Originally Posted By: meep
my fav combo was in an old grand chero. $100 pioneer and a set of polk 2 way 6.5's. The best combo I'd ever heard. I've used sony, kenwood, blaupunkt, JVC separates, been all over the map. Pioneer 2-way and polk 2-way speakers are the cleanest, smoothest sound I have heard at a reasonable price. the pricier stuff can have better numbers, but also becomes more picky and sometimes too edgy, or reveals too many flaws in other system components. I have personally had high-end tweeters that produced so much upper-end frequencies that harmonic distortion from the amps themselves from digital recordings became a real distraction, and took even more processing to clean up. Blaupunkt and kenwood amps seemed to churn out a lot of high-freq noise. the pioneers sounded very smooth by comparison.
I've had sony gear and found it sounded safe, if not slightly bland, though indestructible, including a HU in a car I submerged by accident and lasted for another 6+ years before I sold the car.
bottom line: you can assemble a very nice sound system if you carefully choose mid-range (not sparkomatic) parts. High-end components often requires more work and more high-end components to match!
M
I'm gonna check my rear deck but I'm not holding my breath. I'm going to get my dad new sound stuff for the jeep for fathers day. If you've ever heard the stock speakers in a wrangler, you will understand. 4" front, 5.25" sound bar. They are horrible. Can't decide if I want to do more Polk, or go with some Kickers for him. I'm gonna give him the Kenwood deck I had with my cavalier.