post, so I am being annoying and reposting:

...not crazy or anything, just beefed up things a bit. It's an eclipse 5 channel amp pushing everything, and sounds pretty good. The F/R speakers break up in the midrange at high volumes though, but I can control it pretty well with the complex eq'ing and crossover options the alpine HU provides. The whole schlemeil cost 1580 bucks: 400 for the alpine HU, 300 for the custom fitted fiberglass enclosure, a few hundred for the amp, a couple of hundred for the pair of JL Audio 8 in" subs and the rest for installation. I wanted to keep my spare and also my passenger side storage, hence the choice of amp placement. I am wondering if I should have went for a beefier alpine of JL amp though; perhaps I will upgrade that. Hmmm. Any thoughts?

I will probably replace the F/R speakers, and I'd like some opinions on:

Boston
MB Quart
Focal

What do some of you prefer?

 

Boston Pro series seperates, Focals Polys, and the higher end MB Quarts are all good. It depends on taste. I think the Quarts are bright, and I have never actually heard the focals, but alot of people like them. I have seen the focals and I think they are cheaply made...but htey do have alot of followers.

I have had the Boston Proseries seperates in the past and they are in my opinion the best money can buy. I tried the JL Audio Evolution Seperates, Cx series, and they are very nice too.

If you are usign some equalization or spatial processing, then go with some cheaper, and use your signal processors to get the sound how you like it. I paid about $300 for my JL audio 6.5" seperates adn I have been very happy with them...

 

Alpine Type X off of ebay are an EXCELLENT deal...you can get the seperates for under 250 shipped, brand new.

That HU has a TON of features in it. Nice built in parametric eq. I'm not a big fan of time alignment though...

 

Personally I choose Boston speakers for all my cars, nothing out there will compete with them except an elite few. Focal and MB Quartz are great speakers if you like the way they sound. Diamond Hex speakers you should look at as well as Dynaudio speakers. My money has and is still going with Boston though, I've yet to find a cleaner more true sounding speaker. I run Boston Reference Z6s in my Z and Boston Pros in my other cars.

 

I have had a chance to hear the bostons, mb quartz and focals at local shops, and I like the bostons best, by a slim margin, so far. I would love to check out the diamons and dynaudio's, if I can find a place that carries them, not sure if I can though. Same with the Alpine: can't seem to find the type R or X's set up anywhere for listening, locally.

 

I have a similar setup - Alpine 9815 HU and actually like the time correction feature. Currently using the Eclipse 5422 amp and it seems to have plenty of power for the setup (not sure of how loud you need it though). Amp is powering fronts only, rears are powered off of the head unit, and the other two amp channels are bridged for a future subwoofer addition.

Went with mid line MB Quart reference front and rear, and think they sound better on a larger range of music (e.g. classical, jazz, and rock) than the comparably priced Bostons I heard- and yes, the Dynaudio were better - but adding them put me way over the $2K price target for the complete system. The Quarts sound pretty nice - you need to use the built in parametric EQ to really optimize them though.

I haven't put the subs in yet but was looking at a pair of JL 8W3V2 or a single 10W3V2. How do you like your subs? Would you say they are tight sounding?

If I was going to start from scratch, wouldn't even mess with the rear speakers - just disconnect them and buy two Dynaudio for the front. Hope this helps.

Cheers!