Well I purchased a new 2004 Jeep Liberty a few weeks ago so its time to install the empeg again.
As I am getting on in years I find my musical tastes changing from loud to quality.
Figured I would ask around and get some input before rebuilding my stereo again.

I currently have way more stereo equipment then I can shove into the jeep and its way too loud for such a little car, looking for suggestions. I was thinking about selling it all and starting from the ground up with a custom built system that is not loud just clean and very clear, on that note I was considering getting the following

2 pairs Infinity Kappa Perfect 6.5 Door speakers (or silk Diamond Audio s600's)

2 Diamond audio TDX 10d4 10" Subs

I love the sound of the infinity the diamond audios I had in my blazer were alum tweeters and a bit harsh for me the silks might be better for my tastes.

I really don’t know anything about tube car amps I have always ran PPI, Phoenix gold, or Xtant so I am breaking new ground here. Any suggestions would be great.



Was thinking of this for the subs?
US amps www.usamps.com
TU-600
Two Channel Class A Amplifier
Direct Tube Input
Oversized MOSFET Power Supply
Total Power Output: 600 Watts RMS
THD at Rated Power: <0.05%
Signal/Noise Ratio: >100dBA
Frequency Response: 15Hz-50KHz +/-0dB
Fuse Rating: 60 Amps
Dimensions: (Including Terminals)

62mm / 2.44in High
229mm / 9.0in Wide
368mm / 14.50in Long

Weight: 3.63kg / 8.00lb
Two Ohm Stable
150 Watts x 2 into 4 Ohms
300 Watts x 2 into 2 Ohms


And this for the Door speakers
TU-4360
Four Channel Class A Amplifier
Direct Tube Input
Oversized MOSFET Power Supply
Total Power Output: 360 Watts RMS
THD at Rated Power: <0.05%
Signal/Noise Ratio: >100dBA
Frequency Response: 15Hz-50KHz +/-0dB
Fuse Rating: 40 Amps
Dimensions: (Including Terminals)

62mm / 2.44in High
229mm / 9.0in Wide
368mm / 14.50in Long

Weight: 3.63kg / 8.00lb
Two Ohm Stable
75 Watts x 4 into 4 Ohms
90 Watts x 4 into 2 Ohms


Was also considering getting a single 5 channel and calling it good
Maybe the phoenix gold TITANIUM 900.7

Any suggestions?

I cannot comment on the rest (other than it sounds like a well thought out setup), but I would think that tubes in a Jeep... Vibration and bumps... Would a tube amp even survive?!?!

Good question but one I can't answer I am not sure myself.

jeep lib is little? it's far larger than my jetta, and my jetta is a reasonably big car.. but that's just me i guess, from the size of the crap on the roads these days.

oh well.. on the topic, I had a discussion about building mobile tube amps with a friend of mine who has done design/build work for atma-sphere over the years. Vibration issues are the hardest part of tubes to fix.. a rubber mouted suspention system for the amp would be required.

Personaly, I find any good quality mosfet amp to be more than reasonable for a car amp. Mosfets provide most of the harmonic qualites of a tube, without the problems of tubes.

The bigest problem with your setup is the empeg, I had a long talk with a car audio system designer, and he did some research into the empeg's audio end.. while much better than a normal PC system, it has a long way to go to compete with some of the better quality decks out there.

doing the digital out, and getting an external DAC would probably be the best solution to really getting the best quality out of an empeg based setup.

I don't put much stake in people who advocate tubes, so I hope this wasn't the same person commenting on the design qualities of the empeg. Which does use better components than the majority of car audio products out there.

If a power amp is designed not to its job, then you should not be able to tell the difference between one and another given the same output volume (and other components being the same). If a tube amp sounds "warmer" then it's tainting the music.

I stopped listening to most so-called "experts" a long time ago. If you read any of the online car audio forums, you'll see people praising the quality of their source components only to use interconnects that are sure to cause problem and headaches (more even than their marketing buzz already does while reading about them).

I'm about to do an install for the first time in my BMW and I'll likely be using all the stock wiring because it's very similar to what I would have installed anyway: UTP. As for a power amp, I'm just putting in something I know was designed as a solid product and has some of the features I want. In my last install I could also not detect it was otherwise altering or coloring the music, which is good enough for me.

Bruno

Well put hybrid8! Tube amps are used during live perfomances because of the way they distort (i.e. when you operate them out of the linear range). Even that process can now be emulated digitally though. Personally, I feel like the road noise in the car will defeat the benefit of real high end equipment, unless of course you like to listen to music in your car while it's parked

Cheers
-Ted

Well even though my last SUV a Blazer was on the outside about the same size as my liberty on the inside it had way more storage the "trunk" area on a liberty is tiny and way to small to put 5 Phoenix gold amps and 2 Diamond audio 12D2 Subs, that is what I ment by small.

Quote:
jeep lib is little? it's far larger than my jetta, and my jetta is a reasonably big car.. but that's just me i guess, from the size of the crap on the roads these days.

Hummmmm I have posed this question before lets try it again what is the frequency responce of the empeg ? its not listed in the FAQ or the Book, the Aux input frequency is listed (must be an oversite)
110StnR is well above most car steros and typical channel seperation 50dB while a little low is well within range of car audio. I would love to see "hard Numbers" for the empeg on
Here are the Numbers for Alpines Top of the Line Flagship model you can see for your
self Empeg is not out of range

CD Player

Channel Separation (1kHz) : 85 dB
DAC Type : M DAC (96kHz / 24Bit Multi-Level DAC)
Dynamic Range (1kHz) : 95 dB
Frequency Response : 5-20k ±1 dB
Horizontal Resolution : 500 lines or greater
Number of DACs : 2
Optical Output : Toslink (Dolby Digital/DTS/ LPCM)
Oversampling : 8X/352.8kHz
Sampling Rate : 44.1khz
Signal-to-Noise (S/N) : 105 dB
Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) : 0.008%
Wow & Flutter (%WRMS) : B.M.L
FM Tuner

50dB Quieting Sensitivity : 1.3/13.5 (uV/dBf)
Alternate Channel Selectivity : 80.0 dB
Capture Ratio : 2.0 dB
Mono Usable Sensitivity : 0.8/9.3 (uV/dBf)
Signal-to-Noise (S/N) : 80.0 dB
Stereo Separation : 45.0 dB
Tuning Range : 87.7-107.9MHz



Audio DAC sample rate fixed 44.1KHz
DAC typical S/N ratio 110dBA
DAC typical output noise 3uV
DAC typical THD + N 1Khz, 0dB -70dBA
DAC typical dynamic range 1Khz (-60dB) 102dBA
DAC max crosstalk 10Khz -69dB
Aux input frequency response 20Hz to 18KHz
Aux input typical channel seperation 50dB
Volume control range -66dB to +20dB
Balance attenuation range LR 0dB to -30dB
Fader attenuation range FR 0dB to -30dB
Tone control range, bass/treble -12dB to +15dB
Dynamic loudness level range 0dB to +14dB
Dynamic loudness offset range 0dB to +24dB
Dynamic bass boost level range 0dB to +14dB
Dynamic bass boost offset range 0dB to +24dB
Equaliser 20 band parametric set as 2 x 10-band or 4 x 5-band
Other audio features Dynamic range compression

Quote:

The bigest problem with your setup is the empeg, I had a long talk with a car audio system designer, and he did some research into the empeg's audio end.. while much better than a normal PC system, it has a long way to go to compete with some of the better quality decks out there.

doing the digital out, and getting an external DAC would probably be the best solution to really getting the best quality out of an empeg based setup.