30 replies to this topic

[bob]

About 10 years ago, I was a heavily active member on these forums, and quite into the car audio scene.
Back then, you couldn't go wrong with Soundstream, Rockford Fosgate, Orion, MB Quart,Blaupunkt, even Alpine. Just to name a few. DD was making its mark on the Australian scene with some big numbers too.
From what I see and read, DD still seems to be kicking ass and decent quality, but how about the other brands mentioned? They don't seem to have the same name for themselves as they did many years ago.
Poking my head back into the audio scene a little, there seems to be a massive amount of cheap gear out there, with the focus on quality of gear no longer being the main point.
Heck, the Calibers that I bought about 8 years ago were absolutely kick ass, especially for their price. They are a couple of amps that I should never have sold.
Thoughts? Any further examples? Do you think the quality of gear has gone down hill?

[268669♫]

No. their is still alot of quality gear out there, its just there is also a lot more cheap gear that has flooded the market and made the quality stuff harder to find. The brands have changed however as some went money hunting, some moved production to china, and some just couldn't compete in the changing market.

All in all, there are some really good brands out there that cater to the enthuiast and will be constantly recommended on these forums. Then there is the general everyday cheap stuff available from the chain stores box movers where cheap and quick sales means more money and unfortunately bad quality.

Ant

[Damon]

Actually, I'd say that in my opinion the general quality of 'cheaper brands' is far higher today than it ever was. The trouble is people's perception moreso than actual engineering fact.

Is a 'new' Soundstream Reference amplifier ACTUALLY worse than on old one? Now, don't tell me what you percieve the difference to be, tell me what you know in fact. I own and use old school SS amplifiers as my reference and they work great, but they were unreliable back in the day. How do the new ones really compare?

Rockford Fosgate's gear today is infinitely better than it has even been in history as long as you don't peer through rose tinted glasses, but old school die hards tend to think that the old Punch stuff was magically better somehow. Was it really?

Speakers? I reckon there are far better and more affordable speakers today than ever before. Could you buy speakers like Morel Maximos for $228 10 years ago? No way. Actually, there are probably three or four sets under $300RRP that would score higher than the classic QM series MB Quarts that used to dominate the market back then.

How about source units? Compare a 10 year old $999 CD tuner to a $399 JVC today and the JVC will run rings around it with stuff like dual USB (with iPad charging), built in bluetooth, 30000 colour illumination and everything else. BAck then you paid a massive premium just for MP3 playback via CDR. To get stuff like time correction and paramtreic EQ (as featured in the JVC KDR926BT) meant buying something like a Clarion DRX9255 for $1500!

Subwoofers? Even many sub-$150 pre-fab subwoofers sound great and get loud today, whereas 10 years ago you had to build your own box, while 'small box' subwoofers weren;t yet the norm.

Did navigation exist 10 years ago? Barely. And it was rubbish.

Could I get email and internet in my car via iPhone 10 years ago? Listen to Sticher Ap radio Podcasts? Stream videos from my home server via Servetome?

Forget it.

IMO the old days were great only because we didn't know any better. You'd never actually want to go back. Today's products are better in every measureable way.

[romano.inc]

completely agree with the above, i think its more the fact that certain products were less accessable or unknown to most where as today most of those brands are well known and used by many and other brands have taken their place being perceived as 'quality' or 'enthusiast' brands ..

The reason alot of companies switch manufacturing elsewhere is that its not financially worth keeping production in house, that and i think as soon as somethings made in china people automatically interpret it as cheap and not well made, but wether its assembled in USA or china so long as the products the same who cares.

Just my 2c

[ubernoob]

romano.inc, on 23 January 2012 - 04:59 PM, said:

The reason alot of companies switch manufacturing elsewhere is that its not financially worth keeping production in house, that and i think as soon as somethings made in china people automatically interpret it as cheap and not well made, but wether its assembled in USA or china so long as the products the same who cares.

Just my 2c

If I can afford to buy a product that is made in it's home country I will, so many of my friends bitch about how no manufacturing happens in Australia but will happily surf the net and buy and find the product cheaply OS instead of buying local. Manufacturing in Asia is great if it gives the consumer a better price but some companies still seem to hold their boutique status while having their gear made in Asian countries and at times product from the far east seems to be priced very closely to something made in house in say the UK or the US.

I know I am way off topic already but the world of mountain bike manufacturing seems to have gone 360deg, in the earlier days a lot of frames were made in house in the UK, Aus, US etc. After a while a lot of gear was made in Taiwan and as wages rose frame prices rose and because Taiwan were making almost all of the frames they were able to slowly raise prices again.
It now seems that the smaller boutique manufacturers that survived are making a comeback as the difference between a frame Designed in the US and made in Taiwan is very close to a frame made in hose in the US or the UK.

Having Taiwan come in to the mountain bike world forced companies that manufactured in house to become more innovative and produce gear of the highest quality so in the end Asian manufacturing has pushed design and technology to new levels and I believe car audio is very similar. I don't think car audio has improved build quility in the last ten years but you get a whole heap more technology wedged inside and functionality seems to be more important than overall build quality.

