I need you opinion gents! I figure both brands have their destinct sound characteristics. Between two of these units, which will have a brighter sound?
I remember having Alpine 7995, and everything sounded excellent on it. Since then I went with Eclipse 8445. Eclipse seems to be picky with recording quality of tracks. Few songs sound amazing, but most sound pretty bad(dull). Also, Eclipse does not seem to have a good mp3 processor, as all mp3's sound like poo. Now I am looking to go back to Alpine and get 9887. Hoping to get brighter sound overall, and less picky unit, which will play mp3's properly. I have played with Eclipse DSP, and still don't like the sound. I listen to Trance and House, and think Eclipse is just not the right head unit with my soft dome tweeters.

 

the unit 8445, had a poo sounding mp3 section, absolutely! But that unit is now 4 years old. The new series sound great. The use DSS (digital servo system) that moves the laser up and down to account for the thickness the CDRs and bit rate of the mp3 as well. I found the mid-bass lacking at 250-400 hz on Apline Decks, other than that, they sound great. But 3 year warranty for the Eclipse is also alot of value...m 2 cents...

 

I have no opinion BUT

All recordings dont sound good, many (maybe most) sound like crap or have significant recording deficiencies. If your system tells you this congrats you have lost your innocence and have found out how much information you have been missing. The Eclipse was giving you enough information to identify these faults, the eclipse had/ has good to great detail resolution.

Does that mean the Eclipse is BETTER than the Alpine? Not necessarily, the Eclipse was certainly giving an indication and it may have been due to a tonal exaggeration. BUT if the Alpine ALWAYS sounded good then it is not resolving all the warts in a recording that the Eclipse was. I find many recordings have a unpleasant HF edge to it

This is a problem for all the audio geeks out there. A never ending search for more information from the CD putting you closer and closer to accuracy (knowing you cant stand the sound of 1/3 of your music collection) or do you go with a system with a good (but less accurate) sound and listen to your entire music collection.

If you felt one was too bright or too dull... then it probably was, that is why these things come with tone controls.

 

I've got an 8445 and I love it. It's all in the ear and the install I suppose...

 

Do you have hard tweeters? I figure Eclipse has done a bit of research on their car audio components. All their speakers, like components and 6x9's etc, that I have heard sounded extremely bright, thus I think their head units are toned down and neutral.

 

It's too bad about the Eclipse. I always liked Alpine, and was just curious about the Eclipse line. BTW, Alpine was 2002 unit and mp3 sounded amazing on it, only drawback it was slow on forwarding them.

 

I currently am running an Eclipse cd3100 and I am very pleased with the sound quality. If you are using mp3's no matter what deck you use is going to sound crappy.

 

Ditto that. If you have the clarity, some of your music will sound crappy, but the really well done recordings will sound that much better. Or you can go with less clarity, and everything will sound ok. MP3 is a comletely different issue though.

 

I rarely listen to mp3's, so I dont really mind if Eclipse deck does not play them well. It was just another beef I had with the unit. Anyways, I am going to try new tweeters. I think I am going to get aluminum CDT DRT-26, and see how it works out with the Eclipse. I may just hate my present tweets which are teteron.