Hi Guys,

Firstly - great forum, I love these things, free advice is always the best advice in my books - no sales pitch to look out for!!

Well, the point of this post is to seek advice on the potential SQ of a stereo system I am thinking of installing. Its around the $1500 mark as I can get alot of it from the states, and was wondering if you guys had any experience with these brands and what you thought of them.

H/U: Not decided yet
EQ: Clarion EQS560 - 6ch 7volt output
Amp: Lanzar Viberant 6channel VIBE635 4x75x rms + 2x250x rms output
Front: Infinity 6000cs 6.5" splits 90w rms handling
Rear: Infinity 6953i 6x9 3-way 100w rms handling
Subs: 2x Infinity Kappa 120.3se 12" subs 300w rms handling

Any input would be great. I chose Infinity speakers because I have heard that they have a great reputation, but your input would be appreciated.

Thanks heaps,
Dan

[ April 30, 2003, 09:28: Message edited by: Coatsy ]

If your after SQ, many here would agree with me when i say that you should ditch the 6x9's.. they will only drag the front stage rearwards, screwing up your potentially nice sounding SQ front.. Put in a set of 6" co-ax's instead, and run these off the deck, leaving your amp to run the front stage and the subs..

if you can, you could be able to run the fronts fully active.. If not, ditch it and get a nice 2 channel to run the fronts, and a monoblock to run the 2 subs..

Other than that, i dont know what else to suggest as im not familiar with that gear..

ditch the 6 channel and the 6X9's.
get a seperate sub amp and front stage amp, use stock speakers in the rear.
infinity have a decent reputation and on your budget would probably be good sq/$, i've personally never used them.

IMO I'd definantly ditch the 6x9's but i wouldnt stay stock, just my opinion, but go a set of coax's in the same speaker as your front stage just to keep the sound the same. No point in having a superb sounding front stage if the rear fill is dull, it'd just bring the SQ down.
Good Luck!

Hey guys,

Thanks heaps for the input. So 6x9's are definately not the way to go eh? And Mr_Bob - why do you suggest to ditch the 6ch amp? This amp seems extremely cheap when compared to buying two seperate amps for designated functions, plus the sub power is very decent.

I would lie to run the H/U through the EQ to bump up voltage to the amp to increase SQ, so I don't like the idea of running rear fill from the H/U directly - wouldn't this lead to poor SQ fron the rear fill compared to the rest of the speakers? But if you guys have a different opinion, I'm all ears...

Cheers,
Dan

if the amp is well priced then i say go for it

it can be very convenient being able to easily adjust all speakers from the one amp

welcome to CAA!

well, not 'definitely'. if your stock rear speakers are 6x9 in size, then choosing 6x9s as upgrades would make sense.

any upgrade in rears is of relatively low priority in most enthusiasts' systems simply because we depend very little on them. that is, we 'fade' very heavily towards the front, or don't run any at all (my current setup has no rears). they add little if anything to the overall system SQ because the majority of the frequency spectrum and music-information is delivered by the front speakers, which is where we invest most of our money.

if however, you have $$ spare, and enjoy the sound added by rears, then by all means upgrade them. and some quality 2-way coaxials is usually all you need. if you have more $, then splits are better, but in most situations, overkill.

QUOTE

why do you suggest to ditch the 6ch amp?  This amp seems extremely cheap when compared to buying two seperate amps for designated functions, plus the sub power is very decent.

if you run rears, best performance is obtained by running them off an outboard amp rather than the HU. so allow for that.

however, in most instances, a multichannel amp is usually a compromise. it of course depends on the quality of the amp (and i am not very familiar with lanzar products), but separating amps allows each 'section' to have an independent internal power supply as its main advantage, plus allows you to tailor the power outputs for the speaker requirements (eg: powerful 2-channel for front, small 2-channel for rear, 1-channel (monobloc) for subs). if the 6-channel amp shares the single power supply, that puts a lot of demand on it; when subbass hits hard, you'd want the power to be readily available (and in reality never would be) to avoid the potential to 'steal' power from the other channels. and unless it's well 'regulated', there may be power sags to all the channels during heavy demand. probably also means the power on tap, in reality, may not meet the advertised specs. especially when driving big subs which is hard work for an amp.

so for this reason, separate amps will have its advantage. but there are awesome multichannel amps around. look at soundstream's davinci amp...at a cool $7K. and even their smaller rubicon 5-channel amps retail at $1300 plus. you could argue that you 'get what you pay for'.

QUOTE

I would lie to run the H/U through the EQ to bump up voltage to the amp to increase SQ

in most instances, higher preout voltage makes absolutely NO SQ difference. once the amp-gains are tuned appropriately, don't expect any difference.

as for speakers, ensure you audition them first before buying. and compare them with other speakers. but yes, infinity offer some nice stuff, as do plenty of others. and there's of course no probs having splits and subs from different brands.

if you're on a tightish budget, then as already suggest, consider running a 2-channel amp and a 1-channel monobloc (for subs), and forego the rears.

hope this helps.

[ May 03, 2003, 23:08: Message edited by: shiny_car ]