What is the objective, best stereo head to purchase right now?

>meme
I'm 100% positive you have no idea what that word means.

I've been looking at this recently

kenwood.com/usa/car/excelon/kdc-x998

Is this a good head unit or am I being a baka? Is is compatible with a Yr 2000 Outback?

Pic unrelated

>but cars are not the place for high quality audio.
I've heard some pretty great car setups that sound better than expensive home systems. There are some advantages cars have over home systems too. IASCA is one of those groups that organize car meets and audio competitions. The higher-end car audio shops in my area haved worked on cars for those competitions or demonstrations where car owners show off their creations to other car owners.

The constructions that people bring to IASCA competition can be quite elaborate and imaginative. Many times, people install false bottoms in their trunk in order to hide the large amount of gear installed as well as the extra battery. There are extras such as lights, the ability to have moving parts that configure themselves out of storage into working position, and various remote controllers. Some people will rebuild true custom cases for commercial audio gear and remake custom shapes for remote controls. That necessitates buying multiple remotes can cutting them apart as well as building from scratch custom buttons for either a dash mount or the remote. Thus, competition is not about who can buy their way to victory by having a professional high-end audio car shop work on the car. It is often about how much detail and effort the car owner puts into the car.

Ha, it's bad enough that the manufacturer of my car uses two batteries due to the large amount of electronics gear. One battery under the front hood, and one battery in a hidden space in the trunk. I wouldn't want to upset my car's ecosystem, so I'd have to install a 3rd AGM high-drain battery if I wanted a car I could take to show off at an IASCA meet. It wouldn't be enough to compete with all the autism (ie work ethic) the proud car audio owners put into their cars, but at least it would be some baby steps.

iasca.com

Even simple-looking systems can win competition awards for sound purity if things are properly matched to the interior's sound environment. It depends on the competition category, but stealth audio is one of the highest competitive areas. It typically involves remaking parts of the interior such as the pillars, liner, and even seats as the way sound is absorbed or reflected affects the sound experience.

It also doesn't need to look like a space capsule or airline cockpit full of controls for all the components and amplifiers.

The factory unit with a cassette adapter.

Alpine CDE-143BT

>The factory unit with a cassette adapter.

Unfortunately, no cassette unit in this Lexus car audio system. So it won't play your casette tapes.

(OP)
>cars are not the place for high quality audio.

At least this car has interesting head rests.

"""Often car audio enthusiasts are brought into the hobby by attending car audio competitions or seeing competition vehicles in the magazines. They see these beautiful installs and they want to have one that's just as good. This is exactly the reason that car stereo competition organizations exist, to bring in more customers to the car audio stores. This is why you'll see most shows in the parking lot of your local car audio shop. The competition brings in spectators and those spectators often become customers of the shop after seeing the work they can do on the vehicles being displayed.

"Many enthusiasts then get the mistaken impression that also want to compete when in fact what they really want is a "competition quality" audio system."""

caraudiohelp.com/car_audio_competition.html

Hooning with your car audio instead of being on the autocross course? It's a different approach to the car hobby.

auto.howstuffworks.com/under-the-hood/aftermarket-accessories-customization/car-audio-competition.htm

Oem or gtfo. Aftermarket head units are all rice

Consider suicide
>shitskins proud of being obnoxious retards

>What is the objective, best stereo head to purchase right now?

Your vague question opens the door for too many useless answers. There is no one best setup good for all cars in all situations. You even set up a contradiction in your question by requiring "objective" instead of "subjective". That's because the only correct answer will always be a subjective one because the type of car environment needs to be part of the equation. The number of speakers and their types that your head unit must drive is another concern. Then there are the looks as some head units look very neon-like with their controls while others have a conservative faceplate with a more elaborate touch screen come out for all the various commands.

The safest answer to OP's question will always be to get the highest options package the OEM car manufacturer provides for that vehicle.

>HURRR rap music base base base HURRR

Here is ongoing installation in a camaro of an apple IPAD as the touchscreen and video controller interface for the car's media and environmental systems based upon software. One nice thing is that you can change the looks of controls based upon your mood.

