Blaupunkt car audio opinions?

[05LGTLtd]

Have been looking at upgrading the head unit and components in the 986. Something feels right about going with blaupunkt, even though they are all made in RoC now. I replaced the dash speakers with the 4" blue magic blaupunkt speakers last spring.

I have the stock Porsche head unit now, and if I replace the door speakers, I either need to get a code to turn the stock unit back on after disconnecting the power or just put a better head unit in altogether. Looking at blaupunkt San Fransico and upgrading door speakers to 5.25 components. Would be losing the stock amp and either running off the head unit for now or adding a four channel amp if funds allow. The blaupunkt unit looks doesn't look bad, although there are several good choices in the ~$120 range.

I'm hoping that with component speakers in the doors, I can avoid adding the rear deck speakers. I don't think I need a dedicated sub. I've looked at a few powered under the seat jobs and if going that route, I'm going to have to look at more creative wiring/distribution or another head unit with more than four channels out. Going all the way with dash/doors/rears/sub would mean complicating things quite abit and increasing cost accordingly.

I don't think my door speakers are doing anything right now. So getting a full range from doors, with tweeter up higher than with a two or three way speaker would do should help round things out I hope. I don't need thumping bass that rattles the car. But do want to enjoy some full range quality sound. Before the replacement of the dash speakers, you could barely recognize what song was playing. It's much better now, but it is still two small speakers that are under the windshield at this point.

Thoughts, suggestions, Comments?

 

[Spazdog]

Alpine seems to be the more popular choice among Porschephiles.

I was pleased with the Blaupunkt stereo cassette player and CD changer in the trunk of my Spitfire. Had two surface mount speakers mounted at either end of the dash and two 6.5s in the cardboard bulkhead between the interior compartment and fuel tank. Good sound quality. Stereo was durable too.

Button and controlwise, it would have been a better match for a BMW than my '74 Triumph but I really didn't want a slide rule tuned radio.

 

[JHZR2]

Aftermarket stuff never looks right, IMO. Id send it back to Becker (Im assuming that they made the head unit) for a refurbishment and addition of an Aux-in for your phone or MP3 player. Then get a good four channel line level amp, upgraded speakers (think you already did this) and enjoy.

IMO.

 

[SuzukiGoat]

Get a jvc full touch screen that is double din. Then components on each corner.

The stationary full screen blends in slightly better than a normal unit and is much nicer.

Skip the blaupunkt....MB quart, focal, or at the very least Alpine. No point in spending money on stuff that isn't much better than stock.

 

[HTSS_TR]

I agree that most aftermarket head units don't look right in a classic dash, may be the exception is Nakamichi. I have Nakamichi in my S2000, it looks almost the same as OEM without flashy digital display.

 

[Jimmy9190]

Blaupunkt was OE in the European cars back in the day. VW, Porsche, Audi, BMW all had Blaupunkt decks and speakers. The exception was Benz, their sound systems were from Becker back then. Personally I never cared for it much, Blaupunkt was too difficult to operate and understand the controls. I will say the Becker and Blaupunkt decks were absolutely bullet proof. They were built to last but they were all built in Germany back then and they would last forever. Years ago Blaupunkt made speakers that had a blue dot on the magnet. They were excellent quality, made for German cars and had a lifetime warranty. Blaupunkt held up to their end of the lifetime warranty but if you returned one for warranty exchange, it had better have the blue dot on it. "Blaupunkt" in German actually translates to "Blue Dot".

A modern Blaupunkt deck would probably still be right at home in a Porsche. Probably would still sound good too. Personally I prefer Pioneer. I bought a Pioneer DEH5600HD deck for my truck a couple months ago. It only cost me $71.00, I got it at AAP with a $40.00 discount code. It is one of the very best sounding decks I have ever heard, and I have pretty much heard them all. It's easy to operate, has a ton of good useable features, the sound quality is just phenomenal and it looks good too. I have the deck and 2 pairs of Pioneer TSG-1644 6 1/2" coaxials and one lone set of Alpine tweeters from my old system and could not be happier if I tried. I guess I finally outgrew the slammin' system with a separate amp, sub, deck and equalizer. I sold most of my old system on Ebay. This new Pioneer system is all I will ever need. It sounds great, has a boatload of output power, it is very reliable and I got the rear seat space back that had been taken up by my old sub enclosure and amp rack.

