I am looking to purchase a new head unit. I recently bought a used 99 VW Passat. The previous owner had replaced the stock HU with some sort of generic Sony Xplod HU. Seeing that it is probably worse than the stock HU, I am looking to replace it. The two brands I am considering our Eclipse and Alpine and it seems everyone recommends them as well.
My question is which do you all think is better. I understand that it really depends on what model of the two brands you are talking about and the rest of your set-up, but you have to have some ideas on which you all prefer overall.
At first I was leaning towards an Eclipse 8454 because it will match up well with the JL Audio 300/4 which will be powering my Dynaudio 240 Gt's. However, now I am leaning more towards an Alpine 9835 because I have an i-pod which I use most of the time instead of bringing all my cds in the car and would like to purchase the KCA 420i when it released so I can hook up my ipod directly to the HU.
I am really looking forward to hearing what people have to say.
To be honest, these are both very exquisit head units. If it were me, I'd end up with the eclipse head unit. I've found that just the overall look of the Alpine Head units wasn't impressive, and their controls are somewhat confusing compared to some of the other head unit brands. Therefore, I've never personally been a huge fan of the Alpine Head units.
Although I would like to say congrats on your selection of speakers and amplifiers... both look very nice.
I believe that the Eclipse has a higher voltage preout on it than the alpine which may save you money on an additional line driver if you want to get optimum performance out of this system(and by that I mean keep the gains as low as you can to reduce distortion).
Either way you'll be happy... but the Eclipse Headunit would probably be my choice. I've had much better experiences with the Eclipses.