Hi, I just wanted to know what everyone's opinion on Clarion head units are Are they good values? Do they work well? Are they a good buy? I really like the look of these versus the alpine models.

Also, what's everyon'e opinion on Panasonic head units? Any info is much appreciated!

- Justin S.

 

I think they are great.. I used one for years with no problems, sold it, went to a stock CD deck.. now I'm shelving that and going back to a Clarion.

 

i have a clarion head unit.

i fricking hate the darn thing. its rediculous. its very picky on the the type of disks it reads. some clarions will only read "real" cd's like store bought and not burned cd's. for instance MY clarion deck will only read a Black CD-R. it wont read ANY other type of burnable disk. stay away from clarion mayn.

Go with alpine, they are much much better than clarion will ever be.

 

clarions are badass. In reference to the guy above, you must not know what to look for when buying a head unit. You need to look at the media types supported. I ahve a 2004 model dxz545MP. AWESOME headunit you can get for dirtcheap at thezeb.com. the head unit is 250 at hifi buys or you can get it for 120 at thezeb.com.

 

Well the model I had was a 2001 and it played everything under the sun.. and never ever had a problem .. It even played CD-RW's

 

I like the clarions a lot. Most of their models use 24bit Burr Brown D/A converters, which are widely recognized as some of the best DACs. Up until the 2005 models came out, I also found them to be very tasteful looking.

 

Hey thanks everyone! I appreciate all the feedback. I'll definetley check into all your suggestions!

- Justin S.

 

I had one it lasted a while but was not worth the money spent. You can find just as good of a head unit for at least 2/3 the price that will out last it. They are overated garbage, the one I had lasted about 2 or tree years and started scraching cd as it played them. I had a cousin with the same unit and it had the same problems. Although this is when cd players cost a good dollar like 300.00 plus for a cheap one. So that puts me about 10 years back or so. Maybe the quality has changed since then but I won't buy one have had better luck with less expensive jvc's and pioneers.

 

I just bought the 845MC and this thing is unbelievable. This thing will play almost any CD. The music catcher feature is pretty cool too. I can store up to 265 minutes of music on the hard drive so i dont have to keep swithing discs around. It also has like 80 colors to choose from. I am huge alpine fan but they just dont look as good as the 845. Plus i was lookng for a head unit that was all black to match the interior plastics. And i must say it is a perfect fit. I picked up the 845MC for 208$ off of hooked ontronics.com about a month ago. The price dropped a lot and i jumped all over it. They were probably making room for the new models which i dont like they way they look.

 

Hey thanks for all the suggestion guys!

 

interesting, because I think I read in both the manual for my kenwood, as well as my pioneer that they used the Burr Brown 24bit converters... I highly doubt this matters if I am using mp3 discs, right? those are the ONLY discs I use... 192-320kbps, sometimes VBR

 

the sound quality of an MP3 is already so comprimised, that it'll completely mask any subtle differences between DACs.

That's interresting that the kenwood and Pioneer offered Burr Browns. I have never heard this. Other than some of the real high end stuff, the Clarions and for a while a couple JVC models were the only ones I was aware of that had them.

 

I have had 2 clarion head units that i was very happy with the last one got stolen and now i run pioneer which is ok it mates to the pioneer 4 way 6x9s well, but clarion is a definate thumbs up in my book

 

Jim, you think you can actually hear the difference between a 320VBR mp3 versus a CDA track?

MP3 versus CD-Audio myths

"Since audio is being compressed, and the compression schemes are often lossy, people think MP3 is inferior to what they call 'CD-quality'. That is complete nonsense;
Let's check out the CD-audio format, it can only run 16 bit audio at 44.1 kHz samplerate, while one can create an MP3 out of 48 kHz samplerate 32 bit audio-files. Also, dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratio inside MP3 are determined by the source-audio and can in theory be infinite, while that of an audio-CD can only be as high as the maximum quality of the DA converter you use, which these days is usually of lower quality than when played directly from MP3 using a pro or semi-pro soundcard in a PC. You may like to read a more elaborate discussion on this matter in Dutch, over here.
So; Compressed audio in the form of MP3 can very well be used 'professionally', as long as you use a high enough bitrate, like, for example VBR level 0, or CBR at 320 kbps, depending on your bandwidth or web/diskspace. At those levels even a computer will have a hard time showing differences between the original and the compressed version."