More info on the car audio system build at one of the many camaro fan forums. Forgot the thread name:
camaro5.com

>at least its loud and i got that bass to piss off the crackers around me

>I love my pioneer prs80
Well, that lacks options. Alpine displaced Pioneer in that category for small and medium cars such as FiatDaimler models. Of course, add a few emps and speakers too. Trunk space is preserved by flushmounting gear in false-bottoms and sides. Cover boards are placed on the sides and bottom to protect the gear.when putting cargo into the trunk.

This car build went further by incorporating features of home audio gear such as automated tuning for the soundspace. Thus, the car can adjust not only for all doors closed, but for when all doors and windows are open as well. This car is perhaps a bit unfair as it was worked upon by Tomlinson Holman who was one of the engineers for THX. Alpine licensed the technology and incorporated it into their high-end units as Audyssey MultEQ. Their old PXA-H100 sound processor unit is an example.

Why mention this old car audio stuff from mny years ago? Because it's now way more affordable than cutting-edge new stuff. Besides, a lot of Veeky Forums seems to be stuck using made-in-china rehashes of 1990's audio tech anyways. It may be a 2016 chinese unit, but the tech inside is just 1990's amp on an integrated circut with external cheapie final driver transistors on a heatsink.

>OEM
>OEM

(OP)
>Color controls mean I can make it amber/orange to match my gauges.

This is part of the car audio system for a
Mitsubishi Lancer back in 2010. The owner
is probably a tweaker or tuner. I wonder
what it looks like now?

People sure get interesting colour choices
with these premium car audio parts.

>What is the objective, best stereo head to purchase right now?

I'll have what that texas girl is having.

>at least its loud and i got that bass to piss off the crackers around me

Cracker Barrel-Rolling aside, there are car audio decibel loudness competitions to see who is loudest. There are various websites documenting various local competitions, but the website below has of the more extravagant competitions listed.

intenseexperiences.com/db-drag-racing.html

termpro.com/

There are multiple dB Drag racing competitions and events held in the U.S. and throughout the world these days (audio equipment companies like JBL and Pioneer spend $5 million yearly sponsoring them.) The dB Drag Spring Break Nationals take place in Daytona, Florida, and bring out many of the sports’ heavyweights.

One such heavyweight, Gorman Cassidy of Montgomery, Alabama, had the stereo in his 1990 Chevy Astro van hit 168.8 decibels. By way of comparison, a fire engine siren hits 120 decibels, and an airplane typically hits 90 decibels.

But that’s not even a record.

The dB drag racing world record is held by Scott Owens of Gilbert, Arizona, whose Ford F-250 hit a eardrum, lung AND bone-shattering 179.6 decibels. That’s about as loud as a Saturn rocket.

Look at all the whites

youtube.com/watch?v=Lh_WvMXH2Aw

I have the factory stereo in my RX300, and play music by way of the 5 disc cd changer or bluetooth cassette adapter.

The sound stage is quite nice with the factory tweeters on the dash. I hope I never again go back to a car without at least one set of speakers in a decent location.

Oh wow, way to live up to the uptight, no-fun having white guy stereotype. MFW have met zero niggers with loud systems in their cars, all have been white and very invested in making their car sound nice even when it's loud.

Have fun with your poor-ass 8-track in your shitty old chevy, too bad you'll never know the pleasure of listening to sweet tunes on your commute.

JVC KW AV50

its clean, its loud as fuck, it supports anything you would want to do, it has the orange that my scion tc had on the dash lights so it looked stock higher trim, it also has the ability to turn the screen off with a button press and dim the display after a certain time and it can be upgraded to support gps and serius and hd radio

it also has a usb plug hidden in the back for your music and shit

i used to watch chappels show in my scion tc while speeding with my friends, shit was cash

>i used to watch chappels show in my scion tc while speeding with my friends,

Ahh, my state laws prevent drivers from having any screen that may be positioned to allow the driver to watch video while driving unless it is OEM or DOT federally approved safety equipment. If I had your install, I'd have to hide it somehow from the dealer or shops licensed to perform auto modifications. They're required by state law to report illegal modifications. If it was the dealer, they'd probably hold my car for the state to tow it to impound since an illegal car cannot be driven. This new policy happened with our republican governor who stepped up enforcement of fines that make money and punished criminals.