I like Pioneer. I am sure the modern Blaupunkt would do just as well.

 

[HyundaiGuy]

The Pioneer DEH-80PRS looks like a heck of a unit for $250 at Amazon. I'm putting one in my Fiat shortly. Check it out.

I just put a pair of Image Dynamics components up front ($159) and a pair of their coax speakers in the rear ($109) and recommend them highly. I do have to warn you that you are on a slippery slope- what started for me as a speaker upgrade will turn into a full system upgrade.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: Jimmy9190
Blaupunkt was OE in the European cars back in the day. VW, Porsche, Audi, BMW all had Blaupunkt decks and speakers. The exception was Benz, their sound systems were from Becker back then. Personally I never cared for it much, Blaupunkt was too difficult to operate and understand the controls. I will say the Becker and Blaupunkt decks were absolutely bullet proof. They were built to last but they were all built in Germany back then and they would last forever. Years ago Blaupunkt made speakers that had a blue dot on the magnet. They were excellent quality, made for German cars and had a lifetime warranty. Blaupunkt held up to their end of the lifetime warranty but if you returned one for warranty exchange, it had better have the blue dot on it. "Blaupunkt" in German actually translates to "Blue Dot".

A modern Blaupunkt deck would probably still be right at home in a Porsche. Probably would still sound good too. Personally I prefer Pioneer. I bought a Pioneer DEH5600HD deck for my truck a couple months ago. It only cost me $71.00, I got it at AAP with a $40.00 discount code. It is one of the very best sounding decks I have ever heard, and I have pretty much heard them all. It's easy to operate, has a ton of good useable features, the sound quality is just phenomenal and it looks good too. I have the deck and 2 pairs of Pioneer TSG-1644 6 1/2" coaxials and one lone set of Alpine tweeters from my old system and could not be happier if I tried. I guess I finally outgrew the slammin' system with a separate amp, sub, deck and equalizer. I sold most of my old system on Ebay. This new Pioneer system is all I will ever need. It sounds great, has a boatload of output power, it is very reliable and I got the rear seat space back that had been taken up by my old sub enclosure and amp rack.

I like Pioneer. I am sure the modern Blaupunkt would do just as well.


Becker was used in many others, including Porsche. Ive also seen OE items from Alpine and Pioneer in BMW and other makes.

 

[05LGTLtd]

Thanks for all the comments.

I had a pioneer receiver in the Miata. It was an entry level and this was a few years ago. It was OK, I've always found aftermarket HU controls clunky. I am concerned about 'blending in' to the dash, and like the Blaupunkt because it has pretty clean lines. (I don't really want a dancing light show on my dash, lol.)

I looked at a few alpine units last night, and they quickly get out of my project budget. I'm sure they are nice units, but I don't wan to drop too much on a HU for a convertible: theft risk mitigation.

I'm going to keep looking, but here are some criteria:

4-6 channel pre-amp outs, Blue display capability, Clean faceplate lines, would prefer 4v outputs, single din, $100-150 price range.

 

[Win]

Originally Posted By: Jimmy9190
Blaupunkt was OE in the European cars back in the day.


Both of my Holdens (Pontiacs) have (had) OEM Blaupunkt head units, so they are still in the OEM market.

 

[dareo]

JBL Power components are great for the money, P560C or P660c if you can plus size it to 6.5"

Their new MS Components are quite good too, but lower power handling. Many say they are slightly more detailed than the Power series but not quite as loud.

If you don't want to deal with placing tweeters and crossovers, they come in a coaxials as well, for less money too.

I've always loved every JBL speaker i have owned, home and car.

 

[05LGTLtd]

There was a factory option to add speakers to the corners of the rear deck corners in the 986. You can put two 3.5" speakers in each corner and keep the middle sliding door storage, for all that is worth.

