O.K, here is the situation. A friend of mine has a Nissan Titan with the stock radio in it still. I stil have the stock radio in mine as well. We both have the Audio Control Line out converters however. Here is my question. His front stage sounds great and mine just sounds really good. My first thought was that his components are just that much better than mine. He has Diamond Audio D6'* and I have Elemental Designs 6500'*. he is pushing 75 watts to each side, and I am pushing around 300 to each side. I swear the sound is like night and day. A friend of mine told me that he felt like he just had a better stock radio than me. He felt like even with the LC6 cleaning up the signals on both radios, the Nissan factory radio just started with a better signal anyway. What do you guys think? Would you lean more towards the radio being replaced or the components being replaced first. I would honestly like to keep my factory radio and just go with the Diamond Audio HEX components, but if it seems more logical that the factory head unit is making me miss out on alot of sound quality, I would have no problem putting a 2007 alpine in. What are your thoughts?

My thoughts are that factory radios really suck. And it is very likely that it is your weakest link. Fractory to aftermarket radios is night and day.

the 2000+ radios are horrible for sound quality. The equalizer settings are too harsh. too much bass, and too much high end treble. It'* VERY annoying.

I have decided to go with the alpine cda-9885 for sure.