So I'm kind of new to car audio, never done more than a deck and haven't even done that for many years. Looking to put a system in my '04 Grand Cherokee. In terms of a head unit there are 3 things I want. Bluetooth, iPhone integration, and very good to great sound quality. The integration of the iPod interface is pretty important, some of the things out there are borderline unusable.
I had a chance to play with the Kenwood X993 and the Alpine ida-x305. The interface on the Alpine was much more responsive and I like the the screen slightly better, I however don't like the fact that it's another ~$200 to add BT. I've always had Pioneer in the past, but I haven't yet had a chance to check out the ipod interoperability. Anything else out there I should check out?
I will likely be using external amplification, so the DAC's are of more importance than the amplifier stages to me. I've seen the feature of some of them to bypass the ipod dac, is this becoming pretty common place? And who does it best?
Also in need of some speaker advice. Listened to some Focal's(165krx2, 165vr, and one other that escapes me). Really liked the krx2, it was night and day between that and the VR's. Sound stage was much more open, the VR just sounded a bit constricted. I think we were driving them with a JL HD600 amp. I listen to silk dome tweeter Vienna Acoustics speakers at home. What else should I listen to? I don't really want to spend $3500 on a system, but I'm afraid my ears may not let me go much lower than that. I need HELP!!