I was thinking if I got component speakers for the doors that running the tweater back to the rear deck with one 3.5" speaker on each side, with a 5.25-6.5" component in the stock door location. Going to 6.5" requires some hacking. Of course adding the rear deck speakers means fabricating some mounts too. I'd then need some kind of three way crossover to run low/mid/high and have a run from the door back to the rear deck to power the Mid/high... Alt is to cut the door to mount component tweeter and then run a third channel to rear deck. Not sure how that works, since most 6 channel receivers are set up for two sets of speakers and subs. Slippery slope indeed...

Simplest answer is to put 5.25 2 or 3way speakers in the doors, new receiver and amp.

 

[Spazdog]

Originally Posted By: Jimmy9190
Blaupunkt was OE in the European cars back in the day. VW, Porsche, Audi, BMW all had Blaupunkt decks and speakers. The exception was Benz, their sound systems were from Becker back then.


Volkswagen used Sapphire radios by Bendix or Motorola. Maybe later but my Beetle and Super Beetle and our MKI Rabbit had various Sapphire radios.

 

[Jimmy9190]

When I say back in the day I mean early 1980's. I did not mean that every German car had a Blaupunkt radio. It was just mostly a generalization. In the 80's and 90's that was about all I saw for OE in most Euro cars though. I do remember seeing some Sapphire radios in VW's. In the 80's VW used Panasonic too. The majority of Benzes I got hold of had Becker radios. Now that I have been corrected several times here I will rephrase and say that "back in the 1980's and 1990's when I was a professional car audio installer, a lot of the German cars I installed sound systems in had Blaupunkt radios from the factory."

 

[05LGTLtd]

I like the clean lines of the blaupunkt head units. It seems all the offerings from Pioneer, JVC, Kenwood, etc are too "edgy" and have way too bright displays to blend in half decent.

I keep looking at options, but have not settled on anything yet. The number of options/combinations out there is quite staggering.

 

[Jimmy9190]

Not to harp on it but my Pioneer has over 20,000 lighting color options. You can make it match pretty much any dash light color. You can also have one color for the buttons and volume knob and set another color for the display. I dialed mine in to a perfect match of the blue-green lights in my dash. At night I like to set the color of both the display and buttons all to that blue-green color. During the day I set the display to white. That makes it easier to see the display in sunlight when I am wearing sunglasses. There is a custom illumination control that switches back and forth from the white to blue-green display. The deck remembers the blue-green setting I selected and it is very easy to change the colors, just have to press the volume knob/function selector a couple of times. Another nice feature is the deck has adjustable brightness for the illumination. There are 5 different levels of brightness you can pick from to have it as bright or dim as you want.

My Pioneer has a nice big display, is easy to see and the buttons are not too small. It is one of the cleanest and most attractive decks I have seen in a very long time. Here is a link for it if you care to see what I mean:

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Car/CD-Receivers/DEH-X5600HD

It does have the disco light Mix Trax feature. I have never used it and don't see any need to use it. I guess it is a cool feature to appeal to younger people but I have never been a fan of disco lights or dancing dolphins on a car radio. I used Alpine decks for many years. I think Alpine decks today are cluttered enough to border on being downright ugly. I also think Alpine has gotten too big for its britches feature-wise. The more I listen to my new Pioneer the more I like it. The sound quality is astounding and the deck is super easy to use and control while driving. Excellent quality and I only paid $71.00 for it. Back when I was in the car audio business a deck like the Pioneer 5600HD would have easily cost $300.00 or more. And it would not have had near the same sound quality or features for the price.

 

[05LGTLtd]

The X5600hd doesn't look that bad, esp compared to some others. I was also considering the Pioneer X7500HD, which has six pre-amp outs. The face plate is not quite as clean as the X5600hd, unfortunately.

 

[Jimmy9190]

Originally Posted By: 05LGTLtd
The X5600hd doesn't look that bad, esp compared to some others. I was also considering the Pioneer X7500HD, which has six pre-amp outs. The face plate is not quite as clean as the X5600hd, unfortunately.


