Hello folks. Just got an 03 TL-S, and have read lots of great info on this site for my stereo plans.

When that after market HU kit becomes available, I'm planning on buying either a Pioneer or Alpine mp3 playing unit.

The P is 94dB and the Alpine is 104dB. I'd like to hear your oppinions on both brands. I have used Pioneer for years but have never tried the Alpines.

What do you all think?

 

alpine no question...

 

Another vote for Alpine all the way.

 

Two votes for Alpine, but why? Why are they better that other brands, like Pioneer?

 

This is just my personal opinion. I have always been an Alpine fan. Other than the elite brands of head units, Eclipse, Denon, Nakamichi, I feel Alpine is a cut above everyone else when it comes to sound and build quality. Kenwood Exceleon is right up there with them. I would put Kenwood, Sony, Pioneer, Panasonic and JVC just a step behind. Now, all of these make some awesome decks at their top end. Again, this is just my opinion. I have and will always be a big fan of Alpine.

 

like acurax2 i am a huge alpine fan but if i had the money i would definately go with eclipse... but as far as pioneer or alpine.. it has been my experience that the alpine units are built better and have far better sound quality...

 

First of all, Nakamichi makes a better deck than Alpine. Except the F1. If you want to drop 4 g's for it, be my guest. ; ) . As far as Pioneer is concerned, well, it's actually alot better than most people who don't know what they're talking about think. I have a Pioneer in my Jeep. Disreguarding the simple fact that Alpine has a big name, the Pioneer is just as good. As far as sound quality, I don't think Alpine compares to Pioneer. My Alpine 7893 has no mid-bass tuner, as well as nothing as far as tweaking the sound as much as my Pioneer does. I've heard that the new 9815 has a midrange tweeker on it, but I havn't seen it yet. The Poineer was an awesome deck. The Alpine would work better for you if you are adding things like an EQ, and all other component stereo equipment like that. If you're just doing speakers and subs, go with the Pioneer, it'll sound better, and last you alot longer.


-Paul-

 

I've had the Pioneer Premier DEH-940MP for about a year now. I highly recommend it. The specs are very good on it (6volt preouts are nice to have btw) its loaded with useful features, its got built in DSP which works very well in creating a center soundfield (remember you dont sit in the middle of all 4 speakers in your car, and so the DSP digitally time delays the sound from the speakers you are closest to, thereby making it seem that you are in the middle). The Premier line of Pioneer has a 2 year warranty btw. Lastly, its got a real clean look to it. I dont particularly care for a head unit that has dozens of irregular shaped buttons of assorted colors. The DEH-940MP has an organic liquid crystal display and nice bright blue lighting around the buttons. All in all, i think it was a phenominal value for the $550 i paid for it on eBay. I bought it from a seller there called bumper2bumper7 and i have since gotten alot of audio from him so i can vouche for him selling only brand new non refurb stuff.

Incidentally, my comments about aesthetics are not the only reason why i recommend the deck, but it is something you should consider. You will have to like the way the head looks in the dash, and while that is totally subjective, i personally think the Premier unit looks like it always belonged in the dash. I have a post from a few weeks back that shows my install in case you want to see what it will look like. I made a custom flush mount kit with matching burlwood trim. here is the Linky here, just scroll down abut halfway through the thread to see my install Premier DEH-940

 

i would go with alpine. I tryed lots of unit and when i got the alpine unit it seems like alpine has lots of power in their units and sounds great.

 

Thank you all so much for all the responses. Guess I have a desision to make. I like how the DEH-940 looks in 2002acuraTL's car, looks classy and not too busy.

This forums ROCKS! I think I've spent more time reading the treads here than I have in my new TL-S!

 

for sure Alpine....thats there only business (car audio) so I'm sure there good at it!!!!


O

 

look at the specs and its Alpine all the way. I was lookin at the 9815 and the pio DEH9400 and the alpine had the better features. The close competitors to Alpine are Kenwood and Clarion I believe.

 

i have the pioneer premier DEH-P840mp.... i love it..... it has great looks, built in EQ, plays mp3's and wma's and full of different screensavers and displays..... and the controls, i find to be easier than the alpines......

 

the only issue I have with pioneers is the low signal to noise ratio. Except for the top of the line premier unit, the rest seem to be all victim to it. It brings in hiss after you build a system with amps and good speakers. Other than that, pound for pound, I find the pioneers to be usually more feature packed than other head units for less price. However, this might be the very reason why they have lower s/n ratios. As the manufacturers would want us to believe, higher s/n ratio require more expensive components hence a higher price. I think its just another way to make us part with our money The fringe benefit of a pioneer is that historically, they read the most different kinds of CD-Rs -- for those of you who burn your own CDs.. My original pioneer shocked me when it picked up CD-RWs when it never even advertised it and no one was advertising that bit. Now, every 2bit player seems to handle "CD-RWs" but I figure that has to say something for pioneer's "compatibility" with everything you throw at it.

as for the digital processing on that pioneer to delay the speakers so that you get the feeling that you're sitting in the middle of the soundstage that 2002acuraTL mentioned , alpine has it too .. if not the first to have it. I remember reading about it quite a while back.

