Please Help: High-End car audio

Speaking of Lexus, they've got a new one out that has a 100% Levinson sound system. The Levinson folk were on board from the early design stages of the car and have even included specially treated seats and such for their acoustic properties. By all accounts, it is meant to be quite special (though I surely haven't heard it, nor do I ever expect to...). Point is, assuming you're not about to go out and buy the car to get the stereo, Levinson might have some gear and some technology developed (though who knows whether it is available other then through Lexus) that may be worth looking into. I'd be curious to see whether the stuff is available other than for cars that were specifically designed for it...

Sorry to whoever I offended, thanks for the negative feedback, you made my day.

A few years ago (1996), I had a great car stereo that came close to achieving an audiophile's ideals. It had an alpine head unit and digital time alignment processor feeding. I had 10 Dynaudio speakers in the car and had custom pods built for ideal positioning of the tweeter and dome midrange. The digital time alignment processor was used to independently delay the signal coming from the left pods and midbass to give good imaging, even in a car. I had all Xtant amps and an Xtant parametric eq (necessary in a car environment). The parts for the system cost about $10k and the installation was another $7k.

A while ago, I went to the Lexus dealer and listened to the ML system. It wasn't as cool to look at, but to my ears and memory sounded pretty darn close to that custom system. I'm sure ML is also using digiral soundfield processing in the Lexus.

First, a question; Who installed the gear ? Even great gear will sound lousy if not properly installed. Second , I think you need some professional help .i.e Peter Lufrano @ www.theautophile.com - he has helped many who seek real high end sound in a car and he carries the best gear. Very responsive to email.

FROM POSTER: Firstly, thank you all for the responses. To the last response: the audioshop I bought them at installed it. I figured I wouldn't mess with doing both the indash changer and the main unit, it took them about two hours plus it extended my warranty.

The Xtant stuff looks good. Orginally this whole thing was supposed to be cheap, I mean; the Focal drivers were on clearance for $129 a set (6.5" mids 6c211s1 polyflex with TN46 tweets), not a bad price by any stretch, and the 10" Focal sub was $60 11V5501, all new from Zalytron. Just a hair over $300 for all the drivers, I was havin fun for cheap. The little 5 channel soundstream amp was on closeout for $149 and it fit a cavity underneath my trunk floor above the spare tire perfectly so I gave up no cargo space and the installation was competely hidden. I figure 35 watts of reall power, not chip amp power, and 70 for the sub would give me musical level. At that point I figured I needed an aftermarket unit since I wanted something better than what was in the Honda (a factory cd player). However, the eclipse doesn't sound better, just different, and a different I don't prefer. And to address resulta4sures post-I couldn't agree more, its in the DAC. With my Van Alstine Omega IV I didn't even think about the $1,000 as soon as I put it in, nor with my Fanfare tuner. But the Eclipse isn't cuttin it. If someone wants them-I'm probabl willing to sell: 55430 head unit with 5962 in-dash changer, two days old. I'm guessing that I can't do anyworse so I might as well take my losses now and try a Nakamichi from a place that will let me return it. If the Nak does the job it stays. If it sucks, well then I'm toying with the idea of mounting my old Audio by Van Alstine Fet/Valve dac under the seat, finding a head unit with a coax digital out (sherwood makes one), and building a small audiophile grade kit preamp for the other DIN opening, I know the last option will definately work since that tube DAC sounds nice. It may just be my personal subjective tastes, but an EQ isn't the answer. Bits are bits to be converted over into an analog wave form. Anything other than the original signal is distortion. However, there is always the issue of what type and were that distortion is, and this is probably where some subjectivity comes into play and maybe why I don't like these units. Who knows, maybe it is the amp, but In my experience whenever there is an upgrade things as a whole sound better even though the limitations of another component may be revealed. I'll look into the Autophile.