It seems more to me like you want to justify paying for the Eclipse name whether its worth it or not. But to each his own. If you like a certain sound then who am I to argue your choice.
The choice I made was for a unit that I feel offered more tuning flexibility and ease of use. To me it was worth it. I have owned a couple of Pioneer HU's. The last one was after owning the Eclipse CD8454, and CD8455 (I actually would switch the units out as I had both at the same time). While the P8600MP is not the 880PRS, it did have a good amount of tuning abilities as does the 880. It did not have the L/R 16 band EQ though, but it did have 13 bands I believe. In the end it did not offer as much flexibility as the Eclipse models for my application (except for the CD8454). I also found the Eclipse models easier to use. While the no/less button things may look cool, I think it makes it harder to adjust things on the fly. I do not want to concentrate on the radio while driving to just do basic functions. I want to concentrate ont the road. With my Pioneer I could not just hit a button or couple of buttons and get what I wanted, I had to dig through the menu using the knob, even to adjust the sub level. This was probably one of the main reasons I did not go with the 880PRS. That is too bad as I feel this is where the Pioneer actually has the Eclipse units (the amount of adjustment it has over the sub volume). The Eclipse units do not offer great control over the sub volume, especially for someone who listens to a very wide range of music.
Another thing I liked about the Eclipse units was the ability to take a snapshot of the systems frequency response curve with the microphone and then either have the website adjust it for you (never use these settings), or let you tackle the problem areas yourself on the website. While the Pioneer unit also offered this, I felt that it was missing the mark big time. The frequencies that were adjusted, were way over boosted for my tastes. Doing this manually with the Pioneer unit was not very easy. It was not easy with the Eclipse either, but at least I had the option to to also do it on line where it became very easy to see things. While this is not as accurate as an RTA, it does help point out some problem areas you may be having, so it's nice to have as a tuning aid. In the end though, the ears is where it's at.
The Eclipse models also have a custom mode which allows even more control. You are not limited by preset values for the x-over or PEQ, you also get more control over the Q values for the PEQ (half increments instead of 1,2,3....), and you can adjust the time alingment in 0.05ms steps. It is nice option to have.
I have no problem jumping around with different brands. The only loyalty I have is to me and my ears. I am looking forward to trying out the new Alpine CDA-9887. I feel that of all the HU's I've owned, Alpine's have always bee the easiest to use. If it's as easy to use as my previous Alpines, and also gets close enough to the sound I have from my Eclipse, I will stick with that Alpine HU.
I would have hoped you could come up with a better response than that. I think its just Pioneer's website that is misleading. I will not lie, I do NOT know what the 1 bit means. All I do know is what the resolution means. SACD is 1 bit audio. The difference is it's 2.8 Mhz sampling frequency as opposed to CD's 44.1 khz. To say that Eclipse uses some kind of TRUE 24 bit converter when Pioneer uses an upsampled 1 bit has me a bit skeptical at this point. I'm trying to find out what the differences are but it hasn't been easy thus far. Either way, the end result it what matters most. If the resolution is 24 bit then what difference does it make on how many bits the converter actually is.?? In all reality you're only hearing 20 bits maximum. The last 4 bits are mostly for headroom.
It is not just their website that is misleading. When I contacted Pioneer, even they seemed a little confused with this. Seemed like the person I contacted did not really want or know how to explain things. Gave me some short answer without really answering the questions I had.
Some people feel that these converters are not at the same level as 24bit ones. This was from reading several web pages a while back. I guess the reason these are used is that they provide good performance at a lower cost. If my Pioneer did have these units, they sounded pretty darn good to me.
Either way, the Pioneer unit I had was a very nice unit. Had it been a little more user friendly, I would have kept it a little longer.
