Car Audio is a buyers market..

[whitedragon551 5,000+ posts]

Sure.

Then you would realize that we are talking about audio companies no longer being worth their salt like they used to be. You listed 5 examples of the exact issue. Clarion makes 1 good HU. Eclipse doesnt even sell in the US anymore and they havent designed/released anything new in years. And Pioneer again still makes a plastic piece of shit headunit with the pico fuse issues.

 

[murph 10+ year member]

I want to run a panny bottlehead something bad.

 

[SounDrive Pro Seller]

I want to run a panny bottlehead something bad.

I've listened to West's modified panny bottlehead, it's very nice.

 

[SounDrive Pro Seller]

Power has become cheap and subs have changed a bunch. Used to be weak motors and small light cones and coils.. Needed a huge box to get bass, and fairly low powerhandling capabilties and requirements.. Amps werent' class D, electrical sytems on cars were MUCH weaker too since they didn't have built in electronics like you see today People often bought multiples and did isobaric setups to reduce box sizes. Kicker IIRC, was the first company to make a real car audio sub as we know them today. Putting a 12 in a 1.5 cubic ft box was unheard of before that.
As far as loud, the world record during this period at one point was in the 150's and was just a bunch of sealed subs in a wall, and that was NOT on a termlab, so it was probably upper 140's on todays meter.. Standards were def different, a 140 back then was like a 150 now.

Hence the term "Solo-baric" //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif It required the box size of an isobaric pair of subwoofers with only a "solo" subwoofer.

 

[Droolguy]

I think it really depends on what level of equipment your talking about.

My Pioneer HU is half-a-decade old and sells for around $800 or more used.

Most true high end audio stuff (SQ, not SPL) either hold their value or actually get more expensive as time goes on since most companies now-a-days could care less about SQ and just want "MOAR FEATURRRZ, LOUDER"!

Home theater is seeing the same kind of decline in old used prices, but old ultra-high-end SQ products are still holding strong or getting better because in a lot of cases they actually produce better sound than newer stuff.

Blame the new generation for severely watering down the market with tons of junk with a ton of flashy things built in.

 

[macsdad 10+ year member]

When I first started in this stuff, I had a set of coustic 4 1/2's in the kicker panels, 2 pyle driver 12's, a pyramid cassette-don't laugh, and a hifonics vulcan on the 12's, all if this in a 82 toy corolla. Was decent for the time. All together it cost about 450, and that included the install. For the high end stuff, lets say for amps, you were lucky if you only paid 1 dollar per watt, some were as much as 2-3 dollars per watt. The older of us remember when brands like orion and usa made amps rated at 50 x 2 at 4ohms, but bridged, they would do upwards of 800-1000wrms. I would not have been able to afford the power I have now then. My sundown 1500v3 would have been atleast 1500-2000 dollars. So, in a way I am glad the availability has made it less demanding on the wallet, but who would't want a usa surf board amp on a decent set of subs?