[firefish]

For some time now I have been looking for a replacement for my trusty ol' Blaupunkt New York. The New York was truly spitzen klass back in the day but 2010 it feels old. Vintage yes, but nonetheless old.

My CS is not a race car per se since I don't race it. Most of the mods however are focused on racing and that includes keeping the weight down. Also, losing weight and rubber means adding noise. I'm not saying my car is painfully loud but it is far from quiet.

I only have a 34 amp battery so class A amplifiers, heavy cables and the like was not an option.

Given the above I have been looking for a solution that is 2010, has low weight and great sound with the ability to punch through the background noise.

So yesterday I find this: http://www.alpine-usa.com/product/view/ida-x305s/ that with the addition of: http://www.alpine-usa.com/product/view/ktp-445/

The total weight of this package is about 2 kg which is less than what the New York weighs. With the amp it produces about 4x45 W RMS which should be able to provide me with the needed punch. Perhaps I'll fit some 6,5" in the back (will an 8" go in there?) and keep the stock 4x6 up front. This head unit has no CD but you could use either a USB memory stick or, as I will do, the iPod/iPhone that the unit is specifically designed to operate with. The unit is using its own 24 bit Burr Brown decoder rather than the iPhones so I'll still get the great Alpine sound, depending only on the quality of music stored in the iPod. I'm not sure if it is able to deal with all formats (like Apples lossless) but if I have to I'll use .wav. I will not however use mp3.

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[rhudeboye]

Coupes tend to be pretty noisy from the start (that big hatch area bouncing all the road noise around). Start striping things off the car and I can imagine how that would increase.

I was happy with my Alpine until I installed my Pioneer Avic. I couldn't believe that the sound quality was so superior to my old Alpine. With windows down, at moderate speeds, I can hear even the subtle instruments clearly. It's pretty impressive. Not to mention Im still using my stock speakers. The unit your looking into is a newer model then my old Alpine so its not apples to apples. but I would recommend that you listen to each of them and compare the ease of use and options and sound quality.

PS I don't think you'll miss the CD. I have a CD drive and never use it. I only access my Ipod the radio and the USB for borrowed songs on the fly.

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[flash]

weight is a huge consideration to some of us - i went back and forth on this one, wanting to keep the weight down, but wanting the sound i knew i needed to keep me happy

in the end i had to consider what the car was intended for, and i caved in to the sound system - i just had to let go of the idea of seeking out the ultimate performance (vis a vis yanking all the weight) out of a car that was purchased with the intention of weekend wine trips

now that i have the SC, the weight is not nearly as much of an issue - that being said, i am still looking at yanking a few more pounds out of the system with newer lighter amplifiers, and changing the baffle material to something lighter - i'll change the drivers too if i find something i like that is lighter

as to head units, i have never been particularly impressed with alpine - some of them are ok, but the eq sections always seem to lack control - the pioneers, while perhaps not as well received by the audiophiles, seem to do a better job of providing bang for the buck performance, and i have not noticed them to be lacking in audio quality

i am not particularly impressed with the jvc units i have had, including the one i have now - lots of features, but i am still trying to nail the tuning, even with the 3sixty2 - it might not be the head unit though - i may be fighting the front speakers, and more the point that they are only 2, where they should probably be 3, and not placed as well as they could be

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[firefish]

What appealed to me here was the ability to upgrade the unit, like with the power pack that gives me total hazzle free 4x45W RMS without having to mess with (heavy) cables. The unit in itself lack some tweakability but that's upgradeable too (kinda like the Pioneer black box). If I need it, I'll get it but I'd rather not paying for something I will not need/use.

What I don't like so much is the looks (at least I think so). As far as appearance goes I'd rather have a Pioneer P88 or P99. Or, if I where to keep the CD and mo was no object, the Nakamichi 700 II.

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[flash]

choosing a deck these days is hard - i love the fact that all my decks have hard drives in them - they don't do that anymore - many are deleting the CD - now you have to have an ipod - while i have the module for all of them, i don't want to be required to drag that thing around - i hate gadgets and junk floating around the car, let alone the time to load it, or having to remember to bring it, or charge it.........

with 3 cars, it really gets complicated

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[firefish]

Lol - agreed on the gadgets. But I have an iPhone so it's always with me anyway. And better to carry the iPhone between cars than a stack of cd's. And hard drives needs to be loaded too [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif[/img]

Oh, the Alpine charges the iPhone/iPod when connected. Unless you run via bluetooth that is.

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[flash]

yes, but since the music needs to be loaded from disk into the computer first and then processed to a decent file format (so as to avoid the 128k thing, or what's the point of a decent system?), i then burn to cd and load in - i only have to burn one set, and then load them into each deck

then i just have more stuff on my iphone and connect via the ipod adaptor (using the pin moving adaptor of course)

so, no needing the ipod for the cars at all, and no worries about which car to put it in (hers, mine, or the big one) yada yada

i've gone through this before too - in the mgb i went from a 5 amp 10 speaker system to nothing at all so as to save weight

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[firefish]

I use Mac all the way so I simply slide in the cd and press the button and iTunes does the rest. The iPhone and MacBook sync both fast and easy. The downside with the Alpine/iPod arrangement is that I seem to be limited to run compressed music. I'm using AAC format at the highest bit rate, 320, so I will probably not notice any degradation in sound quality, not in the car I mean. 320 AAC is equivalent to 640 mp3 (were it possible).
If this doesn't work well I might consider using a separate hard drive with .wav or .wma format music instead. I wonder how much a 1 TB SSD costs?

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[flash]

at 320 AAC you will not notice any degradation

i am also on a mac, so yes, simple enough, assuming you make the time to do it, which has been my problem - i have had an ipod for over a year and not yet found the time to put a single song on it

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[firefish]

I put a couple of songs in the iPhone today. 1400 songs at an average of about 10 Mb each (320 AAC) transferred in less than 10 minutes - pretty fast.

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