I have a Pioneer Premier 760MP. It's not ricer bull**** at all, Pioneer Premier is up to par with Alpine give or take a few features on BOTH companies.
I'm on
www.caraudioforum.com and have learned PLENTY about great car audio products... there are a lot of good products out there.
Merlin to answer your question, you said you wanted 2 in the front and 2 in the rear. It has been stated quite a few times that it is better to just have two front speakers and ditch the rears. There are several reasons why this is a good idea, and it is what I'm doing to my car (I've already done it to my car,
here):
a) Music should come from in front of you, not behind.
Imagine you are at a concert... all of the sound is coming from in front of you.
b) Imaging/phasing problems.
Rear speakers will destroy any possibility of imaging (the perception in your mind that the music is coming from the area between the speakers, not from the speakers).
Also, the introduction of more sound waves from the rear will cause phasing problems due to the interior shape of the car. If you're not sure what phasing is, it's when two identical sound waves are played but not in the same phase. When they are not in the same phase, this will cause cancellation issues which will hurt the audible signal.
A person I know (who I paid to have my subwoofer box built) has written a great paper on imaging and phasing issues. I would definitely look into it! Here is the link:
http://www.teamcaf.org/geolemon/Phasing/Phasing.htm
c) By not buying rear speakers, you have that much more money on higher quality front speakers. Likewise for your amplifier (which will be needed to sufficiently power your speakers). Instead of buying a 4 channel amp, you can buy a higher quality 2 channel amp.
There are two types of speakers... coaxial and component speakers. Coaxial speakers have a tweeter built in while component speakers have a seperate tweeter that you are able to mount anywhere (door, A-pillar, dash). This really helps your imaging by being able to place the tweeter where it sounds best as a tweeter should be on axis with you and not off axis.
It's best to assume then that component speakers are higher quality, and they need sufficient power to sound great. Aftermarket CD decks will boast about 50wx4, but that is max. Aftermarket CD decks will, generally, put out ~20w RMS. A lot of component speakers have a RMS rating of 75-150w.
There are some great component speakers out there, and I will list them.
CDT CL-61s
http://www.cdtaudio.com/classic2000MidDriv.htm
Image Dynamics Chameleons
http://www.imagedynamicsusa.com/website ... eleon.html
Adire Audio Koda 6.1s
http://www.adireaudio.com/TextPages/Kod ... meText.htm
Resonant Engineering XXX components
http://www.reaudio.com
Some great amplifier brands include:
Cadence
USAmps
Phoenix Gold
Brax
Arc Audio
Those are quite expensive though. There are some cheaper, budget brands that do the job:
Hifonics
MTX Audio
If you want rear speakers, you can pick up some 6x9s. I haven't done my research on 6x9s since I'm not going to use them, but I heard that Alpine is a good choice.
I agree that Alpine has great products all around, but honestly I couldn't recomment Sony for any car audio products.
If you have any more questions... feel free to ask. Oh, and here is what I'm putting in my car.
Front: dire Audio Koda 6.1 components
Rear: no rear fill
Sub: Adire Audio Brahma 12"
Amp for comps: Cadence Q3000 (100 watts per channel)
Amp for sub: Cadence Z9000 (800 watts)
I'm going strictly for an SQ (sound quality setup) and do not want SPL (sound pressure levels) i.e. blare bass up and down your street and around the neighborhood...
Matt