well I went ahead and picked up one of these Clarions to try for myself. It has some promise so far, but there are a couple of issues I am having with it:
this unit has 3 different ways of setting up the crossovers.
1."Normal"-front pair and rear pair both get highpassed at same frequency (either 50/80/125), sub gets lowpassed separately. This is too bad, since there is little flexibility in the frequencies and slopes.
2."3-way" - designed for system with only front components and sub, splitting crossover to tweeters/woofers/subwoofer. Fully adjustable frequencies and 6/12/18 db slopes
3."2-way" - designed for system with components up front and rear deck speakers, no sub, splits crossovers between these three (six) speakers.
Unfortunately there is no option for a crossover split to components running up front, rear decks, AND subwoofer. Not sure why. I am hoping I can find a way to crossover my front components and rear fills (just for a little midrange help) separately; I guess I could try running things as a 3-way, and use the "tweeter" crossover for the whole component set, the "woofer" crossover for the rears, and the "sub" crossover for the sub.
The time alignment features are also dictated by the above 3 "speaker configurations". There seems to be plenty of adjustability, unfortunately, I have no experience using TA so I'm not sure how to get the most out of it. Perhaps someone could point me to a decent newbie's guide to tuning your time alignment? THe manual doesn't help much. Also I am confused as to whether this TA system is the kind that assumes that when you enter in a time delay for , say, the right speaker, and leave the left setting at zero, the system will apply the appropriate delay to the left signal, or is the kind of system that does vice versa like Alpines, where you enter in the amount of delay for the left signal setting for the system to delay the left signal....hope that question makes sense?
The parametric EQ seems pretty powerful, although I will most likely not mess with that until I do the TA and crossovers first. There is also some sort of preset par. eq settings for different types of cars : sedan with rear parcel shelf, sedan with rear doors, 2 minivan configurations, a pickup configuration, and a van configuration. The settings are then adjustable for further refinement, but hopefully these presets will be a good place to start.
This is about as far as I've gone with the unit...haven't tested out the USB yet.
The build quality is not the highest...the unit does have a slightly cheap feel to it, but it does seem like the money has gone into the tuning features, so for a 2-300$ unit, I'm not gonna complain too much. At least it has adjustable color schemes to match your car's lighting. The preamp outputs do seem noticeably stronger than the 4V Pioneer ones I was using on my p6900ub. They claim to be 6V, although I have not measured yet. Overall the sound of the unit seems a bit warmer and laidback than my Pioneer which always seemed to be a bit top heavy...whether this is a a function of the 24-bit DA converters or not I am not sure. Perhaps with all stock settings, the Clarion does not sound as clear and clean as the Pioneer, but after you're done with TA, crossovers and parametric eq's, I have a feeling the potential for good SQ is higher with the Clarion.
Bottom line so far is that in terms of the unit physically, you get what you pay for, but in terms of sound-shaping features, it's quite a steal, albeit with a few annoying niggles.
BTW, does anyone have any idea what volume setting this head unit starts distorting at?
this unit has 3 different ways of setting up the crossovers.
1."Normal"-front pair and rear pair both get highpassed at same frequency (either 50/80/125), sub gets lowpassed separately. This is too bad, since there is little flexibility in the frequencies and slopes.
2."3-way" - designed for system with only front components and sub, splitting crossover to tweeters/woofers/subwoofer. Fully adjustable frequencies and 6/12/18 db slopes
3."2-way" - designed for system with components up front and rear deck speakers, no sub, splits crossovers between these three (six) speakers.
Unfortunately there is no option for a crossover split to components running up front, rear decks, AND subwoofer. Not sure why. I am hoping I can find a way to crossover my front components and rear fills (just for a little midrange help) separately; I guess I could try running things as a 3-way, and use the "tweeter" crossover for the whole component set, the "woofer" crossover for the rears, and the "sub" crossover for the sub.
The time alignment features are also dictated by the above 3 "speaker configurations". There seems to be plenty of adjustability, unfortunately, I have no experience using TA so I'm not sure how to get the most out of it. Perhaps someone could point me to a decent newbie's guide to tuning your time alignment? THe manual doesn't help much. Also I am confused as to whether this TA system is the kind that assumes that when you enter in a time delay for , say, the right speaker, and leave the left setting at zero, the system will apply the appropriate delay to the left signal, or is the kind of system that does vice versa like Alpines, where you enter in the amount of delay for the left signal setting for the system to delay the left signal....hope that question makes sense?
The parametric EQ seems pretty powerful, although I will most likely not mess with that until I do the TA and crossovers first. There is also some sort of preset par. eq settings for different types of cars : sedan with rear parcel shelf, sedan with rear doors, 2 minivan configurations, a pickup configuration, and a van configuration. The settings are then adjustable for further refinement, but hopefully these presets will be a good place to start.
This is about as far as I've gone with the unit...haven't tested out the USB yet.
The build quality is not the highest...the unit does have a slightly cheap feel to it, but it does seem like the money has gone into the tuning features, so for a 2-300$ unit, I'm not gonna complain too much. At least it has adjustable color schemes to match your car's lighting. The preamp outputs do seem noticeably stronger than the 4V Pioneer ones I was using on my p6900ub. They claim to be 6V, although I have not measured yet. Overall the sound of the unit seems a bit warmer and laidback than my Pioneer which always seemed to be a bit top heavy...whether this is a a function of the 24-bit DA converters or not I am not sure. Perhaps with all stock settings, the Clarion does not sound as clear and clean as the Pioneer, but after you're done with TA, crossovers and parametric eq's, I have a feeling the potential for good SQ is higher with the Clarion.
Bottom line so far is that in terms of the unit physically, you get what you pay for, but in terms of sound-shaping features, it's quite a steal, albeit with a few annoying niggles.
BTW, does anyone have any idea what volume setting this head unit starts distorting at?
