What makes a good Head Unit?

[audiofanaticz]

The over analyzing of simple things was not directed at you, but the person I quoted when he could not figure out the method to connect the power wire of a radio to the vehicle and even tossed out the only way permitted to such task allowed by NASA when they are connecting wires on space shuttles and space stations. How he deemed this method is not good enough for a car radio is beyond me. LOL

Sonics price is pretty competitive, they mostly sell their producs at MAP price (minimum advertised price that the band allows).

Where as Cruthfield seems to be mostly MSRP pricing, which is what you find at a local dealer, but not always the case.

If your vehicle has an expensive mounting kit or harness sometimes it is best to price match both places even if the radio maybe $10 more at say Crutchfield, but Crutchfield might cut you a much larger deal on an expensive harness/dash kit or vice versa.

I also think Sonic deals in more car audio related gear and only dabbles in home audio stuff, where Crutchfield seems to be the opposite. So if Sonic is buying in larger volumes they are getting larger price cuts on their end that they can pass down to the customer.
Both companys mostly deal in current model gear unless the models just changed out and they have a few older units of a brand left. If your looking to save extra money by going with a model older radio sometimes a company like CarAudioGiants, OnlineCarStereo may have that deal your looking for. But usually these are not authorized retailers and factory warranty is not always available.

As a guy that is working on growing his business like I am I will say supporting local dealers is great to do, but at the same time dont buy something you dont want, or settle for something less because your local shop is not willing to wheel and deal!! Say you found a nice $300 radio online that is being sold at MAP and it comes with all installation accessories, but your local shop has that same radio for $410 being sold at MSRP and he wont budge on the price or include any accessories so you end up buying the next model lower from the local shop. Dont do that, no reason to cut yourself short in any means! If they are not welling to make 30% profit on the item instead of 50% screw them and walk out the door. Now they are not making nothing from a potential easy sale. Dont let them try and sucker you in and toss a guilt trip at you, just remember that their cost is typically half of what MSRP is, not always but a majority of time. Of coarse they have other costs and overheads in running a large scale business but that should make them more eager to satisfy their customer!

[06RTCharger]

Its not that this forum is not SQ friendly, its that you over think things that don't really matter like your thread you started about soldering/heat-shrinking or using crimp style connectors. Then after several people posted with legitimate information you still disregarded and continued to look for answers. Theres only so many ways to properly connect 2 wires and neither of those ways you seemed good enough for you after what seemed like 3 weeks.

However I will agree with you on what you said about his budget.

With the goal of SQ being wanting his options are rather slime to none to the point where he can get a "feature packed" headunit that is dirt cheap flea market gear and he will most likely hate after he learns things the hard way, or settle for a radio that has a lot less of what he is wanting but is from a quality brand that is easy to navigate through the menus and will last a long time.

His best option is taking his budget and look for a Pioneer deck that is as close to his max budget and get that, or go back a year or two to their older models that some online retailer may have in stock at a heavily discounted price.

imma just plead the 5th on the wire connection methods topic lol. I hope this dude dont go down that road, he seems to over think a lil like i do lol. Alot of his topics have similar questions as i did.

I think maybe the OP would make his HU budget bigger by sacrificing sub stage for now. Or if to him, his sub stage has priority over mids/highs, then sacrifice the mids/highs budget. By sacrificing one of those areas, he could REALLY open up his options and get something he'd be stoked with. Then save up again to make up for that sacrifice.

[audiofanaticz]

Thats not a bad idea if he is starting from scratch and has purchased nothing yet.

The headunit is going to be the heart of the system, if you can put more coinage towards that now and wait on buying something else until the funds are avaible that is the way to go.

Then your not skimping on anything and stretching your funds farther then they can go.

[whazoo84]

I want a touchscreen double din and know all the unnecessary extra stuff (back up camera, steering control etc) in a head unit I want in my 07 Suburban...besides that and 3 presets for front, rear, and subs; I don't know what else to look at for sound quality? (Bits, FLAC, USB, inputs, EQ etc). I'm looking to spend around $300-350 and want to buy it right the first time.

Check out what SoundStream has to offer. I've seen them get pretty damned loud for being as cheap as they are, a high pass crossover can remove high volume distortion. If I were you, I'd get a small 4chan amplifier with it and then just use it for its snazzy features and nice display.

