Another car sound thread!
I've just installed a new CD head unit and amp.
Okay so it's not a color matched Nakamichi or top end Clarion. I bought a Sony CDX-7710. It's a gun metal aluminium finish with a crapola blue display.
On the postive side it has 6 x 4volt pre outs (front, rear & sub) plus an aux in.
It also can play Sony Atrac encoded discs as well as MP3's and has Burr Brown 24bit 96khz convertors (whether that makes any difference in a car is another thing!)
The U.S. version CDX-7710 doesn't have 24bit convertors. You have to order the CDX-7715 to get them.
At Autobarn it was reduced from $699.00 to $429.00 but after I bought it JB Hi-Fi had them for $379.00... DOH!!! I've fitted a 4channel 4 x 50watt (true RMS) amp and have done the ubiquitous factory booster crossover adaption (removed the amp module and direct wired to the crossover) which seems to work fine... however, there appears to be something different about the overall EQ.
The sound is definately more dynamic and detailed but the low mids from the front bass speakers are now really quite thick and boomy. As I haven't added a sub yet and rolled the bottom end out of the front speakers I know things can only improve, but concerning the Blaupunkt factory amp, I suspect there is also some electronic equalisation going on in the amp.
Mine has two plug in pcb's which, based upon the components fitted, appears to be some kind of active fixed equaliser, not a crossover that's done by the inductors (coils) and large electrolytic capacitors.
The input to the booster amp has to first attenuate the amplified output from the factory head unit. Then the signal is buffered and fed into these plugin pcb's.
I'll run a signal generator through one of them sometime soon and see what effect these pcb's have on the ouput.