Unless it is critical to have a fully functional front to rear fader you can just use the front preouts for all of the mids and highs and wire the amp's speaker outputs in parallel stereo for each side of the car. You could also use RCA Y-adapters if you are using a 4 channel amp for mids and highs, instead of wiring the speakers together in parallel for left and right stereo you can split the front RCA outs from 2 to 4 with Y-adapters and wire the amp's speaker outputs as you normally would for front and rear, left and right. The sound for the mids and highs would be dead center and sound the same either way but if the amp has separate front and rear gain adjustments you could adjust the gains for more or less volume from front and/or rear if needed. Then just use the deck's sub outputs for your sub amp channels.

Personally I don't think I will ever need it but you can even bridge the rear speaker outputs on the 5600HD to drive a small subwoofer. The deck will put out about 70 watts for a direct-wired sub and it has all the low pass crossover features and adjustments for crossover frequency, slope and sub level built in. The deck has built-in high pass crossovers as well. I don't see a need for a separate sub now. The bass response from my 4 full range Pioneer TSG-1644 6 1/2's is more than enough. The 5600 and the other Pioneer decks all have the same audio outputs. They have a built in adjustable 5 band equalizer instead of plain bass and treble controls. There is a 3 level loudness contour and 5 separate levels of bass boost. The sound quality is perfect once I got it all dialed in the way I wanted it. I can not believe the bass response I get from 4 cheap 6 1/2" coaxials. I also bought my speakers at Advance, regular price was $49.99, I used two separate discount codes for $20.00 off a $50.00 purchase, did two separate transactions, threw in a bottle of windshield washer fluid or some other cheap item to bring each total transaction over $50.00 so the speakers only cost me $30.00 per pair. The TSG-1644 is a good sounding speaker, it has a nice fat sound to it, good bass response and clear crisp highs. It's not like Focal or Image Dynamics but it still gets good reviews on Crutchfield and Sonic Electronix' web sites.

The MOSFET speaker outputs from the 5600 have plenty of good useable volume. It is very clean with little to no distortion. It sounds good even with low-quality 128 mbps MP3's. I was floored by how loud the deck will play. There is also a Source Level Adjustment that lets you set a specific volume level for the different sources, CD, Ipod/USB, Tuner etc. It is intended to set a pre-determined volume for each source so when you change sources the sound level is not blasting loud. I use the SLA as kind of a preamp level to help control the volume. I mostly listen to MP3's on a 32GB micro flash drive, and some MP3's are recorded louder than others. SLA helps restore volume to lower level MP3's. There are computer programs to normalize the volume level on the entire flash drive but I have been too lazy to look into it.

If I had to find something I do not like about my 5600HD it is that the display can wash out if you look at it straight on in direct sunlight while wearing polarized sunglasses. That is not the deck's fault, but it could be a factor in a convertible if you use polarized driving glasses or polarized sunglasses with the top down. It has not been a problem for me, my deck is in the center of the dash and I see it by looking to my right. Only a time or two in very bright sunlight has it been hard to see the display and in that case all I needed to do was take my polarized sunglass clip off of my eyeglasses and I could see the display perfectly fine. I am trying to find a non-polarized clip, so far no such luck.

 

[nleksan]

I have this Pioneer AVIC in my E46 M3 http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Car/GPS-Navigation/AVIC-Z150BH

And before I went to a car-puter/audio hybrid in my 328Ci, I had an AVIC from 07 and then upgraded to the newest in 11. Both were flawless, but I hated knowing that I could fit a 9.2" 1080p touchscreen while having a 7", so I went car-puter (all solid state, very light weight with the OS on a Samsung 830 256GB, and I have 4xUSB3.0 + 8x 2.0 in the glovebox, and routed a cable under the center console and have a hidden (but accessible) 4xUSB3.0 + 2x SD below the armrest.

I had not planned on spending that much, but the lack of ability to make any single DIN unit look remotely good coupled with the extensive capabilities of the Pioneer, such as integration with my Android phone and wireless syncing of my media library (and playback), option to use either the Pioneer GPS or my phone GPS, and live (updated every 10-15s) traffic, well, it is heaven for a tech junkie like me.

I just think single DIN head units almost universally look like eye rape, and are designed to appeal exclusively to brain damaged ricer/stance/etc driving teenagers. Why they can't make a classy, edge to edge glass covered Black unit w proximity controls, I don't understand?