Excellent. I just ordered 40 sq feet of eDead 45. That price is unbeatable at $1/sqft. I plan to do the entire trunk before I move onto the next step. I have a bunch of noise from the Bassani exhaust that I want to try and deaden before I move on. Plus, I still haven't decided on what electronics I want to use yet.

I will definately be posting up pictures of all of this as I do it. Should be a good time.

 

Ok, Update time:

The trunk is coming along nicely with eDead 45 covering all of the floor, wheel wells, and as much of the inner 1/4 pannels and rear pannel as I could get.





Then, I started on the deck lid, which is a pain in the @$$.





There are areally no flat surfaces and the application is difficult, however, with the help from some extra Dynamat Extreme I had laying around, I was able to come up with this end result for the back half. Its basically a layer of eDead 45, covered in Dynamat Extreme. I am going to do the top half as soon as I get more product, then over all the material on the deck lid will be this:



It's called Luxury Liner Pro from Secondskinaudio.com, and works as a noise canceller, rather than a vibration dampener. The way I see it, is a lot of sound and SPL is lost through the trunk lid, since that is directly what the subwoofer is pointing at. With the combination of the undercoat of vibration dampener, then the overcoat of noise canceller, I should be able to block out a lot of external exhaust sound, and keep most of my subwoofer sound in the car. Also, I think cosmetically the Luxury Liner will look more like a trunk liner when I open the trunk, rather than the reflective silver from the vibration dampener.

Lets talk about the components. After going to a few stores, I have changed my mind on what I like. I am no longer going to do an all-Alpine system. Although the new Alpine CDA-117 deck is a great deck, you basically have to add all of the features to it, externally (such as HD radio, Blutooth, Sat-Radio), and I really wanted a deck with built-in blutooth. So, I found this:



The Kenwood Excelon 994. Great large display for easy iPod searches, all the bells and whistles I am looking for, and built-in blutooth from Parrot.

I also really like the sound that Boston Acoustic speakers put out. So I have decided to go all Boston. For the sub, I have already purchased this used on eBay, in great shape.



It's Boston's G2 subwoofer, tuned in Boston's own box. That way, the air volume is perfect since Boston designed the whole thing. As far as the amp, I am still going with an Alpine PDX-5. These are the speakers I am going to run:


Boston SC60 components up front.


Boston S85 5x7's (designed for Ford vehicles) in the rear.

 

As far as speaker choice, what have you actually listened to?

 

Honestly, off the top of my head right now, I can't remember each one I have listened to. I do remember that I liked the Boston's the most, and am trying to stick with an efficient speaker to match to the PDX-5's 75watt RMS x 4.

I see you have some car aduio knowledge. Opinions?

 

Opinion... Maybe.

Since you thought the Boston brand sounded good, I probably can't help you, but I would suggest that you go and listen to a set of speakers that cost more than your head unit. Speakers are the most important item that defines sound quality, so they should be the single item that eats at least 50% of your budget for the system.

I would suggest that you go and listen. Take a piece of music that you are very familliar with, and listen to it on every set of speakers that you can find. (listening for tonal characeristics)

...And remember... Real speakers begin at about the $1200.00 price point.

 

Good point but real speakers don't need to cost over $1200.00

If he ran a active capable deck and went active I'm sure he could get away with a lot less money wise.
A set of Vifa XT25 tweeters on axis would be pretty sweet although they don't play well below 2khz without a good amount of harmonic distortion. Heck he can even get a set of Image dynamic full body horns.

A nice good size mid would work well also. He can get away withScanSpeak 7" Revelator mids for well under that price.

Don't forget everything is primarily on install, you can have some of the best equipment but with a shotty install it wont work out well at all.


Also op you don't need to lay dampener on every single piece of sheet metal in the trunk. I think you only need about 35% coverage and then after that it is primarily a waste. It has to be placed in the right spots for it to work obviously.

http://sounddeadenershowdown.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi

 

Wow... I don't know where to start. Good luck.

 

Whoa, guys. I am not out to build a competition sound system. I just hate the Mach 460, and want some better sound with some features like HD Radio, Sat, and Blutooth.

 

Who said anything about competition? I see that your 1st post starts out with the quote: "I miss having great sound qualiy and imaging"...

You've got well over $1200.00 spec'd out on the head unit, amp, subwoofer, and other materials. Just spend the other half of the budget on some quality speakers.

 

I hear ya. But it seems that once I start stepping into higher end speakers, the 75w RMS from the PDX-5 isn't going to cut it. So then I am looking into changing the amp for a more powerful 4ch, and then I have to get a seperate sub amp. So it really changes everything else for me.