Most of the nicest installs try to hide the wires. But not everyone tries to have symmetry of the subwoofers because that is not necessary for such low frequencies. Instead, more interesting arrangements can be done which take advantage of that fact.

>Is is compatible with a Yr 2000 Outback?
If you paired it with this subwoofer you might be able to blow out some windows in the Year 2000 Subaru Outback.

Can you stop talking to yourself? Thanks.

You're that censorship guy that posts in threads. Telling others to stop posting what you don't like.
You're worse than alphonse and the other trolls.
At least they're not fans of censorship.

How are these big audio systems powered? Does everyone have to install a whole bunch of extra car batteries?

Yeah. Big batteries and upgraded electronics, new alternators.

>Big batteries and upgraded electronics, new alternators.
Besides that, large capacitors in the farad range are used near the amplifiers. They supply on demand current for sharp peak loads and reduce the amount of voltage drop due the resistance of the wires between the batteries and the amps.

ive got an alpine head unit with a 60gb ipod, my friend gave it to me out of his 92 eg gsr from tx its mad jdm, ive seen them used in alot of sports cars like ferrari or lambos

>new alternators.

Some people replace their alternator with a bigger high-power one. To help cool it down, the case may be changed to allow more air flow around the windings as with this baffled surround.

Or they use TWO heavy-duty alternators instead of just one. This one has a more interesting mount so he's probably one of those that likes to pop the hood at meets.

Or they use THREE alternators when two are not enough. How do they find room under the hood? There's no space under mine for even two alternators.

These are nice black alternators. If cleaned and shined up, they would look quite black.

Those black alternators remind me of this red alternator which also has those nice cut grooves. It's clearly a lot smaller and of different design. But apparently, people who have the money to pay for styling do have the chance to have normally clunky-looking parts like alternators look a lot better under the hood. Even those serpentine belts can be different colors such as purple, blue, or bright green.

Damn, three alternators sounds like a clusterfvck. It must be one giant cable going from the hood to all the amps. I've seen some 500 ampere fuses and they aren't small. The slightest short and there would be so much power available that maybe the fuse wouldn't even blow because the melting car panel melted away before the fuse could blow.

It's time for a car fire.

>blast music with nigger bass just to piss people off

Who /devilish/ here?

>What stereo head do you currently own?
Actually, many of the modern brand name head units are fairly similar in features. It will be the color, looks of the light placement, and control types that are subjective to each purchaser.

Get one that has a sturdy non-gimmick touchscreen. The blend off controls between the regular controls and the screen will serve you well. The touchscreen should let you adjust equalizer settings for either side.

Get one with a removable faceplace. If you take it with you, prying your dash apart for the unit is useless as the code key is mated to the base unit.

>What is the objective, best stereo head to purchase right now?

It's ironic that in "better" car audio systems, the head unit cost is pretty small compared to everything else.

You'll probably have to buy one of the unified remotes unless the others are all RF remotes. I've seen units elsewhere in the car have an IR sensor extension (designed to have a long extension cord) into the cabin so that the remote could control them when the car is moving. Otherwise, you'd have to get out, lift the hatchback and aim the IR remote at the units. That was two of my old pioneer units which after all the years are still working today.

Some people use four alternators, lots of batteries, and plenty of big multi-farad capacitors with their audio systems. At some point, the speakers are so large that they take on the aspect of being a substantial and heavy mechanical system.

How many in Veeky Forums use liquid-cooled speakers in their cars?

>I love my pioneer prs80
I don't need a 3rd party head unit.