Again sorry for getting off topic, some people may be interested in the Doco- The Lightbulb Conspiracy, the whole vid is post on Youtube and is well wort a watch.

[bob]

So the quality is still there, or if anything improved? Would I be correct in saying then that these brands are perceived differently now? Possibly due to being more "main stream"

[Damon]

Quality and fuinctionality have improved ten fold.

People's ability to cling to 'older was better' undiminished!

LOL

[br85]

Consumer electronics have gotten cheaper. Not just because of OS production, but because there's physically less "stuff" being used now. If you've ever heard the phrase "throw away society", it refers mostly to consumer electronics. Things that used to be done on entire PCBs or even hard wired are now being made on a SMD (surface mount device) chip about 1/6th the size of your smallest fingernail and made by the million using minimal materials, almost zero labour and in a matter of seconds. (It is a shame that we are still throwing entire cases and such away when we dispose of stuff but that';s another topic).

This means a few things, connectivity has improved, dsp has been improved, and dare I suggest it, mainstream DACs and word clocks etc. have gotten better and much, much cheaper. However, as a caveat, things like power supplys on amplifiers have gotten smaller and lighter, which I don't see as a good thing, design has gotten a little bit sloppier, and care from manufacturers, distributors, and stores alike has decreased when it comes to the actual sound that a system can produce. The introduction of A/V units means bigger systems are now often based on visuals in the front end, and all you need to do is compare a P80 ($799 RRP, no ipod or much connectivity) to an AVICF30BT ($2499RRP, but a beautiful AV unit in its own right) on exactly the same system and the AVIC system will sound awful by comparison. (To anyone who has anything to do with the production or design of AV units, a toslink output and ability to control a high end dsp/active xo module on the touchscreen would certainly fix this problem -_- Yeah we know you all use windows CE, it CAN be done)

But, to be fair, this is primarily due to 95% of music being produced and listened to these days being designed for small, lofi speakers, and therefore fidelity and dynamics and such are pointless expenses for most people now, and the equipment is manufactured to meet a market, and quality gear and hi-fi enthusiasts just don't make up a large market at all.

Edited by br85, 24 January 2012 - 08:57 AM.

[Damon]

Agreed.

There's also the fact that many 'black box' devices like analogue outboard crossovers, EQ, noise gates (remember them!), CD Changers, and even iPod 'adaptors' have all been integrated into either the source or amplifier today.

Edited by Damon, 24 January 2012 - 12:58 PM.

[Prime mova]

Damon, on 24 January 2012 - 08:34 AM, said:

People's ability to cling to 'older was better' undiminished!

LOL

I've been a great follower of Damon and his articles and 'how to builds' over the years and respect what he is saying, I even though about swapping out my other amps for crossfire amps for about a millisecond back in the day.

I pose this question I've used the same amps for approx. 15 years and there still going strong if i swap them out for new ones am i going to know the auditable difference?

Edited by Prime mova, 02 February 2012 - 09:44 AM.

[sphell]

I agree headunits, speakers and subs have definitely improved in the last 10 years, I mean I've seen Alpine's flagship 117E on sale for three hundred and something bucks before.Those sort of features at that price was unheard of back in the day. However, I'd still take old school amps over a lot of the newer stuff that's around. Even some of the decent brands (Rockford) seem to have poor noise supression even when you do everything right (correct grounding, separate sides of car for power/RCA's etc etc). On the other hand, my "in the mean time" system with my old Soundstream Reference 1000sx and Phoenix Gold ZX was literally slapped in the car in less than an hour, shortcuts everywhere, but put your ear up to the tweeter and it's dead quiet.

[Damon]

Prime mova, on 24 January 2012 - 01:33 PM, said:

I pose this question I've used to same amps for approx. 15 years and there still going strong if i swap them out for new ones am i going to know the auditable difference?

Unless there's:

1: At least 1.5dB or greater difference in output (in other words they offer at least 50% greater or lesser power for the same load)
2: Either of the amplifiers are clipping
3: You use signal processing in the amplifiers and this is carried over to the new ones

Then the answer is no.

But, the fact is that one or more of these aspect will indeed be in play and therefore your will hear some difference between the two. Which is 'better', however, will not be down to age - since the 'sound' of amplifiers has not improved over the years. You can't improve from being completely transparent, can you?

Edited by Damon, 24 January 2012 - 08:18 PM.

[ubernoob]

With my current HU I went for a few bells and whistles but I then realised I don't want to talk to people while I'm driving and I'm happy to leave the external HDD at home and stick to the stacker. If I bought another HU I would buy whichever one had the best on board tuning facilities and buy that, I'm a simple person and I like the old stuff that used more metal for no real reason, I know it's stupid but I like the old gear.

I am still kicking myself for not buying one of the old Kicker ZR amps years ago when the local Strathfield had one for next to nothing.

[Crescendo]

I love my "Old School" car audio stuff. Great finds can be found on Ebay US and once found & brought, they just get tossed into the wardrobe, never to be used again! LOL.

Q - which one would you choose if both we're available today = JL Audio 10w6 (let's say they did a remake) or JL Audio 10W7?

[iluvmusik]

^ neither

I'd choose an Ultimo and that's new school