There are so many different styles and tastes of everyone that i would like to ask what would be your dream system if cost was no object and you could pick anything. How would you setup your car if given one chance to do it all with no reserves and could pick your favorite gear. what would it be?

for me it would be:

Head Unit: eclipse or a top of the line blaupunkt (eclipse has much better skip protection). chosen for impressive sound and ability to tailor accurate changes.

Amps: i'm torn between tubedriver, mac, or us amps.

Mids: without question USD all the way.

Subs: Servodrive !!!

Processing Audio Control has never let me down.

Wire pure stranded silver all the way through.

Solder Wondersolder (if you don't know what this is, your missing out)

Batteries US Amps SPL (i love any battery that can do 2000 amps continuously)

 

I am for the clean/simple look.

Head Unit: Stock

Speakers: A/D/S all hidden under the stock grills.

Amp: Probably a Rockford, tied into the stock head unit.

I don't get to caught up in the high end electrical (amps/head units) part ,as I feel once you get to a certain level of gear (i.e. above a Sony haha) you need a computer to tell the difference. I am a firm believer that the speakers make all the difference in the world. In my home theater system, used a good 6.1 channel $1000 reciever, but I spent over 5K on my speakers and I have been in home theaters that the person spent huge $$$ on the electrical part and went with ok speakers and in my eyes my system blows theirs away not that home and car are in the same class but it's something I go buy.

 

wood, it sounds like you have an excellent system going in your home. remember, clean sound starts at the source. garbage in, garbage out. don't ever skimp too much on the signal source. sounds like you did fine.

 

I know about the clean input/output, that's why I was trying to make fun of "sony". I've always had the best I could afford ( and couldn't afford ). Up until recently I spent every penny I made on audio equipment. My boat, truck, bedroom, garage,etc. I have to have good clean music wherever I'm at. I get made fun of all the time cause I have a NAD reciever and CD player in my garage.
My friends used to always buy the electronics with all the buttons and whistles and would use ok speakers. They would always make fun of me cause I spent so much on my system at one time. But in the long run they would end up spending 3 times what I did trying to equal the sound quality of my stuff, cause they would keep re-doing theirs to try and make it sound better.

 

Headunit: Older Eclipse or Alpine as a transport
DAC: External ID DAC20
Amps: TRU Technology C7
Processing: Moded Alpine F1 Status
Speakers: Rainbow Refference or my current Scanspeak Revelator setup
Subs: 3 Velodynes or 3 Focals

Simple, but it really all in install.

 

oooooh rainbow and focal. i love those, it also brings Hafler (sp?) to mind

 

Focal has one problem...the tweeters...man, those things just kill my ears. Otherwise Focals are pretty damn nice speakers. You can use theit TLR home tweeters instead of their automative ones. they are a lot smoother but expensive.

As far as Rainbows, I changed my mind, I would not trade my Revelators for Refferences. Just fired up my new setup yesterday and it sounds like nothing I have heard before. For the info, the set I am using is the same that Alpine is about to release in near future. I think it will retail for 4g's.

 

Dream system...

Keep in mind that some of the stuff doesn't exist yet. I'm just going by the way technologies are evolving.

HU. Multi format player capable of SACD, HDCD, DVD, DVD-A, standard CD. All the bells and whistles. My gut feel is that the new rumored Sony XES system may have quite a bit of these technologies.

Processor. 192khz/24bit upsampling, 1x sampling switchable. Also must have SACD processing, HDCD, etc. Fully programmable xover, eq, ALL the goodies.

Speakers. Dynaudio. No substitute for my system goals. T330D or ESOTAR2 tweeters.

Sub. Velodyne. Of course.

Interconnects. Transparent Audio Reference XL's all around.

Electronics...ZERO op amps, all discrete components for input and output buffers.

Tuning. Bruel and Kjaer Pulse analyzer. For those troublesome tuning sessions. 20 grand. Doesn't include the Falcon series mics.

That's a good start for me...

Percy