My 2016 OEM factory unit (full options package version) with 9 speakers (and subwoofer) sounds great. The sound is tight and not muddy. The frequency range seems balanced. There is enough bass that some songs give a physical thump feeling in the chest. The bass doesn't rattle the trunk lid like I've seen in some cars. Of course, I can replace all those things after the head unit with 3rd party aftermarket items if I want. But the head unit is fine as it is.

Factory head units (and their speaker setups) have come a long ways since the bad old days when people spurned them.

Besides the alternators, having enough batteries is important since alternators don't provide a perfectly smooth operating voltage/current and capacitors by themseleves aren't enough to filter the DC output of the alternators.

...

If I put an aftermarket stereo in my miata will the aerial still automatically extent and descend when it's turned on and off?

I'm scared of fucking this up

>blast music with nigger bass just to piss people off
>Who /devilish/ here?

Aim this at your neighbor's house? The problem is that your neighbor knows where you live.

.

>If I put an aftermarket stereo in my miata will the aerial still automatically extent and descend when it's turned on and off?
You haven't switched to hidden antennas? I guess I come from the wrong era since I don't know if having antennas come up or go down is part of the Miata's charm. But if you're using aux, CD, generic satellite radio, sirius, or a thumb drive, then you don't need to have the antenna go up or down.

Moar please

When you've got enough bass to make your sheet metal buzz, you've gone too far.

Does anybody make a head unit with a CD changer anymore? I've been trying to find one for a while now.

So, an 8" paper cone woofer from a Chinese flea market is too much?

have manufacturers effectively murdered DIN (ISO 7736)?

>have manufacturers effectively murdered DIN (ISO 7736)
It seems more and more use universal connectors on back but DIN is still alive for 2016. The best head units have an aux input not just in back, but also on front and also take USB. So if your head unit doesn't have an aux/usb on front at least, look for a different one.

My head unit is a bit stupid. For USB, it only accepts MP3 and ignores audio tracks from FLAC, avi, mkv, OGM, or other audio formats.

>subs facing passengers

For your Twingo, yes.

>What is the objective, best stereo head to purchase right now?
In previous car audio threads, a lot of posters strongly wanted non-flashy basic units. They said they were sick of the flashy units with lots of lights and touch screens. This head unit fits their needs as they specified.

If you're looking for cheap and non-flashy, this stereo head unit is on sale now for $17.99 if you are signed up at Frys.com for a promocode. It has front inputs for USB, SD card, and AUX. It supplies 20 watts per channel and uses DIN connectors. Normal price $29.

Front AUX Input
20W x 4 Max Power
Half-Size DIN Depth
FM Radio with 18 memory Stations
4 Channel Audio Output
Pre-amplified Line-Out
Electronic Audio Controls

frys.com/product/7172722

>So, an 8" paper cone woofer from a Chinese flea market is too much?
Nylon cones from china are also disgusting. Any type of nylon + polymer means avoid it.

Whew. For a minute there I wasn't sure if my MTX9500s would pass the test.

To the chinese, when they combine things like nylon and "polymer", you never know if they ground up recycled plastic scrap into powder and let it melt into hot nylon. They have a history of recycling scrap of all kinds into various products.

>The factory unit with a cassette adapter.

Modern cars make it hard to use those mechanically interfaced head units now even if you wanted to. Pushing a button to mechanically force the radio dial needle to move to the desired station (and thus physically dial in the station's frequency) doesn't work with my voice-operated car which can access everything ranging from Aux to Bluetooth devices and everything in the OEM head unit of course. It can even search songs on my USB thumb drive (under voice control) by genre, artist, song name, or descriptor if the songs have those properly labeled. So it's good to properly label each song with a MP3 labeling software or use microsoft's operating system to clumsily do that for the few label items it allows you to edit (although it can sort very many of them).

>Does anybody make a head unit with a CD changer anymore? I've been trying to find one for a while now.
Please evolve Mr Dinosaur. Go MP3 USB thumb drive with a modern head unit.

