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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vanquish" data-source="post: 105232" data-attributes="member: 84">Dear Leonard,Allow me to answer your queries to the best of my ability ...1. Your Alpine HU's x-overs are one of the best HU controlled x-overs that I have seen / used in that price range. It's flexible, can be run either as 2 or 3 way with adjustable slope level, has a 6-Position HP/LP (24dB/Octave) design and is rather easy to use and manage. In fact, you could run an entire system on active basis WITHOUT a need for ANY external pre-amplifiers / electronic x-overs / electronics equalizers / line drivers / etc cos adding them separately wud only serve to mess up and discolor the signal from the HU, IMHO. BUT .... in order to do justice to the HU .... you WILL need quality speakers and ideally external amps. Messing with the stock speakers' x-over points from HU will not result in any sound improvement except for some bass notes or high notes ... too much of either is not good for your ears and the stock speakers will go bonkers in no time.2. A lower end HU even from Alpine will NOT produce a better sound quality as long as you are using the stock speakers. Remember that in ICE, the GIGO rule sticks out like a sore thumb ... Garbage In Garbage Out. In your case, the stock speakers are the WEAK link as they are NOT capable of maximising the high quality sound reproduction of the HU and convey it to you, the listener. BTW, most Proton cars are using Clarion's drive units which are rather good .... even if their stock HU suck big time. I am willing to put my every dime that there is NO stock HU in the M'sian market that is capable of outdoing your Alpine unit sans the mucho expensive McIntosh system from Subaru, the Dynaudio system from Volvo or the Mark Levinson system from Lexus. Again, these are vehicle optimised systems with matching amps and speakers/subs. Let's compare an apple to an apple here.3. The Alpine CDA 983x series are designed to work in all of Alpine's global markets - APAC / EU / US-CAN and ETC. The basic architecture of the units are the same but considerations are made in terms of voltage rating, misc. features and FM/AM switching or tuning frequencies which differ from region to region. For example, my Eclipse CD8443 is actually sourced from the US directly and as such can only receive radio station frequencies ending with ODD digits i.e - 98.7FM, 99.1FM, 90.5FM and etc. In fact, more often that not, our built in / rear windscreen printed radio antenna or internal wiring could be a more likely culprit for the poor radio reception ... not the HU itself.Consider the HU as the heart of any decent ICE system as it not only reproduces the recordings in the most accurate manner but now have to doubled up as a signal processor, equalizer, e/x-over and etc in these modern days. As sad as it may sound, the age of anolog HU / processors are trully over as the new multi function HUs like yours will blow these old dames into the water. However, these modern day HU also needs quality partners to perform at their best .... hence the need for quality cables/interconnects > power amplifiers > speaker cables > component speakers / subs at minimum. In your case, even without an external amp in the equation, your stock speakers are slacking at their job by not accurately reproducing the signal from your HU .... and no amount of tweaking or HU swapping will change that.The Alpine CDA-983x series are one of the most highly recommended and reviewed HU range in that price bracket. It ranks very high in my personal list as well as a lot of other casual or pro ICE freaks for its sound quality, features, user friendly menu and flexibility. In fact, nothing comes close to it except for the Eclipse CD-84xx series which are also top flight stuff but with very little publicity / marketing in this part of the world. The heart of your system is already there ... perhaps it's time you start looking at the rest of the equation.Cheers, VaN.</blockquote>

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