Rob41
Don't stop believin'
Well, this is something I've wanted to do for a long time and I've got to say I'm VERY surprised by how good it sounds. Yes, it is a car stereo!
My main system consists of a few vintage amplifiers including some of the top offerings from Heathkit and Nikko. I use them in an active system with a miniDSP to control a set of my DIY line arrays augmented with two subs below 80Hz. This car stereo (Pioneer AVH-491BHS DVD) has built in active/DSP although not quite as feature rich as the miniDSP it is pretty good. It allows control of 3 separate pairs of channels and sub control. It allows control of crossover points, types of slopes, time alignment, driver matching etc.
I figured it would be barely adequate for use in a home environment and be more of a novelty at best. When I roughed in my basic parameters from memory and turned the system on I was pleasantly surprised. I asked myself how this could even be possible to get this level of sound from a $300 ($250 after price match from Crutchfield) car head unit? All I can speculate is that there are very short signal paths and I'm using a good power supply to provide the DC power, which I think is critical.
It has all the functions of a modern head unit including an HD tuner, Android and i-phone comparability with Pandora and Spotify control, plays FLAC files via the usb port, CD player DVD player, remote and more. You can control everything with your smart phone or the remote.
So I built an enclosure out of 1 3/4" maple butcher block material, sprayed some automotive paint on it, added a push button power switch and added some aluminum feet. I gotta say I'm happy with the outcome and ecstatic about how well it sounds. I will be using it in my secondary listening system in the living room with conventional passive speaker via a Carver amp. I will add a sub to gently reinforce the lowest frequencies for music enjoyment.
Here are a few pics:
My main system consists of a few vintage amplifiers including some of the top offerings from Heathkit and Nikko. I use them in an active system with a miniDSP to control a set of my DIY line arrays augmented with two subs below 80Hz. This car stereo (Pioneer AVH-491BHS DVD) has built in active/DSP although not quite as feature rich as the miniDSP it is pretty good. It allows control of 3 separate pairs of channels and sub control. It allows control of crossover points, types of slopes, time alignment, driver matching etc.
I figured it would be barely adequate for use in a home environment and be more of a novelty at best. When I roughed in my basic parameters from memory and turned the system on I was pleasantly surprised. I asked myself how this could even be possible to get this level of sound from a $300 ($250 after price match from Crutchfield) car head unit? All I can speculate is that there are very short signal paths and I'm using a good power supply to provide the DC power, which I think is critical.
It has all the functions of a modern head unit including an HD tuner, Android and i-phone comparability with Pandora and Spotify control, plays FLAC files via the usb port, CD player DVD player, remote and more. You can control everything with your smart phone or the remote.
So I built an enclosure out of 1 3/4" maple butcher block material, sprayed some automotive paint on it, added a push button power switch and added some aluminum feet. I gotta say I'm happy with the outcome and ecstatic about how well it sounds. I will be using it in my secondary listening system in the living room with conventional passive speaker via a Carver amp. I will add a sub to gently reinforce the lowest frequencies for music enjoyment.
Here are a few pics:
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