Even in the age of CDs, CD changers were usually mounted to the underside of the rear dash. There isn't enough real-estate on the dash to support a CD changer unit ever since Nakamichi (of Japan) died as a company. They were strong in the CD changer days with 7 disc changers that were revealed by the flip down control panel. I had one. But then the market moved away to FM modulators then to Aux and USB. Nakamichi was caught looking away and they sort of refused to change, so they got bulldozed over as the dinosaur as the marketplace evolved. Evolve or Die. They gambled on remaining with CD and lost to all the media pirates using MP3 on memory devices.

I sort of felt Nakamichi's pain. I had a Pioneer 50+1 CD changer in my old car's trunk and time has passed it by. It was cutting edge for its time since it had voice control back when that was all new. I went all stealth as my dash looked all factory. I installed its Mic in my driver's side visor, a subtle knee-operated button pad on the side of the lower console.

My visor also required me to learn fabric stitching since I also installed a pioneer head-up display not in the usual place but along the face of the visor. At night, its gentle display glow barely lit up my face, but I wonder if other drivers who saw my face thought it was vanity? It wasn't that I wanted to show my face to everyone. The HUD was available if I flicked my eyes up to look at it directly. So, I could run the OEM CD player in the dash or access the entire other system in the car. I had to use a commercial shop because only they had all those bridging electronic modules (available to the trade only) to interface OEM and Pioneer together.

Even without the speakers, this car looks pretty striking due to all the extra curvy lines. The contrast of the black door seals and the sunny yellow paint is very striking. One thing I especially like is how this car didn't apply surface treatings to the black surfaces to make them shine more. It's a more natural wholesome black look than the artificially shiny black.

Are those tires the Continental ContiExtremeContact DWS types? At first glance, they fooled me with the similarity due to the asymmetrical curved crosshatch. On closer look, they are different because the Conti DWS has narrower crosshatch treads closer to the center and the circumferential tread is also different. It looks more like someone tried to copy the best features of the Conti DWS. Any idea what brand and model of tires these are?

She likes the audio so much her hair is standing on end?

Actually, if the air was just moving in and out, it wouldn't look like this because there's even verticle movement. Her hair is also vertically arranged by all the sound waves, so that suggests a nicely distributed sound field is emanating from the back of the vehicle.

Her hair acts like it is floating on waves of sound.

Just get a Pioneer DEH-X5*** series for 150 and enjoy
>bluetooth handsfree and music playback with memory support for 3 devices
>AUX
>USB
>iPhone + Android MTP support
>Color customisation (2 part RGB, brightness, dimmer setting)
>radio
>shitload of audio controls, 4 RCA out (rear/rear + Subw/rear + subw/subw)

I see no point in getting a shit headunit for thirty bucks for your daily, especially since a little more investment brings so much more comfort and features along with a high quality product. Especially if you don't have the most high-end car, at least make driving it more fun by upgrading the audio a bit, you can get a speaker + amp + HU combo for around 500 that will be worth every penny if you drive even a bit more than 15k in a year.

That's really amazing.

Her hair is not blowing in front of her face or behind her head. The hair is levitating up into the air at the sides of her head from the sound waves.

Picture: A japanese taxi. Some have media advertising for the passengers or may have music videos and TV shows.

got this older alpine for dirt cheap

someone broke into the car and stole it

itt was a good headunit. i even found it online being resold for like 6x what i paid, but i had no Serial number or bill to prove it was mine, but i could recognize the scratches and stuff

>but i could recognize the scratches and stuff
That darn eBay. When it first opened, a lot of our best library books would get stolen and then resold on eBay by teenagers wanting to make money.

Our local laws regulating pawn shops selling stolen goods don't apply to ebay resellers, so it's a free for all in my state. One ebay reseller based in my area had an ebay store and ebay auctions. The hottest items he would only sell on the store to out of state people far away, thus there was no chance a victim or local sting operation would catch him. His weak spot was that he had to meet with trusted sources of iPads, laptops, and other goods.