I agree with touringluxury99 in that the pioneer is the better setup if you're not building a system because if thats the case, you're probably not a careful enough listener to discern hiss in your music and it'll be the more feature rich way to go. I've seen people build insanely beautiful pioneer based systems too but then again, they're using pioneer premier head units. However, disagree that the alpine's SQ is not as good as the pioneer. I believe that he's confusing 'features' with SQ. Just because you have a built in EQ does not mean its a 'better' sound quality head unit. It just means you have more flexibility. If you have a hiss in your music, an EQ will do nothing to get rid of it .. maybe lessen.. but it wont get rid of it.

but then again .. who am I to talk .. I listen to mp3s .. which, according to the car audio purists .. is a noisy and lossy form of compression. I guess I'm not careful enough to hear the issues of properly encoded mp3s. anyway, that's another discussion.

Unfortunately, I don't have an alpine to make my recommendations on. I 'want' one but right now I have a Kenwood Excelon and that's doing me pretty good so I'll stick with it for a while. If I build another system, I'll probably go with alpine but for all my friends and family who are not as serious as I am, I recommend them the pioneer so that they can save a couple bucks. dang .. I'm turning into Southbound. writing a lot when I didn't mean to in the first place.. .. good luck on your purchase, leijie

 

There's no hiss from my Premier DEH940MP. Zero. And i use balanced twisted pair interconnects so there's no engine noise either. The head's got 6 volt outputs (the pioneer version called the DEH9400 looks identical but only has 4 volt outputs and a one year warranty (the Premier warranty is 2 years). With that amount of signal going out, I have my Soundstream amps inputs backed way down to less than 1/3. The 940 also has a 13 band adjustable EQ and a build in spectrum analyzer that will build the best curve in about 4 min time with the supplied mic.

As for DSP, I used to have Sony Mobile ES way back in 1995 (when the ES line meant high-end, with copper chasis and Burr-Brown not like that garbage X-Plod crap they sell nowadays). I find the DSP on the 940 to be as good as it was on my Sony ES CDX900 and UPD50 DSP module. Having always used DSP, i cant imagine anyone living without it.
Audio Control used to make the Epicenter which required a dedicated amp and installing a center channel speaker in the dash (using an air vent to mount the speaker was the only option for alot of cars.) Boy have times changed and things gotten easier to accomplish for less than 25% of the price. Incidently. I was a pro installer for 15 years before retiring in the early 1990s.

 

Eclipse are horrible HU's in my opinion. I had the 5303 when it first came out and was all good until winter. The friggin radio had to warm up for 15-20 minutes so it wouldn't skip everytime my subs hit. very annoying. It skipped very easily in the summer too on bumps. Had it serviced 4 x by Eclipse and all four times it came back the exact same thing.

Clarion on the other hand a much tougher built HU in my opinion. My DRX9575Rz hardly ever skipped and had excellent sound quality. I did not have any issues with it for over three and a half years. Just recently some flakey stuff started happening. But I'm still impressed that radio put out many hours of work, I was driving almost 100k miles in 2 years while commuting to school and work.

I'm considering going Alpine since everyone here seems to speak so highly of them. I never liked the look of them with there green button but I think they have come a long way in appearence.

Kenwood I have heard pickup a lot of engine noise I'm not sure if its coincidental to poor installs or not though. My friend had is Kenwood indash dvd player installed professionaly by Curry Audio and I about died when I heard all the noise.

I had an issue with my old Sony HU blowing the speaker level outputs but has been a real long time since I have everused anything but preamps so am not sure how they are now.

 

I would have to disagree here. I think Eclipse are some of the best built and best sounding units there are. I have had Eclipse for several years and would not have anything else for the high end. Not alot of bells and whistles but, awesome sound.

 

Do you have cold winters less than 30 degrees with subs and bumpy roads.? New England roads are very bumpy due to the frost heeves and plow damage how are the roads in Oklahoma? The sound quality was no doubt excellent but in my case was definielty not worth the collateral aggrevations. In the same environment the Clarion has surpassed the Eclipse. I could count on one hand how many times both my Clarions have skipped in 4 years. The sound is also excellent, with a few but not many bells and whistles. A friend of mine also had the same problems with his Eclipse which he rightfully dubbed "skipomatic"

 

Are winters are not quite as cold as yours but, we get into the 10's and even single digits quite a lot. The roads just plain suck. I will have to admit though, I have only had an Indash screen with a CD changer. The changer never skips. I can hit on the changer and it will not skip. I have not had an indash CD player so, with that, I could not say. I am only basing my opinion on my setup, which it just top notch in my opinion. I have almost the same setup in my MDX only with Alpine screen and changer and the Eclipse picture and sound quality is just better.

 

You know what? It's all about what you like. What sounds good to you?

I have loved Pioneer gear for quite some time. However, I have decided to replace my HU with an Alpine and combine it with an Alpine EQ.

YMMV, but I don't think you can go wrong with Alpine.

I've got an Alpine HU, EQ, and six disc MP3 changer.

You asked a simple question and received our simple responses.

IMHO, Alpine is better than Pioneer.

I loved my Pioneer Premeir comps and 6x8s in my previous ride, but I don't think they will compare to the system I'm putting into my TLS.

Again, YMMV. You have to decide what works for you!

Cheers.

 

Eclipse sound is awesome even their speakers sound very good ( I have two Eclipse Subs and wouldn't give them up for anything except maybe the Titanium ones) Side form the subs I put average Eclipse coaxs in my ex's car a long time ago and they sounded great. I just wish I hadn't had such a bad experience with them and their HU's. I am seriously considering going Alpine though. I have not yet heard anything bad around here about them. I hate switching from what I know to be good but I would hate to be missing out on something nicer.

 

I've had experience with Alpine and Pioneer. Alpine all the way. It by far has better SQ and a higher Signal-to-noise ratio.