 

of course mp3 can "sound" to your ears like cd quality... to me 192kps is acceptable in mp3 format and anything lower than 128 i can hear the diff....

 

yup the human ears can't tell the difference between 192 CBR mp3 and source cd... I've done the tests with many different people... it's rather hilarious when they pick the mp3 over the source cd... oh well.

I still go with 192+ VBR... that way it only uses 320 if the song needs it.... no wasting space.

 

Maybe I should have clarified my statement to read:

"When listening to 99.9999999% of all MP3s out there....."

I'm not saying that an MP3 can't ever sound good, but the overwhelming majority of the mp3s being played on car stereos are 128kps and sound like sh*t. Compound that with the typical car audio environment, which is noisy, and well you see my point.

But, when I made my reply, I did however, miss your comment about using 192/320 mp3s.

I'm not up to date enough on mp3 technology to spark a debate over percieved differences in sound quality, but the fact remains that although you may be able to attain higher s/n ratios and dynamic range, you're still dealing with a lossy compression technology. When you compress that signal, you're losing signal data that can't be restored or recovered. How much compression it takes to become audible can be debated and isn't something I've experimented with anyway.

One thing I need to do a little homework on is just what gets done to the MP3 before it's passed through the DAC. My guess is that it gets down-converted to a 16 bit PCM signal before being sent to the DAC, and if that's the case, regardless of the mp3 recording method, you're going to lose that added dynamic range and s/n ratio, but still be stuck with the compression artifacts, however insignificant they may or may not be.

 

people really listen to 128kbps??? good ***!

when I first used mp3s, I had some 128s.. then I found out they can sound better... never again....

128 sounds like pure crap to me...

its gotta be 192vbr or higher.

 

I'd like to delve into the 'nuts and bolt' of the mp3 format as well. A lot of space can be saved over the CD audio track just by eliminating the EFM. CD audio tracks have info 'added' into them. They take an 8 bit serial data and 'expand' it to 14 bits. This is done to limit the length of space using consecutive 0s. Just makes sure that there is a 1 once an a while for optical pickup to 'see', it's needed for laser tracking. There must be something in the mp3 format to handle this as well.
But IF you could eliminate the EFM (Eight to Fourteen Modulation) and still have info of the pickup to track with, you'd be saving around 40% of the space right there.

 

I say we should just start a new format of disc audio... using ogg vorbis or some AAC or something... and have it recordedd straight to this format, instead of from CDA, then to the new compressed format.

 

If you're going to go that rout, F' the optical disk altogether, solid state man.........
BTW, some new HUs are MP3/WMA/ and AAC.

 

The only problem with "F'ing the optical disc" is nothing can compete with the massive storage ability!

Imagine a new deck that supported MP3/WMA/AAC/OGG and it used a BLU-RAY disc?? (I have read that bluray can support up to 150gb of data, theoretically--and at launch, they will have well over 50gb of data)

Blu-Ray/HDDVD will revolutionize the car audio market, with or without higher compression audio...

hell I'd like to see DVD audio tracks growing in popularity... (but I've never heard one before---unless you count movies)

hey Needaz, what units support AAC, I would seriously consider buying that... provided the other aspects are up to par.

 

Some of the newer Pioneer's support AAC. The DEH-P80 and I think the DEH-P7700 may also. And I should be happy with optical disks, job security. Optical pickups will fail and mechanisms will need to be repaired.....

 

I like solid-state as much as the next guy... the only problem is, with bluray coming out... the data/volume ratio is looking weak on flash... I know there are some new processes trying to increase this... but only time will tell.

 

i saw a 4GB flash thumb drive on alienware site

 

a 150GB blu-ray disc will cost $0.75 to make.... flash is still very expensive.

 

i only contributed that becasue ive never heard of blu ray.. i think itll be awsome

 

hell yeah it will be, I could have my entire collection on two or three discs! (in AAC format that is... mp3 would take up a few more)

 

if it werent for the price. and the method of moving my songs to it, id love a HDD headunit

 

yup I'm gonna have to make a carputer to solve my needs... even when bluray comes out