That ebay fence got caught our local police at his minivan where he was picking up merchandise from resellers. He would only buy from trusted resellers who would not out a bro. But there were two black "kids" (they were kids but were much bigger and more muscular than me) who messed up their snatch and run (standard method: walk past you, turn fast to punch your head HARD, grab your laptop, backpack, or purse) at a library near the park.

Alert bystanders stopped the one who snatched the laptop so he dropped it and took off. Although with hoodies, they were seen getting on bikes a block away where someone was guarding them. There was a security camera in that area and the bike make/sizes were ID'ed. Months later, the computer gets a hit on black kids riding bikes of that description and size going to a minivan. The police show up and the van was discovered to have suspicious quantities of cells, tablets, laptops, lcd monitors, and electronics inside. One less ebay seller of stolen merchandise and one new felon in jail unjustly arrested as Basketball Lives Matter movement would say.

BLM youths carjack Mercedes-Benz ML350. Was the stereo head unit saved? No info on that. The driver smashed the SUV into a ditch.

cbsnews.com/news/jeff-triplet-mayor-sanford-flordia-trayvon-martin-carjacked/

Have this. Is excellent.

MVH X370BT

I probably didn't word that as well as I could have. What I meant when I said "high qualtiy audio" wasn't the installs or the systems as a whole, which can be pretty insane I agree. I mean that a car is not the quietest place you will ever be, you have road noise, wind, the engine, the AC, etc, whereas in a home setting you can get it pretty quiet, so you can get a really high fidelity sound with better acoustics, as you only have so many places to put speakers in a car. Also, most high end installations that I've seen mostly focus on subwoofers and low frequency power, which is fine, but is NOT what I'd consider a high quality reproduction of the original sound. I'd also sure that there are some car systems that blow home systems out of the water, but in the long run, theres more potential for ""audiophile"" (I hate that word) quality when you're not constricted to a car. Different application, really.

I mean the lighting on the display, so it isn't a blinding blue or green at night and it matches the stock dash colors so it blends in better. But yeah, if you have the money, anything's possible.

I believe in the extreme 3 class early last year someone did a 186db sealed at the dash. It was a burp box only though not sure what he could do in dbdrag
Nothing wrong with subs facing passengers, every sub/car/enclosure is different

>i even found it online being resold for like 6x what i paid,
Was the seller located in your own area?

yeah it was nearby

i couldn't be sure if he was the thief, or just a random reseller cause people have a tendency to buy shady shit from shady people just to resell it

If you filed a police report on it earlier, look up the business car the case police officer gave you. Usually they write the case number on the back (over here they do). Contact the officer and have this info, URL, and any other related info added to the police report. Why? In the distant future, if that person is possibly arrested for something else stolen, this info might pop up and result in your stolen merchandise being backtracked for you. Or not. But at least it is more data for the computers and detectives to use.

You can try to simplify things for them by pre-researching the info online to cross-verify the seller's actual name, the actual home address (not just mail drop address), and any other info such as facebook account.

You can also check other forum posts by that user's nickname. Even if it doesn't result in return of your unit because he has sold it to someone else, at least if it helps link him to other crimes, that is a good thing in terms of revenge.

And even if he is a reseller, he is supporting the underground market by reselling. And resellers exist to launder the goods. That's why the homeless thieves are so poor after stealing so much. Most of the profits go to the fence and the ebay reseller who buys from the fence. It's semi-organized professional crime as pointed out in

>random reseller
More like a fence of stolen goods from car burglaries.

>So, an 8" paper cone woofer from a Chinese flea market is too much?
Cones nowadays are laminates of various materials and may have different materials at different locations of the cone.

>missing the point

i-is that a shoop?
How does he close the gate?

>How does he close the gate?
It's a movable subwoofer assembly. It has to move in the first place to be serviced.

Blaupunkt Adelaide 130
Pros: Fairly easy to use, Looks pretty nice for a cheap aftermarket head unit and it has some features I haven't seen on too many radios.
>Had to un hook the battery and figured I'd lose all of my presets.
>To my surprise it saved all my preset stations and audio settings
>You can set it to a default volume every time you turn on the car instead of last volume setting.
Cons: Remote with a ton of buttons, Menus are kind of annoying to navigate

Didn't Veeky Forums design some really good looking head units?

