if its who i'm thinking about, yeppers... seen his kicks Adam? i think they are worth more than my car!

 

I've got an Alpine deck currently - and I wasn't looking to swap it out (I've got the same deck in my Pathfinder). It's a 7894, and it doesn't have any digital outputs.
As a matter of fact... while I'm no expert on this year's line... I believe it used to be that there was only one model - the F#1 deck - that had digital outputs anyway?
MDXman lives 15 minutes from me.. he's got that deck, and the PXA-H900. Nice setup, but pretty bad on a bang-for-the-buck standpoint... and not important for competition, but the deck didn't do MP3's either... and my whole punk rock collection that I used to have on cassette tapes when I was a kid I burned to MP3 discs so I wouldn't lose them.
Of the H701, you are saying?
I haven't heard that... but obviously I do need a silent car (which I don't have right now).
Noise is usually one of those things that is not caused by your componentry, however.. so I am a bit skeptical about claims like this.
In other words, lots of people buy "high end" gear, and expect that to solve all their problems... and are disappointed when they still have noise from their shadetree install, etc. [img]graemlins/freak.gif[/img]
Very interesting suggestion!
No one sells Altomobile around here... unless you know someone in Southern Ontario, reasonably close to the US border / peace bridge at the end of the QEW?
As I mentioned before, this is going to be a sponsored car... and this shop is looking to expand into some very high-end offerings (I'll keep the board updated with the uber-high-end listening room going in... Audison Thesis amps, Utopia Be components, etc. ).
I've got some pull as to what lines... I'll have to suggest this one.
I grabbed their lit at CES this year, and I've always been intrigued by their flat piston sub (check out the rear suspension on that sub... find it? ).
Anyway...
True.
SX amps now... H700 later if justified.
Or Altomobile later if justified.

My only hesitation is that I really haven't had any time at all with any SX amps at all... to say nothing of hearing them in a high-end SQ car.

It's difficult to audition amps to begin with... because there's SO much in the signal chain that can detract from the sound.
In auditioning, you can't ever hear a bad install and blame it on the amps.. you just dont' know.
All you can know is if you do hear a stellar install, you know that amplifier wasn't a bottleneck... and that's a good thing.
But a pain in the butt for auditioning.

I'm still leaning towards the SX's fundamentally, from a practicality standpoint.
Biggest bang-for-the-buck for sure.

 

Sounds like fun...
How are you doing the testing?
I have an oscilliscope I could bring to aid in setting gain adjustments uniformly.

The only thing is, you only have high-end amps here.
I'd hope you wouldn't here any differences... if so, that speaks poorly for one of them.

It would be interesting to compare a more modest amplifier - or one that wouldn't be expected to be decent.
For example, last year I picked up an Earthquake PHD2 to play with... and a matching PH2.5 (a 2 channel amp from the same series).
While the PHD2 sounds like mud as you might expect, what I didn't expect was that this PH2.5 sounds really nice.

What might be even more interesting would be to compare something really cheap... a Profile amp, for example.
Let me know, if you are interested, I can grab something from our inventory... that would add an interesting aspect to the testing, I think.

Regardless, I'm definitely interested in seeing how well the SX amp compares to the VRx amp - that being the one I'm most familiar with (after Audison's SRx line).
Tru and DLS we haven't gotten our hands on yet, so while their reputation preceeds them... devil's advocacy is too much in my blood to even think about committing to something purely on reputation.

 

As for the testing, we can throw some 'other' stuff in there... i have a crunch amp, Plow has a hifonics and an Xtant laying around, i'm sure Eddy has a couple other amps too... lots to play around with. btw i also feel your pain on the comparison... i'd hate to see the look on plow's face when eh can't tell which amp his Tru is or he chooses some other amp as sounding better than his!!
both Eddy and Plow have osciloscopes... but would you have access to an RTA? i have the Altomobile and Plow has the H700... oh boy oh boy oh boy! i'm getting a hard on!

 

When is this test Mr.Marco?

 

tentatively for April 2nd but most likely for the 9th so there is more time to organise.