Help me choose between 3 HUs please…

[Grounded]

Been out the game for a bit. Bummed to find out Eclipse left the states. I'm looking for decent SQ but not going nuts as it is going in a 66 Impala vert. Haven’t nailed down the mids and highs yet but prob Selenium’s and DDs in the back. Not sure on the amps...

Looking for good Ipod play back and Bluetooth with Audio streaming for Pandora. I have a Droid phone and it seems everyone is locked on the iPhone… The three I’ve narrowed it down to are..

Alpine CDA-117 CD receiver at Crutchfield.com

Kenwood Excelon KDC-X995 CD receiver at Crutchfield.com

JVC Arsenal KD-A925BT CD receiver at Crutchfield.com

thanks!

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[Team TH (Donny) 10+ year member]

The Alpine is best bet in my opinion. I like the looks of the Kenwood better however. Nonetheless, all three are pretty nice and will be good for what your looking for.

 

[Grounded]

Thanks Donny. Yeah I'm siding with the Alpine as well. Never ran been much of a Kenwood fan in the past, but they seem to have vastly improved over the years. Anyone have any experience with the Sony DSX-S310BTX ??

 

[JoshC 10+ year member]

Get the JVC, its got 5v preouts vs 4v, that alpine requires ycables for each output too. Plus there all basically the same HU JVCs just cheaper lol, ive loved all my JVCs, they have been as good as my alpine to me

 

[murph 10+ year member]

kenwood I think is the superior of this group. It has so many more features and looks nice.

 

[wenn_du_weinst 10+ year member]

Get the JVC, its got 5v preouts vs 4v, that alpine requires ycables for each output too. Plus there all basically the same HU JVCs just cheaper lol, ive loved all my JVCs, they have been as good as my alpine to me

no the alpine doesn't?

 

[audiobaun 5,000+ posts]

I like the Alpine and the JVC,I have bought several Kenwood HU, and they have always failed me.Have you checked out any of the Eclipse HU?Yet, out of the three, my choice would be Alpine, then JVC, and last..Kenwood.//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/cool.gif.3bcaf8f141236c00f8044d07150e34f7.gif

 

[9515ROB 10+ year member]

i have pretty much the same kendwood headunit i think i dont know my model number. But i like it. The best part is you can control your ipod from both the deck and ipod unlike a pioneer deck.

There are a couple of the audio settings that are hard to understand and i still have no idea what they are but I would recommend it....Plus it looks alot better than the Alpine and JVC deck

 

[JoshC 10+ year member]

no the alpine doesn't?

My bad, looked at the angled pic and only saw 1 row. I see the other side now lol thought it was odd

 

[whitedragon551 5,000+ posts]

Get the JVC, its got 5v preouts vs 4v, that alpine requires ycables for each output too. Plus there all basically the same HU JVCs just cheaper lol, ive loved all my JVCs, they have been as good as my alpine to me

117 has 2 sets of RCA ins for each. Also 5v vs 4v isnt going to make a different. Even 5v vs 2v wont make a difference. The 117 is the same internally as the 9887. Id go with the Alpine over anything in this thread so far.

kenwood I think is the superior of this group. It has so many more features and looks nice.

The 117 is the same internally as the 9887. Id go with the Alpine over anything in this thread so far. Looks

 

[LosIsATool 5,000+ posts]

The 117 is one of the best Alpines made.. Easy choice.. or the 9887

 

[TheUnderFighter 10+ year member]

I avoided Alpine because I didn't wanna have to pay a fortune for every basic add-on feature, and I wasn't gonna get the Imprint. If I could afford it, I'd have gone with an Eclipse cd-5030. But I found a couple really good deals on the Kenwood x-994 and x-995. Having owned Kenwoods previously I was used to their in-depth, yet terribly confusing UI. The difference between the 2 kenwoods is that the x-995 is a bit more expensive, and has longer distance settings for T/A. And the x-994 is capable of streaming audio through BT. So I went with the x-994 for, better price and I didn't need the extended T/A distance settings, and streaming BT audio was a plus. I'm happy with it. I did notice a big difference in my gains settings going from 5v to 4v, but the SQ is the same as far as I can tell.

 

[LosIsATool 5,000+ posts]

I avoided Alpine because I didn't wanna have to pay a fortune for every basic add-on feature, and I wasn't gonna get the Imprint. If I could afford it, I'd have gone with an Eclipse cd-5030. But I found a couple really good deals on the Kenwood x-994 and x-995. Having owned Kenwoods previously I was used to their in-depth, yet terribly confusing UI. The difference between the 2 kenwoods is that the x-995 is a bit more expensive, and has longer distance settings for T/A. And the x-994 is capable of streaming audio through BT. So I went with the x-994 for, better price and I didn't need the extended T/A distance settings, and streaming BT audio was a plus. I'm happy with it. I did notice a big difference in my gains settings going from 5v to 4v, but the SQ is the same as far as I can tell.

No joke?

 

[TheUnderFighter 10+ year member]

No joke?

Not sure if this is sarcasm or not, but yea... Whitedragon has just said there's no difference between 2v and 5v for SQ purposes. And while that may be true, I just wanted to be sure that someone did not mistake that to mean there wasn't a large jump in gain variation, because there was at least in my case only losing 1 volt.