Originally Posted by SickVette
Speaker placement....speaker placement...speaker placement...if you don't have that you are not going to have much with any speaker you use. I have heard cars with "low end" product sound fantastic due to proper speaker placement and tuning. I have heard three times as many cars with "high end" equipment sound like shit. I bet Toby remembers Tyrone Chestnut and the Earl Zausmeyer (I doubt I spelled that correctly) guy with the BMW. Tyrone had an Acura Lengend with a very simple system in it. Nobody could beat the guy because it was so well put together. Earl Zausmeyer had these obnoxious 15k speakers in the front of his car. Tyrone and I listened to his car at IASCA finals...we both were like WTF? IT sounded horrible. That was just one example.
Now taken into account a good install with proper speaker placement,tuning, and overall high quality. I will take a high end product because I know that product will perform flawlessly for years.
Can't deny that high end sometimes has benefits, many outside sound quality, like durability, warranty, install flexibility, etc. What I was aiming at are some of the comments I see here and other places, like 'Kicker can't give good sound quality' or 'I use JL, your stuff can't sound as good as mine'...we've all seen them.
I had a guy bring in a van fitted with JL, Audison, and Focal...it didn't sound very good at all. Speaker placement is questionable, crossovers and gains were set wrong...this is what I could tell from 5 minutes of listening. Oh yeah, the guy was also feeding it with an Ipod full of low bit MP3's. Point is, brand is often less than half the battle.
I had a kid come in here with a pair of W6's, on a crappy beat up MA amp, in a really bad box he and his buddy built, using the stock head and speakers. For what he spent on the W6's alone, he'd probably be on his way to a decent modest system, but he had to have JL. Lucio Proni probably has hearburn as I type.
As for SA picking up JL, I'm sure it was an excellent decision. I'm actually a little upset that JL went big box, but it was a business decision for them, as well. Now, if they'd just clean up the internet, and get rid of some of the low end woofers (that's what Total is for), I think they'd do better.
Toby