[Derek217]

Since I am actually starting off from scratch since I just bought this truck recently as you asked; I think I'd rather buy a great head unit with gps for wayyy more since I've been thinking the past few days. Legitametly buy it right the first time. That being the case, still looking at sonic electronix and found the Clarion NX706 (someone mentioned earlier clarion was good?) http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_107467_Clarion-NX706-Hi-Res-Digital-Sound-Stereo.html. Also found a full hands on demo and I'm impressed with everything https://youtu.be/oDjwN6L0bDI GPS, 7in, colorful, 15 band EQ, USB, FLAC playback (idk if it actually works as someone mentioned earlier how that works) all the cool streaming and phone book stuff and can still have a back up camera. Idk about steering wheel control. Within that price bracket there's also the Pioneer NEX series (a kenwood and an alpine too) someone else suggested as well but I seem it in person and wasn't too impressed with the interface (Pioneer NEX). What I'm trying to get at, is this head unit a good one for great SQ and stuff mentioned wayyy earlier that would cost a lot or am I still stuck in awe for a feature packed shiny head unit? Only bad thing is 2v pre amps although I was told not too worry too much on that?

[06RTCharger]

Since I am actually starting off from scratch since I just bought this truck recently as you asked; I think I'd rather buy a great head unit with gps for wayyy more since I've been thinking the past few days. Legitametly buy it right the first time. That being the case, still looking at sonic electronix and found the Clarion NX706 (someone mentioned earlier clarion was good?) http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_107467_Clarion-NX706-Hi-Res-Digital-Sound-Stereo.html. Also found a full hands on demo and I'm impressed with everything https://youtu.be/oDjwN6L0bDI GPS, 7in, colorful, 15 band EQ, USB, FLAC playback (idk if it actually works as someone mentioned earlier how that works) all the cool streaming and phone book stuff and can still have a back up camera. Idk about steering wheel control. Within that price bracket there's also the Pioneer NEX series (a kenwood and an alpine too) someone else suggested as well but I seem it in person and wasn't too impressed with the interface (Pioneer NEX). What I'm trying to get at, is this head unit a good one for great SQ and stuff mentioned wayyy earlier that would cost a lot or am I still stuck in awe for a feature packed shiny head unit? Only bad thing is 2v pre amps although I was told not too worry too much on that?

Thats a good choice to raise ur budget. Thats the exact Headunit i was going to get, but the shop in my area didnt have one for me to mess around with. Someone was telling me its programming was a little laggy so i wanted to see for myself, but i couldnt. If you actually got to play around with it yourself and use the screen and it seems all good to you and u like it? Then i think youd be happy with that headunit, no big issue to NOT get it.

Some reasons i didnt get it, besides not being able to test it out myself. It is a resistive screen (at 4:55 https://youtu.be/u3Z5P0lij-g). Also i wanted to do a 3 way active front stage. So including the substage, id need 4pairs of output. Also i got MAJORLY lost in the FLAC/ high resolution stuff lol, and i was looking for a headunit with Digital Coax output instead of the toslink, so i could run that to a DSP.

So anyway, if u like it in person....get it. I believe it has everything u wanted. Looks pretty damn nice too.

[Derek217]

I didn't see it here in town at the shop that displays all the head units. Don't think they even carry clarion. From the video it doesn't look too laggy and I never noticed the resistive screen, thanks for pointing that out. That's something I could probably overlook for a 7in navigation and colorful head unit...doesn't look like it's too tough to press the buttons although I know it's not the best screen type. So with the whole output thing, would that mess me up since I plan to run two monoblock amps to my subs and at least two amps for mids and highs total (x4 6.5s and x4 tweeters)? Maybe 4amps on mids and highs plus (x8 6.5 and x8 tweeters) the 2 mono blocks for the subs?

[06RTCharger]

I didn't see it here in town at the shop that displays all the head units. Don't think they even carry clarion. From the video it doesn't look too laggy and I never noticed the resistive screen, thanks for pointing that out. That's something I could probably overlook for a 7in navigation and colorful head unit...doesn't look like it's too tough to press the buttons although I know it's not the best screen type. So with the whole output thing, would that mess me up since I plan to run two monoblock amps to my subs and at least two amps for mids and highs total (x4 6.5s and x4 tweeters)? Maybe 4amps on mids and highs plus (x8 6.5 and x8 tweeters) the 2 mono blocks for the subs?

I dont think so. You'd just be using a bunch of rca y-splitters to turn ur given 3channels from ur headunit and splitting them into 6 channels. That might be the cheap way to go about it. And i think you'd lose alot of individual speaker tuning abilities. My best suggestion for running 6 amps with only 3channels and keeping tuning ability, would be to get a DSP with 8channels of output. Also with that headunit youd be able to makeuse of that toslink output if u get a DSP with atleast a toslink input and 8 channels of rca output.

[MrSkippyJ]

No he's fine. There are plenty of outputs for his amps.

[06RTCharger]

Where are all those mids&highs getting placed in ur vehicle? What speakers were u running? You dont want a couple 8's in there to possibly give u better midbass?