I have a 860 and its the best HU ive had overall. INcluding alpine and eclipse decks. I love its looks and colors and especiall sound quality and the EQ and controls are so easy not to mention a great price. You can get them for $309 from electronicgiant
go for it, those are the most popular HU's at the audioshop i go to. although i do not care for the bug button in the off-left-center. i would rather have two knobs.
i have heard differing opinions on the new button setup. some say it is easy to simple and easy to use, and others say it is cumbersome, and mess up while tuning etc. but other than that if it was me, and it was in my budget, i would definitely buy it.
For another $30 you could get a Clarion DXZ955MC, for an even cheaper $320, you could get the DXZ855MP. Because the 860 has a 24 bit Burr-Brown DAC in it, you wouldn't let me compare it to any single-bit units...so I won't, though the Alpine 9835 would be a good contender (plus, the Alpine sells for quite a bit cheaper through ebay).
Also, the Nakamichi CD400 is worth looking into at only $275.
A lot of people like Pioneer because they offer 6 Volt preouts, while Alpine offers 2 Volts in most of their HU'S, and 4 Volts in their higher end HU's.
This feature allows the amp to run under less stress, and therefore you get a stronger signal, and higher output.
Basicly every system has a "pre-amp". An amplifier will be more effective if the signal that it recieves is greater than lesser. So a pre-amp does just that. It sends the signal to the amp(via the RCA jacks). The RCA jacks were intended as low voltage sources. Thats why some amps have the option of low input or high input. But, even at RCA low voltage circuitry there is competition. Some companies choose to offer higher voltage in these circuits.
I have a Pioneer Premier 860 that according to specs has 6.5 preouts.
Got it hooked up to two amps, both Hifonics (yes I realize not the greatest but best I could afford)
Both have adjustable input levels, the mono one for my sub actually goes to 9v and the four channel for my other speakers goes to 6v.
I had the 4 channel set to about 2 volts (actually the dumb people at Circuit City set it that way) and it kept shutting off in protected mode.
I turned the voltage to 6 where it should be and no problems, just have to turn the head unit up a little higher.
By the way, I really don't like to trash anybody but I am done with Circuit City installers. I have had a lot done by them, in different cars, both at the Dayton, (OHIO) mall location and the (Longview) Texas location and they both have not really impressed me. Kind of cocky because you don't know enough to install it yourself (like me) but enough to pi$$ me off because I AM smart enough to catch it when they do something wrong (for example the guy who put in my $500 Viper remote start alarm did not bother to hook up the kill switch for the hood OR the valet switch and the guy in Texas hooked up the headunit remote switch to turn on the amps whenever there was power, not when the head unit was on/off.
I have a Pioneer Premier 860 that according to specs has 6.5 preouts.
Got it hooked up to two amps, both Hifonics (yes I realize not the greatest but best I could afford)
Both have adjustable input levels, the mono one for my sub actually goes to 9v and the four channel for my other speakers goes to 6v.
I had the 4 channel set to about 2 volts (actually the dumb people at Circuit City set it that way) and it kept shutting off in protected mode.
I turned the voltage to 6 where it should be and no problems, just have to turn the head unit up a little higher.
By the way, I really don't like to trash anybody but I am done with Circuit City installers.
I have had a lot done by them, in different cars, both at the Dayton, (OHIO) mall location and the (Longview) Texas location and they both have not really impressed me.
Kind of cocky because you don't know enough to install it yourself (like me) but enough to pi$$ me off because I AM smart enough to catch it when they do something wrong (for example the guy who put in my $500 Viper remote start alarm did not bother to hook up the kill switch for the hood OR the valet switch and the guy in Texas hooked up the headunit remote switch to turn on the amps whenever there was power, not when the head unit was on/off.oth
In both cases I had to return to have them do it right.
