Highest Quality Car Stereo/CD Player 2017

Hey, audiophile friends! I need everyone's humble opinion on the highest quality aftermarket car stereo with CD player as I'll be purchasing one in the near future. My number one criteria and concern is finding a deck with the finest digital to analog converters available (for the purpose of playing CDs). Some brands I've found to be of high quality include: Alpine, JVC, Kenwood, Pioneer and Sony. Thanks in advance!

 

IDK, look at the chip set used and go unit by unit. Sometimes higher voltage output can be a good indicator.

When I bought I went with a Sony even though they didn't have the best rep at the moment. It had a Burr-Brown chip. I guess it sounds OK for car audio.

 

I only ever use manufacturer installed stereos, but there were some thoughts here:

Best options for car cd players.

 

What car do you own?

Unless you have one with a very very quiet cabin (like a hi end Lexus LS MODEL) I am not sure how much difference a DAC will make in the overall picture of things. Quite honestly, there are a lot of really good sounding DACs out there used in a lot of audio equipment. If I were you, I'd focus more on the quality of the op amps in the unit or think about an upgrade in speakers. IMO, must greater bang for your buck.

Sorry if I peed on your Wheaties but just asking a question that may save you some $.

 

It isn't even a close race any longer. Years ago Alpine and Clarion (the serious side of clarion) made some killer mobile head units. As of 2017 there is only one serious audiophile CD player on the market- which I own and love - the Pioneer DEX P99rs- (4- 24 bit DACS, copper chassis, 8 channel preamp) - third link.

Clarion U.S.A. | DRZ9255
Alpine CDA-7897
Pioneer Stage 4 DEX-P99RS

 

I installed an Alpine cassette deck in my old 1991 truck, it lasted me 17 years, and its still in there , as far as the new owner of my truck has told me. good stuff!

Alpine is very good, and i loved that icy blue color of the buttons. had a clarion, which lasted all of 9 months, clarion sucked !

 

Agreed, their basic decks did suck. But the one listed (also sold in Japan as the "AddZest" model) is truly legendary and regarded by many mobile audiophiles as the best sounding head unit / CD player ever made.

 

Not sure today but for years Alpine was my brand for car stereo CD players. Excellent reliability as several Pioneer players that I owned were not as reliable.

 

1998 Honda Accord. No, I agree with you. I think aftermarket amps and speakers make the most drastic improvement in car audio. But as I'm upgrading the entire sound system, a new deck will be needed as well. I like the Rockford amps and I'll be upgrading to Alpine or Polk speakers. Thanks for the info.

 

Well, really the MOST fidelity is with TIME DELAY, unless you relocated your Accord driver's seat to the vehicle centerline. All the DACs on Earth can't fix sitting off-center. Time delay is not a total fix but it can be a humongous help. The NEXT fidelity step is outboard processors. DACs in head units are under terrible challenges no matter how good the chip. I recall once measuring a Sony with a 1 kHz tone disc, and the FFT spectrum had a huge wide spread-turned out the disc was mildly scratched, and what we were observing was the effect of the wildly slewing laser disturbing the power supply which bled into the audio.

I bleed Alpine blue, but for a plain single-DIN CD player maybe the Pioneer is it (and it does have time delay)? There's this however
Alpine
and you'd pick a matching head unit. Crutchfield are the folks to talk to or go online to see what will fit your car
All Car Stereos at Crutchfield.com

Time delay aside, the speakers and subwoofer and amplification will make a lot more difference to the sound. Subwoofer is important because to overcome road noise (like a +6 dB/octave increase at the lowest frequencies per research from Ford) you really need to generate serious unstrained bass, which simply will NOT come out of stock speaker sizes.* I'm not talking about booming around the neighborhood, I mean just "real" bass.

Oh, on another note, forget those rear speakers unless you're getting a DVD head unit (are they even made any more?) and running 5.1. Because, does your house stereo have rear speakers? No, of course not. They are only in cars due to historical inadequacy, so ditch that cr@p and concentrate your money on the fronts + sub. Really. I spent umpteen years in this field and I am not kidding a bit.

By the way, beware that at this point many radios no longer play CDs.

*(OK, well, once, but that was a prototype for Alfa Romeo and my friend who designed the speakers is a genius. And it turned out to be way too expensive to put in production).