So many options... (Sera's hifi)

Sony headunits, in my very brief experience of them, sound s**te. Alpine, Pioneer or Blaupunkt is what you want. FWIW, when I fancied an MP3 HU, I decided on the Blaupunkt at £100 or so.

In article , snipped-for-privacy@spamtroNspidar.com=20 spouted forth into uk.rec.cars.modifications...

But if you ever want to listen to the radio, then it has to be=20 Panasonic, they have some of the best sounding tuners for the money,=20 that you can buy.

Had a Panasonic basic CD headunit, was picking up Liverpool, Cumbria,=20 staffordshire and Leeds/Sheffield. Swapped it for a Blaupunkt, CD's sounded better, could barely pick up=20 the BBC local and local independant, and the BBC natonal needed constant=20 returning, and it wasn't a crappy bottom of the line either, same car,=20 same power connections, same arial.

--=20 Carl Robson "Sorry Sir the meatballs are orf" (The poster formerly known as Skodapilot)

Yeah. I'm veering for the MP54 for about £120ish with the £7 Aux-in cable so I can hook up the iPod. None of these radios ever look good fitted to a Japanese car, though, because the fold down fronts mean the wider-than-normal facia won't fit and the proper facia trim from the car doesn't cover the hinges.

I prefer Sony to JVC, never had Alpine, used to love Blaupunkt kit (I had a £600, mad Blaupunkt which followed me from XM to CX to Volvo 480. Loved it. Wasn't much better than the £80 units you get now, of course!).

Richard

Well for now in the audi i'm going the Ipod route, I fancy a change and as I dont have a CD player I thought I would give this a try

I've got a Kenwood MP3 CD player, one of the very first ones, bought it about 2.5 years ago and it's brilliant. Needs to be run through decent amps to get the full quality out of it though..

Not a great deal more no, but if you wanna play MP3s on it, then you want a Kenwood - their MP3 implementation is an order-of-magnitude better than all the rest.

There's no seek gap between tracks, it takes no time to navigate your folders, plays WMAs too, full and complete support for ID3 tags, not at all fussy about how the CDRs are burnt, etc. etc. etc.

Look at something like a

or if you can raise the budget a little, go for a I've got a my TI, and very nice it is too ! 5v pre-out makes a good deal of difference to the sound quality (much more than you'd think !) - you pay for the privilege though. If you're particularly bothered about sound quality, then look at both

I've had some trouble finding out about how good the MP3 support is on these units, so that's really helpful. IIRC the Kenwood tuner in my last Sera was alright, and once I chucked some Infinity speakers in the shelf in place of the single-cone Kenwoods it sounded pretty good.

Mmm. Nice.

I've been looking at their page - I got my Supra's wiring adaptor from them, fast and cheap, so I'll use them again. That's the second unit I looked at, there was a cheaper Kenwood I was considering, then I saw the 'upgrade to this' and wondered what 'Mojo' was and why it looked familiar. Heh. Mmm, Mojo.

That's nice and has the Aux input, though still rear mounted. PITA, since the Sera isn't really suited to having dangly cables everywhere. Still... £200 will lose the MP3 but get double-DIN Clarion. No aux-input though.

Yeah, that's nearly as much as the Sera cost ;)

I've seen those Pioneer jobs on eBay - they look very funky indeed, retro. I'd have one of those in the Beetle if I wanted to upgrade from the Gamma unit.

Richard (argh, decisions, decisions).

i think the kenwoods have a function to control the ipod with an attachment i was told by errrm someone. could be quite useful

Christ your house is like a Retro aladins cave :)

You need an intellivision console in there tbh :)

Had one, they're alright, but I prefer my Coleco and VCS :)

Richard

was told by errrm

Just Alpine. I've looked for similar things.

Richard

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Baupunkt have something similar on the cards too, as a plug on Multichanger type adaptor (like the Aux-in adaptor).

have a look on Bluespot.co.uk, but go for the top line stuff only, the tuners are s**te on the lower to middle end stuff.

I've always got my ICE from

- they're almost always the cheapest, and great service too. The site's a bit crap though, so look elsewhere to compare models etc. first !

Heh, I was on there yesterday looking at the slide-out screen DVD unit for £1,299. Car Audio Direct do it with the Navigation unit for £1,399.

All academic. The most I want to spend is a couple of hundred, and since I have to buy new headlights... I'd rather spend as little as possible. Though these Centurion/Necvox and Gaska 6.5" Double-DIN DVD etc players for £500 are very, very distracting indeed; I'm sure they're utter s**te, but I also know that these things are made in the same factories that make the good stuff - I even swallowed my snobbery and got a £40 Maxim DVD player when I needed a Region free one, and it's generally better than the £400 (but ancient) Toshiba it replaced. Crap build quality, but perfectly good picture. (I posted a massive rant about how the hell could they make them, pack them and ship them for £40, and got a bunch of whiney liberal types going on about EPZs and sweatshops. Meh).

I'm considering buying the new slam panel and headlight panel 'just in case' I find a competent cheap welder, or even so I can be super-honest if/when I sell the Sera and say "Look, I straightened everything out because I can't weld - the bits were actually really cheap, so I've got them, and you can have them and fit them if you have a bodyshop you trust". So more pressure on the wallet, too.

Richard

When I said Highend, I meant the high end high end CD tuner stuff (=A35-

800) rather than the =A31-300. Not the full whizbang gear. Although that=20 would be nice.

Although when I get round to sorting and installing it, I will have all=20 that in the CarPC. And the single din VGA motorised touchscreens are=20 getting closer. We actually now have 5 vapour ware and one supposedly=20 shipping (one unconfirmed group buy), instead of one piece of fantasy=20 that never got any further, like we had a year ago.

Once that arrives, it will work fantastically with a C134 travla case,=20 and make the perfect 2 din solution.

--=20 "Sorry Sir, the meatballs are Orf" The poster formerly known as Skodapilot.

Nakamichi. Why are you looking anywhere else???

CD quality fantastic, Tuner quality great, reliabilty utter pants. But I've heard good stuff about McIntosh (Not Mac Audio).

--=20 Carl Robson "Sorry Sir the meatballs are orf" (The poster formerly known as Skodapilot)

I've always had Pioneer, and been very happy, my brother has always had Kenwoods and is very happy, and through my mates i have experience of every brand in the world :) The only one to sound consistently crap (to be fair, it was put in 3 cars, due to write offs....) and then bust was a Sony....

Because my budget for this is under £200, and the Navigation thingy was 'window shopping' ;).

Richard