What is the best car audio receiver?

[Horsedreamer72]

Last year for Christmas, I got my son a Rockford Fosgate T1500-1bdCP 1500 Watt Class-bd Constant Power Mono Amplifier, a Rockford Fosgate Punch P3 P3L-2X12 Double 12-Inch Pre-Loaded Enclosure, and a remote Punch EQ. He still has an old receiver, though, so I would like to get him a new one that will really complement his speakers. What is the best audio receiver out there that will really make his system sound great?

 

[N2Audio]

There are MANY good head units that will work well - as in hundreds.

The "standards" in the industry would be Alpine and Pioneer. Kenwood, Clarion, JVC and a few others also offer good quality.

In general - features, quality etc are going to go hand in hand with the price tag. For $100 you can get a basic good quality unit. For $150 a pretty nice name-brand with most of the music specific options covered and getting into aux input capability, USB inputs, some basic crossover and equalizers etc. At $200 or so you should be able to get everything you need and start loading up with options like high voltage preamp outputs, HD radio, ipod control, etc. Beyond that you start getting into complex equalization, customizable graphics, DVD capability, video displays and on and on.

Some possibilities -
(I'm assuming the car has a standard 1 din opening)


http://www.onlinecarstereo.com/CarAudio/p_25211_Pioneer_DEH-P5200HD.aspx
http://www.onlinecarstereo.com/CarAudio/p_28579_Kenwood_KDC-BT648U.aspx
http://www.onlinecarstereo.com/CarAudio/p_28425_Clarion_CZ401.aspx
http://www.onlinecarstereo.com/CarAudio/p_29337_Alpine_CDE-123.aspx

There are a lot of other good ones.

Just don't get sucked in by the off-brands that seem to be loaded with features vs the price. Having a lot of features is great, but not if buttons stop working and lights go out after just a few months, or weeks. If something seems unusually inexpensive there is usually a logical explanation for it.

 

[ck_da_finest]

theres a lot sysems out there it just depends on how much you want to spend. try out crutchfield.com theyll answer any question youll ever dream of

 

[airforceyooper]

yeah, it pretty much boils down to what features you want. I personally like JVC. All their units have 24 bit burr-brown DACs. So does Clarion I think. McIntosh probably makes the only real audiophile unit these days, but that's crazy expensive. Then again, Pioneer came out with the DEX-P99RS. That one is really nice. Alpine used to make some F1 stuff, but I think they quit doing that.

 

[OmeroA]

No best but depends what you want and your range? alpine makes nice headunits..now do u want navigation in it? play movies??

Go to my youtube channel it will teach you how to match your subwoofer to your amp wattage wise..if you need any other help i will be their to reply asap so feel free to leave comments and i will help as much as i can http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a5op4tSgiU&feature=related

 

[Charles]

buy the best and the hell with the rest and make sure it has everything you want it to do.if your planning to run external amps and or i pod or mp3 player you have to make sure you have picked the right head unit/audio receiver as you call it same thing. go to eBay then car audio then head units and take a look at all they have new and used,they have eBay buyer protection so you can't lose even if you buy used.go with name brand equipment.the external amp or amps will do the work, the head unit should have RCA ins and 2 RCA outs to run the sub woofers amplifier.the 4 rca ins are to run an external amplifier for your speakers.hope this helps.have used many pieces from eBay to install powered systems and it worked out great and don't forget the wiring kit to run the sub woofer amplifier,and a distribution block on the end closest to the amp,so you can pick up a power source for anything else you want to add at a later date.good luck with your system.