Best Components Under $800

[b5i8 0]

Who do you think makes the best component speakers for under $800 (maybe up to $1k if I have to) and where can you get them. I've been looking at making a set using CDT drivers which would be the ES-06 with the braxial tweet along with the upstage kit that has the DRT-26 tweet. I'm sure there must be many different brands to choose from but I haven't really been keeping up with car audio. Some brands I've also heard of and are considering are Focal, Hertz (no idea who sells these), Morel, and Boston Acoustics. I need a 6.5" set to go in the doors of my 350Z. I was planning on using Zed Audio's The Deuce (is this a good amp?) with BB upgrade to power the components. Also, does anyone know what a shop might charge to make partial custom door panel to accomodate these speakers? The factory grill is just horrible and I've been thinking about having a shop redo the bottom half of my door panel (I'm not going to do it myself). Of course I will also have the door's inner and outer skin sound deadened. Is Dynamat still the king of sound deadening? Things in the car audio world sure have changed in 10 years. That's probably how long it's been since I picked up a car audio magazine. By the way, these will be the only mids/highs in my car which is why I need such a good set. I already have the low end. I have a pair of TC Sounds OEM 10's and I'm planning on powering those with a Sundown SAZ-1500D.

Thanks in advance.

Edited June 18, 2007 by B5I8

[JimJ 11]

For that price, I wouldn't even bother with passives.

$800 would buy you the finest in individual drivers, you could just buy a four channel Zed amp (and yes, they are good ) and use an outboard crossover instead of passive networks.

Is Dynamat still the king of sound deadening?

Dynamat Extreme is a good product, but competitors like Second Skin and RAAMmat have opened up the market a lot...

[b5i8 0]

For that price, I wouldn't even bother with passives.

$800 would buy you the finest in individual drivers, you could just buy a four channel Zed amp (and yes, they are good ) and use an outboard crossover instead of passive networks.

Active systems sound very complicated and seem like they take a long time and a good ear to get it tweaked just right.

[JimJ 11]

To some degree, yes...but they're infinitely more adjustable to your individual setup needs.

With a passive set, if the chosen crossover point or slope isn't the best for your situation, well, you're SOL unless you can model up a new crossover design and rebuild it. Not exactly the quickest solution...

If you've got that kind of money to spend on a front stage, why not make the most of it

[b5i8 0]

To some degree, yes...but they're infinitely more adjustable to your individual setup needs.

With a passive set, if the chosen crossover point or slope isn't the best for your situation, well, you're SOL unless you can model up a new crossover design and rebuild it. Not exactly the quickest solution...

If you've got that kind of money to spend on a front stage, why not make the most of it

So what would be your recommendation? Since the Zed Audio Draconia is out of stock and will be for a while, go with a pair of Gladius's? I may even go with US Amps Merlin line, specifically the MD-42 and MD-2D although it would be more expensive. What drivers would you suggest? I'm just trying to get input for now as I won't be installing any of this until the beginning of August. As for passives, the CDT Audio ES-200US crossover has many adjustments that can be made.

[audio-neon 34]

My suggestion if you want to stay passive and a good amp to match your saz-1500d.

Go hertz space k6l components and the Saz-100.4. You will have two channels left over but that is for upgrading in the future. Or you could always get the smaller 100.2. *(I would stick with the 100.4 though in case you decide to go active where you need to bi-amp.

[b5i8 0]

My suggestion if you want to stay passive and a good amp to match your saz-1500d.

Go hertz space k6l components and the Saz-100.4. You will have two channels left over but that is for upgrading in the future. Or you could always get the smaller 100.2. *(I would stick with the 100.4 though in case you decide to go active where you need to bi-amp.

Where can you find Hertz here in the US? Are there any internet dealers? If I'm going with the Hertz line, I might as well go all out and get the MLK 2. What do you think about the US Amps AX-2000 and AX-TU600C? These seem like some very good amps with a damping factor of 1000 for the AX-2000 and 600 for the AX-TU600C. It seems the more and more I play with ideas the more and more I plan on spending. I started with a $6k budget total for a sound system then it moved up to $8k and now I'm considering up to $10k. So far I'm going with the following, Eclipse AVN-6610 head unit (I need the navigation), a pair of TC Sounds OEM 10's, a pair of good components up front in the doors, two good amps to power my subs and separates, a high output alternator (any recommendations, how many amps do I need and who should I get it from), a Kinetik HC1400 under the hood and either a HC2000 or HC2400 mounted somewhere hidden in my car, sound deadening for the entire cabin, if I missed anything or you have some suggestions I'm all ears.

