has anyone upgraded their stereos?

[noone]

I'm happy with my 8" boxed, I'd be upto probably $450 spent all up on sound (not including sound proofing).

Stock speakers are quite good, no where near good splits, but fine for budget system.

[flashpixx]

- Pioneer AVH 2450BT double din head unit which I absolutely love, it's easy to use and I'm able to adjust basically everything to my liking!!

Same as mine. Yep great unit. I'm running stock speakers tho. Had it professionally installed using a proper (expensive!) harness. Best thing for me is bluetooth phone. Excellent integration and a decent noise cancelling mic comes as std.

[flat6]

Yep, I've demoed my car, with all the speakers stock, to many people and everyone is flabbergasted at the sound and volume that they can output (because my head unit allows redirection of the bass signals to the sub - mine is set to cross-over at 80Hz with a 12dB/octave slope)

Heard it myself, pretty impressive for the price, still loving my kenwood unit

[diarx]

Finally ditched the Eonon and had a Parrot Asteroid Smart installed in the missus GTI today - you were totally right about the sound quality of the Eonon flat6, the initial novelty/price of that unit kind of distracted from the mediocre sound quality . The Parrot is back to sounding better than the stock unit.

As for the unit itself:

The GUI on this thing is really nice and fluid. Of course not as smooth as the latest and greatest Android v4.x on my current phone (Nexus 4), but definitely feels as good as lets say v2.x Android on my previous Samsung Galaxy S2. It's really fast, but it's hasn't got that buttery smoothness you find in the lastest android.

Had it installed at Metrosound Artarmon - they did a pretty nice job of putting all the USB and GPS cables ends in the dash cubby and using a rubber grommet to hide the rough edges of the hole they drilled - everything sits in there hidden away rather nicely.

The bluetooth A2DP music playback from the missus phone works well, she plays back Audio books on her Nexus 4 from Audible and she's pretty much ecstatic at just being able to do that above anything else. The phone side of things works quite well too.

Not sure if phone internet sharing is working on it yet - I gave it a try in our underground parking, but her phone is on voda and I'm thinking I'll have to go outside to get enough reception for it to work. Will have another try over the weekend when I have more time to play.

Will have to suss out navigation apps too, I think the iGo nav app currently preinstalled on there is American maps. Once I get internets working on it and hack it to install the Google play store I'll have access to Google maps and other nav apps on the Android market.

Sound quality - It a bit better than the stock polo unit, and WAY WAY better than the Eonon unit I just replaced. There's some sub woofer and bass curve controls in the menu too. I don't think it's ever going to be a top Audiophile quality unit, but it does have 6 pre-outs rated at 6v (I recall 3v pre-outs were all the rage back when I was into fully sick sound systems) so hooking up and amp and getting good sound shouldn't be a problem. The onboard amp output is rated a 23w rms x 4 (55w x 4 max), from what we've played on it through the Polo's stock speakers it seems pretty reasonable, not that we listen to much loud/doof doof music these days though.

The only other thing is the screen looks a little shiny - which could become annoying in low sun - but even with the Eonon that was a problem, and was pretty easily rectified with an anti glare screen protector.

Here's some install pics, should have a short vid up soon too.

[diarx]

Vid,

Excuse the crashing noises from someone nearby chucking out stuff in the garbage room.. and powderfinger

[flat6]

Nice job on the upgrade, will have to update us on what its like to live with

Definitely looks smoother than the eonon unit, massive improvement there

I always find after a few months you spot the annoying things with any system, im the same with the doof doof music, found myself turning the sub down the other day, maybe im getting old lol

[diarx]

Yep, will do - I'm sure there will be a couple of minor annoyances here and there - but so far the responsiveness of the unit has been fantastic as you can see in the vid.

The missus was initially scared of losing the old coaster slot, but I think with A2DP/bluetooth actually working properly now and being able to use 32gb USB sticks she won't care so much.

The really cool part will be hooking it up to the laptop and getting Root on the OS so it can be modded to run whatever you please, different launchers or whatever else. Hopefully parrot keep developing with this unit and upgrade the OS to v4 - even without it the unit looks to have some really nice potential though!

Sheepishly discovered Metrosound are actually a distributor for Parrot and said if I'd purchased the unit of them it would have cost $1000.. didn't even occur to me you could get this unit in Aus as there didn't seem to be much about it on google. Still, $550 or so to import the unit, and all the FM stepping and whatnot is changeable to suit Aus so there's not much incentive to buy locally.

found myself turning the sub down the other day, maybe im getting old lol

lol.. that's been the last 5 or 6 years for me I gave myself tinnitus back when I had my Civic, but my ears fortunately seem to have mostly recovered since not having a powerful sound system in my car.

[diarx]

Only thing I was a little annoyed with was the grained black plastic surround I ordered, doesn't look so nice a contrast between the silver dash to the gloss black of the unit.

Are all the 2din spacer mounts for polo's like this? Or is it a case of just sanding one down smoothly, giving it a spray in gloss black/silver?

[flat6]

Yeh I notice my hearings a bit more sensitive now, cant have it up so loud anymore.. might be time to sell the fully sick system lol

Wouldn't be too hard to paint that plastic fascia plate, I recon matching it to the silver would be perfect, smooth it down and use a gray primer, would be perfect

[kaanage]

Yeh I notice my hearings a bit more sensitive now, cant have it up so loud anymore.. might be time to sell the fully sick system lol

That's why I'm perfectly satisfied with my 10" sealed sub powered by a 60W RMS amp with bass redirection from the front and rears to the sub - it goes plenty loud enough for me and anyone else who has sat in my car.

I did try a 300W RMS sub with a 12" sub (also sealed box) and cranked it up to see what it would do (I didn't sit in the car) and it was enough to make the number plate and holder buzz against the valance and the parcel shelf visibly vibrate. I now use that sub in my secondary home theatre.