Musician needs a head unit to check mixes. help?

[deej]

First of all, let me thank everyone who contributes to this forum. I'm on my tenth day of research and i decided this was the place to join. So lets get to it then!

I recently started driving a Ford Ranger after a long lay off from a couple DUIs. It's been 12 years in fact since I've had a valid Lic. Crazy.

So I've been looking at HUs for this truck. I'm leaning twords the eXcelon series.

x-493 was the first choice but many people scream about the interface.

x-592 cheaper but is it any better?

x-693 Pushing the budget and again, any better?

DEH Pioneers look good but i hear things about SQ and again not sure if the interface is any better.

I'm a recording musician who needs to check his mixes in a car cause the studio doesn't translate to car audio very well most the time. Bass ends up needing alot of tweaks once i find a decent system to check it on. Having something decent in the driveway would help soooo much. And ya, I want to rock out while driving that Ranger.

Any thoughts, sugesstions, experiences to share?

P.S. Oh ya, and I do digital recording so most of the material will be on USB stuff. CD player isn't a big concern. Don't own an Ipod yet so thats not a big part of the equation other than passengers who worship the apple seed. I'll stop now.

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[macq32 10+ year member]

First of all, let me thank everyone who contributes to this forum. I'm on my tenth day of research and i decided this was the place to join. So lets get to it then!
I recently started driving a Ford Ranger after a long lay off from a couple DUIs. It's been 12 years in fact since I've had a valid Lic. Crazy.

So I've been looking at HUs for this truck. I'm leaning twords the eXcelon series.

x-493 was the first choice but many people scream about the interface.

x-592 cheaper but is it any better?

x-693 Pushing the budget and again, any better?

DEH Pioneers look good but i hear things about SQ and again not sure if the interface is any better.

I'm a recording musician who needs to check his mixes in a car cause the studio doesn't translate to car audio very well most the time. Bass ends up needing alot of tweaks once i find a decent system to check it on. Having something decent in the driveway would help soooo much. And ya, I want to rock out while driving that Ranger.

Any thoughts, sugesstions, experiences to share?

P.S. Oh ya, and I do digital recording so most of the material will be on USB stuff. CD player isn't a big concern. Don't own an Ipod yet so thats not a big part of the equation other than passengers who worship the apple seed. I'll stop now.

Dont know about the other models, but I love my 791, the only negative is in direct sunlight the display pretty much cant be read and its not active capable. Don't worry about the latter and as far as the display, how often is the sun directly on your head unit?? Not much

Also, if you're thinking about hooking up and external hard drive to the USB, dont... There is a difference between external hard drives and flash drives so you can get up to a 16 or 32gb flash drive (or more if you really need it) or you can get a kenwood music keg I beleive. Externals will not work, doesnt matter if they are BUS powered (which is what I was hoping)

I'm not big on apple at all, but after learning that an external drive wont work (the hard way), I got a 120gb. It was just the most practical solution for the price.

 

[bureau13 10+ year member]

To be honest, from the perspective of checking your mixes you are going to want to know how they sound to "most people." Most people have a factory stereo in their car. The farther you get from the norm, the less you're going to know about how your stuff sounds to your average listener.

I realize that this is NOT the answer to "What system will I enjoy the most." So maybe some compromise is needed, unless you can just get what you want and test your mixes out in someone else's car with a factory stereo.

jds