>What is the objective, best stereo head to purchase right now?

Should have a picture comparison of heads like in

I also seen some stereo heads with headphone jacks but most don't have that jack.

>Didn't Veeky Forums design some really good looking head units?
Go to one of the archives to look those up.

Insurance doesn't always require receipts if you have a picture of it installed in your dash. It can then be reported for theft purposes. What the insurance company wants most of all is a police report case number. If they have that, then the claim is usually approved unless they think it is suspicious. Then they just drag their feet and wait for you to either go away or file a lawsuit for the compensation. At the lawsuit, they will then require full evidence.

That's what I hear so it may be true or false, I don't know. In all my years, I have yet to submit a car burglary claim. They've tried, but the alarms go off on the new car (3rd party alarm since factory alarm doesn't stop break and snatch). I previously had only silent alarms due to homeowner association (no 3rd party car alarms that make noise) paging me. One time, I parked the car and I was only 25 feet away when it paged! Damn BOLD asshole thieves. It sensed the door handle being lifted (three vibrations). I saw who was doing it but kept on walking AWAY while very INOBTRUSIVELY doing 911 and then holding down the camera button with peeking over my shoulder. Thank you Steve Jobs for stimulating the cell revolution so many years ago. You were an giant asshole of a person, but your future vision was unbeatable. I was behind obstacles to do the call and the police came and caught the suspect. I identified the suspect, signed a form certifying it was the suspect, and that was that.

The alarm "paid" for itself that day in the amount of personal satisfaction at seeing the perpetrator busted for car prowling. It was a black youth, so no doubt he was probably released that day and will probably do something else to earn money.

Earning money, working, a normal job. Those are terms meaning different things to different people.

>What is the objective, best stereo head to purchase right now?

What is your budget? If the budget is not much but you anticipate having more in the future, then wait to buy the head unit. The choice of head unit can influence or even force your choice of future accessories such as an amplifier for a subwoofer if you ever want one.

In the meantime, visit the CRUTCHFIELD website since they are a place willing to use a lot of words to explain things, describe approaches, and even have info articles. Over the years, I have bought major items from them for my two previous new cars and have been satisfied every time.

If you get a lot of loud sounding speakers mounted on your rear dash, you want to put sound dampening on the dash. That will stop the metal from vibrating and making your sound sloppier. That's because your speaker frames are bolted to the metal obviously. But if that metal picks up sound waves and vibrates, that means the speaker itself is vibrating. Those vibrations are transferred to the speaker magnet in the voice coil. Since the movements of the voice coil relative to the magnet are what make the cone vibrate, moving the magnet relative to the voice coil affects the sound in random ways.

So if you get a higher power head unit or a subwoofer, you want to use sound deadening material on the rear dash. See this thread for links to sources of sound deadening material.

...

>What is the objective, best stereo head to purchase right now?
Because the car uses digital codes between my controls, stereo, and touchscreen, I decided the cheapest method was to stay with the factory unit and buy the upgraded option when I got the new car.

I looked thru places like Crutchfield and called, but they don't have any really good looking solution for the non-standard dash opening other than to use their special integration package which means basically to carefully cut and sand down some sheet of plastic to fit in the opening. The flushness of the edges to the opening depends on your workmanship.

>Pioneer stopped making good looking head units
Styles have changed a lot since the late 1990's with that narrow thin rectangle front you posted as an example of what you considered to be good looking.

>Nothing currently.
What made you stop liking those units that you called "good looking head units"? Why not just re-install those units in your next car?

That clashing look of old versus new must have been deliberate.

That must be the backside of the rim. I don't see how a subwoofer could fit.

>their special integration package which means basically to carefully cut and sand down some sheet of plastic to fit in the opening. The flushness of the edges to the opening depends on your workmanship.

I saw a photo posted online and it looks crappy compared to the original factory dash.