[///M5 2,833]

What drivers would you suggest? I'm just trying to get input for now as I won't be installing any of this until the beginning of August. As for passives, the CDT Audio ES-200US crossover has many adjustments that can be made.

In your budget even with "adjustments" passives are a bit of a joke unless you have everything optimally setup in your car. Paying someone to do this could be a half order of magnitude greater than your speaker budget pretty easily. The truth of it is if you pay someone less than $500 for the installation of your front stage and buy $800 passives, a set of drivers that you spent $200 on and ran active could easily sound significantly better. Going with a 2 way it isn't all that difficult either.

[JimJ 11]

These seem like some very good amps with a damping factor of 1000 for the AX-2000 and 600 for the AX-TU600C.

Damping factor, especially with solid state amps, is an almost meaningless spec. The output impedance is low enough for it to not really matter.

[///M5 2,833]

With your budget you should really go the Alpine route and get an H701 as well.

[b5i8 0]

I guess active it is. Now that just opens up the door for a bunch more questions. First of all amps, what would you go with? Option A (cheapest option): Sundown SAZ-1500D for the subs and possibly a SAX-100.4 for the active setup. Option B (slightly more expensive): Sundown SAZ-1500D for the subs and a pair of Zed Audio Gladius for the active setup. Option C (most expensive): US Amps AX-2000 (Class A/B) for the subs and an AX-TU4360C for the active setup.

Second question. What components do you suggest I go with? I need to know brand, model, and where you can get them.

Third question. Do you have any shops you can recommend in the San Francisco Bay Area that can install all of this for me and tune it? I'll be moving to Fremont on August 2nd.

With your budget you should really go the Alpine route and get an H701 as well.

Why do you recommend I go with Alpine? I thought Eclipse made some very good head units.

Thank you all very much by the way. It seems I need to learn Car Audio all over again.

[Adrian_D 520]

Alpine makes very nice units.

on the amplifier part, i'd choose all sundown.

[vladd 26]

the h701 will have wayyyyy more flexibility

also there are tons of good amps out there, i wouldn't hesitate to run the sundown combo and wouldn't call it a cheap option either(takes away from the quality of the product). Should be a very fine setup.

[JimJ 11]

For the amps, I'd probably choose Option B...

As for the drivers themselves, I'd check out the driver reviews on http://www.zaphaudio.com. Most of them can be found at http://www.madisound.com.

[audio-neon 34]

Eclipse does make good head-units, but after 2005 they have gone more flashy and less sq oriented. If I started over again I would a pioneer navi piece, and get the apline h701 with the controller for processing. Than look for a set of dls, dynaudio etc... mid bass's, and some great tweets, and play around with time alignment and eq. Be sure to use an oscilloscope for setting your gains for ultimate sq, as well as using an rta and saving those settings somewhere if you plan on going to comps. I would do compression horns instead of tweets if it were me. Image dynamics cd1 pro's or cd2's if you have the money. Than for woofers I would put them in a large box (either sealed almost large enough to be considered infinite baffle, or ported to 22 hz or so.) or infinite baffle. You will easily spend close to a 1000 dollars on sound deadening. There are just so many options when you make the leap towards ultimate sq. To give you an example of a budget, my buddies expert Iasca car is ~ 16 grand not including any install costs at all.)

As for high output alternators, Dominic Irragi, or ohio gen which will be more expensive but they are probably the best at high output alts in a longevity point of view. *imo*

[b5i8 0]

the h701 will have wayyyyy more flexibility

also there are tons of good amps out there, i wouldn't hesitate to run the sundown combo and wouldn't call it a cheap option either(takes away from the quality of the product). Should be a very fine setup.

I did not mean to take away from the quality of Sundown. I meant it literally when I said cheap. The two Sundown amps would probably cost me under $1k while the US Amps pair would cost me $2.5k. Pretty big difference in price which is why I'm asking for opinions of which to go with. There is one big difference between the US Amps AX-2000 and the Sundown SAZ-1500D which is that the AX-2000 is a class A/B amp while the SAZ-1500D is class D.

