Should have come here first

[THATpurpleKUSH 5,000+ posts]

I always thought JBL and RF were the companies that have been in 12v the longest.

 

[quackhead 10+ year member]

Arc Audio, Audison, Mmats, Zapco, Zed Audio,German Maestro and Boston Accoustics, Hertz, HAT, Focal, CDT, and Rainbow are a few that can be seriously looked into for SQ... there are more, but you get the point

 

[CHEMMINS 10+ year member]

Ha....PG is far from toast. Their newest offerings are borderline amazing. Very reminiscent to the old skool PG.

 

[THATpurpleKUSH 5,000+ posts]

BA is no longer in the 12v market //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/crying.gif.ec0ebefe590df0251476573bc49e46d8.gif, but you can still buy their stuff for the time being.

 

[hispls 5,000+ posts]

Wow, I didn't realize how much consolidation is going on. I guess it makes sense from a business standpoint. Good to see Quart and PPI is still around. I guess a/d/s is in there with them somewhere.
Im sure I'll have questions during my install. By the way I ended up with Infinity 60.9cs components for up front along with an Infinity amp. Not sure if I'll put an old unused 60.7cs set in the back.

Lot of consolidation, and a lot of "underground" brands that pretty much slap their name on 2 or 3 different Chinese/Korean factory's offerings (not saying they're all bad, and at least you save a bit of overhead).

Infinity/JBL/Harmon Kardon is the same company now (speaking of consolidations) and while IMO Infinity isn't what it used to be I like them for what they are, and they have some good offerings under the JBL name as well.

I don't think A/D/S is around at all. Orion was bought out by DEI, even US Amps outsourced their amps and many would say they went downhill after '99. ALL the old Zed brands (Alphasonic, Crunch, ESX, Hifonics, Lanzar, US Acoustics, Planet Audio, Autotek, etc.) are owned by one or two big companies and the majority of them all is crap. Zed makes their own branded amps now which are still excellent and cutting edge.

Soundstream is Power Accoustic now and mostly crap. PPI is definitely not a shadow of what it used to be. Polk Audio turned to crap somewhere along the line as well.

Zapco is still what it was, Audison is also still around and what it was. Rockford Fosgate is still around but you have to get into their top end amps to have anything worthwhile from them (and they're NOT worth MSRP).

Alpine, Pioneer, and Kenwood still dominate head unit market. McIntosh doesn't build their own head units anymore.

Kicker hasn't changed much, nor has JL

Sealed boxes are no longer desireable (since power is cheap, we can get good low frequency in relatively small boxes).

If you live in Florida it is cumpulsory to install as many PA midranges and horns in your doors as you can fit.

I think that gets you about up to date.

I always thought JBL and RF were the companies that have been in 12v the longest.

Actually Blaupunkt would take that title with factory radio in the mighty Studabaker in 1932...

Rockford Fosgate, A/D/S, and Zed Audio were some of the first. JBL has been around a long time, but they weren't into cars terribly early on.... and if we're going there, Jensen actually produced the first conventional loudspeaker in the early 1900's (fixed magnet and moving coil attatched to a diaphragm)

 

[quackhead 10+ year member]

Ha....PG is far from toast. Their newest offerings are borderline amazing. Very reminiscent to the old skool PG.

TBH I have not looked into PG to see what's up since the phasing of the Zenons

 

[THATpurpleKUSH 5,000+ posts]

If you live in Florida it is cumpulsory to install as many PA midranges and horns in your doors as you can fit.

This made me lol

Actually Blaupunkt would take that title with factory radio in the mighty Studabaker in 1932...

I said 12v, not 6v //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/tongue.gif.6130eb82179565f6db8d26d6001dcd24.gif

 

[quackhead 10+ year member]

Lot of consolidation, and a lot of "underground" brands that pretty much slap their name on 2 or 3 different Chinese/Korean factory's offerings (not saying they're all bad, and at least you save a bit of overhead).
Infinity/JBL/Harmon Kardon is the same company now (speaking of consolidations) and while IMO Infinity isn't what it used to be I like them for what they are, and they have some good offerings under the JBL name as well.

I don't think A/D/S is around at all. Orion was bought out by DEI, even US Amps outsourced their amps and many would say they went downhill after '99. ALL the old Zed brands (Alphasonic, Crunch, ESX, Hifonics, Lanzar, US Acoustics, Planet Audio, Autotek, etc.) are owned by one or two big companies and the majority of them all is crap. Zed makes their own branded amps now which are still excellent and cutting edge.

Soundstream is Power Accoustic now and mostly crap. PPI is definitely not a shadow of what it used to be. Polk Audio turned to crap somewhere along the line as well.

Zapco is still what it was, Audison is also still around and what it was. Rockford Fosgate is still around but you have to get into their top end amps to have anything worthwhile from them (and they're NOT worth MSRP).

Alpine, Pioneer, and Kenwood still dominate head unit market. McIntosh doesn't build their own head units anymore.

Kicker hasn't changed much, nor has JL

Sealed boxes are no longer desireable (since power is cheap, we can get good low frequency in relatively small boxes).

If you live in Florida it is cumpulsory to install as many PA midranges and horns in your doors as you can fit.

I think that gets you about up to date.

