Please Help: High-End car audio

Swampwalker is right. An increase in output isn't going to help, and mounting location and the quality of the installation are paramount to the sound. Partnered with a 35watt pioneer and BA pro 6.5s, I too have an Eclipse. My tonal balance is weak right now (xover needs adjustment), but the imaging and soundstage is as much as you could expect for this price range. Ezmeralda, from how you have recently described your sound, it really seems that it is a problem with your speakers and/or amp. Maybe a defect, maybe bad mojo. I'd go to a couple of car audio places and have them check it out, especially if this is the first time you have mounted seperates yourself.

Thanks for all the support/advice, at this point its basically see if I can trade them in for something else, or get money back and maybe pay a restocking fee. The 6.5" mids and 1" tweets are mounted on the rear deack in the factory 6*9 openings. I was going for the factory look and so they are hidden under the factory grills firing into the rear window. The front 6.5" are mounted in the door panels where the old 6.5" were and the tweets are mounted on the sills at the top of the door where the side mirror is on the other side. I didn't mess with angling them, I figured just getting the tweets up there would be a step up from anything stuck down in the door. The guy at one of the other car audio places in town thought it sounded fine and said the whole installation looked better than what was in his car. When I asked my sister to listen she described it as "tinny and everything sounds on top" (which I agree with). It was my first component driver/ext. amp install, but I had done other cars in the past. I'll admit the amp isn't the best in the world, but I figured any power amp, and especailly this one, would give better sound than any in-dash chip amp. And on the same token any decent componenet drivers w/ an ext. X-over will sound better than some coax's. And it all did, things just went wrong at the head unit. For the same, if not less, money as the eclipses I could get an Audio Alchemy DLC, a power invertor, and a sherwood unit with a coax output to run into my tube dac and come out with better sound by far. Its more elaborate than I wanted and I'm still tempted try Nakamichi. Whatever ends up in the dash can't sound any worse than what I have now. The factory unit, even with its noise, had more body in the music. I expressed my concerns to the dealer and they are going to look at it monday, they want to try a new amp in, but I don't want to spend more money on an amp. I'll bring in my home audio DAC, transport and preamp and run them through to see how much difference the front end makes.

Help is spelled as ' PPI' in high-end car audio. Art series ones. I don't know if these are discontinued but you can always get in the used market. They areworth every penny. In car EQ and sound delay is a must. How powerful is your battery/alternator?, Install a capacitor to store power.

PPI is not making any new products and the art series have been discontinued for about 3 years now, however if you are lucky enough to find them they are very good amps. PPI is not making ANYTHING at this time and there last creation amps had beaucoup problems so stay clear of them. Also worth mentioning are the Audison Thesis series(they are no longer imported) if you could find a HR-100 buy it plain and simple it is the best car audio amp ever. The HV sidici and the HV trenta are also terrific amps if you can find them. There was also mention of eclipse stay away from used eclipse and this has nothing to do with ESN, some models from year to year have tons of problems and eclipse is less then accomidating with any problems you have. That is not to say they will not take care of it but it is not uncommon for 10+weeks of turn around time. Currently I have a out of production Clarion deck and zapco signal proccessors and amps(comp. series of course) with focal drivers and custom made passive X-overs. Yeah I do know a thing or two about this stuff my best friend owns I respectable/successful car stereo shop. So I have seen/heard just about everything. Best of luck and if you have any questions feel free to ask :-)tim on that note I am liquadating my car system and everything is going cheap(I bought at wholesale and am willing to take a loss) most of the stuff is new sealed in the box if any one is interested send me an email and I will give you the specifics.

Ez: I strongly recommend that you get your home gear from the house and drag out the extension cord and replace the head unit with your home stuff. I would also hook up the front speakers to your home 2 channel amp. These two tests will tell you where the bad sound is coming from.

The speakers you got from Zalytron are built by Focal but are not the best Focal makes for the car. On the other hand it is probaly not the speakers that are the source. It is probably the mounting & location of the drivers.

Please preform the above tests so we can then recomend new electronics. BTW older Honda's heads were from Alpine and were pretty good cassette decks! I think the CD units may be from Clarion. (I could find out if you care)

Chris