Eclipse does make good head-units, but after 2005 they have gone more flashy and less sq oriented. If I started over again I would a pioneer navi piece, and get the apline h701 with the controller for processing. Than look for a set of dls, dynaudio etc... mid bass's, and some great tweets, and play around with time alignment and eq. Be sure to use an oscilloscope for setting your gains for ultimate sq, as well as using an rta and saving those settings somewhere if you plan on going to comps. I would do compression horns instead of tweets if it were me. Image dynamics cd1 pro's or cd2's if you have the money. Than for woofers I would put them in a large box (either sealed almost large enough to be considered infinite baffle, or ported to 22 hz or so.) or infinite baffle. You will easily spend close to a 1000 dollars on sound deadening. There are just so many options when you make the leap towards ultimate sq. To give you an example of a budget, my buddies expert Iasca car is ~ 16 grand not including any install costs at all.)

As for high output alternators, Dominic Irragi, or ohio gen which will be more expensive but they are probably the best at high output alts in a longevity point of view. *imo*

Image Dynamics HLCD's are completely out for me. They are just way to hard to mount and fit. I've heard of both DLS and Dynaudio but the latter uses such odd sizes. I've heard Rainbow Audio as well as SEAS drivers are excellent. Does anyone have any experience with either of these. I know for home audio the SEAS Excel line of drivers are simply amazing. I've seen them used in $100k home speakers so they must be phenomenal. I wonder if thes could be used in a car application and if they would sound good.

Edited June 19, 2007 by B5I8

[JimJ 11]

Sean (///M5) has plenty of experience with Seas products

I don't think you could go wrong with any of the choices in speakers you've mentioned...they'd all have the potential to sound phenomenal.

[b5i8 0]

About the crossover, so you have to run an electronic crossover or use the one built in on the amp right? How do you go about setting the frequency range for the midrange? The tweeter is simple as you probably want it to run from say 3.5KHz and up. The midrange is different as you want a LP setting of say 60hz and a HP setting of 3.5KHz. Do you need two crossovers just for the midrange to accomplish that?

[///M5 2,833]

Yes, together they are called a bandpass.

[vladd 26]

and most head units will do that, you won't need external crossovers or to use the amp's

[helotaxi 46]

and most head units will do that, you won't need external crossovers or to use the amp's

I wouldn't nearly say "most." "Some" or "a few" would be a fairer assessment.

[helotaxi 46]

There is one big difference between the US Amps AX-2000 and the Sundown SAZ-1500D which is that the AX-2000 is a class A/B amp while the SAZ-1500D is class D.

Why would you use the AX-2000? Why not go with one of the AX series Class D amps?

[b5i8 0]

Why would you use the AX-2000? Why not go with one of the AX series Class D amps?

Because the only Class D's in the AX line now are the AX-600DE and AX-3200DE both of which are not suitable for my application. I need between 1600-2000W of power.

[helotaxi 46]

Why would you use the AX-2000? Why not go with one of the AX series Class D amps?

Because the only Class D's in the AX line now are the AX-600DE and AX-3200DE both of which are not suitable for my application. I need between 1600-2000W of power.

IN that case I think that I would look elsewhere. You really don't want to try to run that kind of A/B power, especially at that price. $2.5k for amps and then another $500+ to beef up your electrical to run it. Not my idea of an efficient use of funds.

[b5i8 0]

IN that case I think that I would look elsewhere. You really don't want to try to run that kind of A/B power, especially at that price. $2.5k for amps and then another $500+ to beef up your electrical to run it. Not my idea of an efficient use of funds.

Regardless of what amps I get I was going to "beef up" the electrical on my car anyway. I'm one of those that firmly believe in building a solid platform to work on in whatever you do. A weak electrical system makes for a weak sound system in my book. The first thing I'd do to any car is to sound deaden the entire car and to change out the alternator and batteries. I look at it as if I run a solid electrical system and the whole car has been treated for sound, I can put in a mediocre sound system and it would still sound pretty good whereas if I had a crap electrical with no sound deadening and a totally killer sound system setup in the car, it would sound pretty awful. This is probably the reason why my budget keeps going up and up and up because I really don't want to skimp on any piece of equipment going in my car.