Actually Blaupunkt would take that title with factory radio in the mighty Studabaker in 1932...

Rockford Fosgate, A/D/S, and Zed Audio were some of the first. JBL has been around a long time, but they weren't into cars terribly early on.... and if we're going there, Jensen actually produced the first conventional loudspeaker in the early 1900's (fixed magnet and moving coil attatched to a diaphragm)

Yep..James B. Lansing started JBL back in the 20's and just made what jensen had better. Sidney Harman and Bernard Kardon bought JBL in the late 60's. Harmon Kardon was the 12v predecessor to the JBL 12v. lineup, IIRC.

When I mention 12v, I was referring to external stand alone amplification. and I am not sure who started that, but i believe it was in the mid to late 70's with Zapco or Alpha

 

[audiobaun 5,000+ posts]

I was into car audio heavily back in the mid- to late-80's. I still remember swapping out my Nakamichi tape deck for a new Alpine CD unit, and using PPI Art amps. I've been out of the loop since then - wow have things changed.
I recently inherited a 95 Grand Cherokee and thought it'd be great to dive back into car audio and put a nice system in it. The stock speakers are so old that all the surrounds have turned to dust.

I'm no longer confident in my install skills, so I take it in to get a head unit, sub amp along with sub and install to include a distro block so I can add an amp later for the other speakers (when I decide what to get). What I end up with is a joke - no firewall grommet, wire loose under hood, power and signal cables run next to each other, and sub amp gain at 100% with max bass boost (after telling them I'm after SQ and don't care at all about SPL).

Reading the posts here have confirmed that the basics haven't really changed at all, and I'll be tearing out all their wiring and doing it myself! And I was definitely oversold on the subs. I ended up with 2 Memphis PR12's when just one is plenty. I also know NOW that I probably should have gone with an ID sub.

Anyway, just want to give you guys a big thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Welcome back to the car audio world!!And welcome here as well:santa:Im still running all old school Zed amps/Autotek BTS,and Mean Machines,Hifonics VII,VIII series.

 

[jhall1jax]

Lots of good info in this thread; thanks for catching me up.

Yes, hispls, I immediately noticed the sealed vs ported box thing. Back in the 80's, I seem to remember everyone used sealed (I used a passive radiator setup but I was looked down upon - hah). Now sealed setups seem rare. I initially asked for a sealed box, and got a weird look from the shop guys.

 

[quackhead 10+ year member]

Lots of good info in this thread; thanks for catching me up.
Yes, hispls, I immediately noticed the sealed vs ported box thing. Back in the 80's, I seem to remember everyone used sealed (I used a passive radiator setup but I was looked down upon - hah). Now sealed setups seem rare. I initially asked for a sealed box, and got a weird look from the shop guys.

LOL..now you mention Passives and the guys say WTH? These guys are getting phenomenal numbers with high power single 12" setups (example) and tuning of the ports/placement of the ports/type of port all comes into play. It is not uncommon to see just everyday groundpounders with a couple of 12" subs and 2,000 watts of power feeding them producing mid 140's or better in spl. Class D is a boon in efficiency...A/B was what? High 60's pecentage wise in efficiency with a good amp at 4 ohms? The cheaper Class D's now days can get close to 80% efficiency at 1ohm loads....so yeah, i eat my words, times have changed a lot.

 

[CHEMMINS 10+ year member]

Yeah, PG has the new elite series out and "The One". All of them are phenomenal amps. The realy went back to their roots on these and made some very nice amps. They are a little spendy, but very solid well built SQ amps, well except "The One". It is 12k of mean power.

 

[wickedwitt 10+ year member]

Sorry about your bad luck with a local store. Unfortunate that these stories happen as often as they do.

welcome to Ca

 

[hispls 5,000+ posts]

Lots of good info in this thread; thanks for catching me up.
Yes, hispls, I immediately noticed the sealed vs ported box thing. Back in the 80's, I seem to remember everyone used sealed (I used a passive radiator setup but I was looked down upon - hah). Now sealed setups seem rare. I initially asked for a sealed box, and got a weird look from the shop guys.

Some use passive radiator, but I think cost keeps most people away. The main issue is cheap power and the engineering in the woofers, in days of old the woofers were just very biased to very large sealed boxes for performance...most people used small sealed boxes because that's what we could fit and sealed in a car is pretty forgiving. These days drivers are very robust and the good ones are actually built with small ported box and huge real-world power handling in mind. In short, I think the only reason we didn't use ported back then is the limitations of the woofers available.

Yeah, PG has the new elite series out and "The One". All of them are phenomenal amps. The realy went back to their roots on these and made some very nice amps. They are a little spendy, but very solid well built SQ amps, well except "The One". It is 12k of mean power.

It's a shame "The One" is only supposed to be run at 18V. Really makes you wonder what'll happen if one were to hook it up to a 16V system and their voltage dropped into the 13's

 

[LosIsATool 5,000+ posts]

Yeah, PG has the new elite series out and "The One". All of them are phenomenal amps. The realy went back to their roots on these and made some very nice amps. They are a little spendy, but very solid well built SQ amps, well except "The One". It is 12k of mean power.

At 18v. Only clamped 8000 on 12v. 10000 on 16v