Hey guys I am hoping somebody could help me decide on which head unit to get. My main goal is to have built-in bluetooth that I can use as hands free calling and to play music and books from my phone. I prefer to have an external mic that I can mount somewhere and have steering wheel controls. I have been looking at a clarion deck and a pioneer. Specifically these 2
Clarion Pioneer

I have a Clarion in my Honda and it is a great deck. I like having the USB in the back, I dont like having things plugged in in the front. What do you guys think?

 

My vote is for the Clarion and I've posted the reasons why I like it so much in a few other threads now, lol.

You'll have to order the external mic for the Clarion and I would recommend it, luckily it's not real expensive. The internal mic on mine leaves much to be desired but for the money and everything else that deck can do it's worth every penny.

I got away from using Pioneer a few years ago because every time I turned around the RCA's were going bad on them and causing noise in the amps. It was a PICO fuse blowing but I had never had that problem before the more recent units (of 5 years ago or so) and I've not had that problem with any other brand I've used before or since that. In my mind that tells me that Pioneer has done something sketchy with them and it's bull crappy in my opinion. That's just my opinion though.

 

I was leaning that way as well just needed a bit of a push to decide lol.
Have you used the bluetooth and mic on yours? do you like them and do they work well, like noise cancellation during call etc?

 

I've used the bluetooth and the internal mic on mine. I've not gotten around to ordering the external yet because right about the time I was worried about it was when the engine got fubared and I had bigger problems than the mic on the HU, lol. The internal one doesn't work too bad at all but it's extremely directional. If you're not talking toward it then it's not picking you up real good. Other than that it wasn't bad with noise and most people could hear me just fine as long as I was talking in the direction of the HU.

 

cool, I think you have me decided than, I just needed to hear from somebody who had used it.
I have a very similar clarion deck in my Honda, it just doesn't have Bluetooth and it works very well, I love being able to tune everything with the options it gives you ( not that I know what they all do lol)

 

Well, I went with the Clarion, and man am I glad I did. That is a very nice deck, Bluetooth works awesome as well.
Only thing I noticed about installing it in my 99 zr2 is that I had to cut a bit off of the plastic that sits in behind where the stock deck was mounted. If I didn't cut that there was no way the Clarion was going to fit.

 

That's a typical problem with all of them. Just another way the factory tries to keep people from making easy modifications to the vehicles.

 

Ya, it was just unexpected but easy fix. Now I just need to figure out how to tune this thing lol

 

I'm not sure how much experience you have tuning systems, but here's a kind of reference on a good way to go through and set things initially, especially with this particular HU.

The very first thing to do is take a tape measure and measure the distance from the drivers head rest to each of the speaker locations (convert the inches to centimeters if your tape doesn't already have them on it (inches x 2.54)). Go into the menu for Time Alignment and set each of the speaker channels to the right distance. Immediately after doing that you should hear a big difference in the music and it should be much harder to locate where the music is coming from. Then you need to set the crossovers. I'm not sure exactly where you're at on speaker replacements, sub installation (I think I remember where you're at there.) and anything else you have planned audio wise but I think we can fudge it for now, lol. Since you don't have a sub yet you don't want to block all the bass from your highs, but you can make them sound a little bit better by taking some of it out.

How did you set the HU up in the Initial setting? If you set it to NORMAL, then your choices are limited and without a sub in the truck the lowest you can set the highs to is 60hz and that won't sound all that great. I would recommend running the HU in 2WAY mode as it will give you all the flexibility you could ever ask for. Put on something you regularly listen to that has a fair bit of bass to it. Go into the crossover settings and turn on the HIGH and MID HPF (high pass filters) and start with 25hz. Listen to it for a little bit cranked up. If you're getting bad distortion then turn up the crossovers to 31.5hz. Listen some more and adjust again if necessary. You might lose some of the deepest bass but most small speakers can't handle real deep bass very well and it will improve the overall sound in the long run. You shouldn't need to set it above 40 or 50hz to improve the distortion issues and this will get the crossovers set for the average speaker system. A 12dB slope is normal for almost all crossover settings and normal phase is what you need as well.

Now for setting the EQ. It's best to put in music you're very familiar with and preferably on a CD at that. Digital music is so compressed that it can sound like there's issues in response where they don't really exist due to the way the audio is affected by the compression itself. As for setting the EQ the FIRST thing to do is go in and REDUCE the level on frequencies that are too loud or harsh. This HU allows you to set 5 bands of EQ to almost any frequency from 20hz all the way up to 20khz. Dial it up to about the frequency you think that needs adjusted, leave the Q at 1, and dial it down about -6dB. See what kind of difference that made. If it seems like you're at the wrong frequency adjust the frequency until you hear the difference you want and if it's too much right now don't worry we'll adjust that momentarily. Now increase the Q until the difference you just made goes away. If it doesn't and it still made the difference you wanted then that's great, if not then back the Q off until it's back. Now, if the level has adjusted those frequencies down too much, raise the level until it sounds right to you. When you've adjusted everything that sounded off down and you still have frequencies that aren't high enough, do the same procedure only raising the level instead of lowering it.

What all that mess above does is help you find out a little quicker what frequencies need adjusted. You might need all 5 bands of EQ, you might not, every setup and everyone's listening preferences and ears are different. The Q adjusts how wide a band of frequencies are affected at the center frequency. Say you set the EQ frequency to 1khz. With a Q of 1 it would affect say 500hz above and below 1k. With a Q of 20 it may only affect 50hz above and below 1k. The Q adjustment is the slope of adjustment and allows the user to dial right into a problem frequency or make a more general affect. Every parametric EQ has this Q alignment and it works the same for all of them though the Clarion is the first one I've seen that gets so tight (20dB slope). I said to roll the adjustment on the EQ intially so far down/up only so it makes a strong audible difference and to make it easy to pinpoint if the frequency you set it to is right or not. No matter what it takes quite a bit of practice with all these adjustments to get everything just right but hopefully this can make the learning curve a little quicker. Once you start getting down what you're listening for then it won't take long to know what adjustments you need to make, how to make them and where to make them.

Currently on my CZ702 I have the highs crossed at 50hz, the sub at 40hz, both on 12dB slopes. I have the EQ band set to -4dB @ 40hz with a Q of 1 on band 1, -2dB @ 125hz with a Q of 3 on band 2, -4dB @ 1.6khz with a Q of 7 on band 3, -9dB @ 3.15khz with a Q of 7 on band 4, and +2dB @ 16khz with a Q of 1 on band 5. I still have AMAZING midbass response from my mids with no distortion at the highest listening levels, the sub takes care of the sub bass with great authority and my ragged midrange is fairly well tamed with a little boost to the higher frequencies just to help the tweeters with a little more sizzle on the cymbals. Just for reference.