I hope I don't regret doing this, but I sold my Pioneer P880PRS for $275 and will be picking up an Alpine CDA-117. My system has been down since July when I accidentally blew the pico fuse inside the deck. At that point my system got put on the back burner since Christmas was fast approaching. Since then I've been considering selling my P880 and getting a 9887 from Alpine and have also picked up a Digital Designs 2512 750 watt 12" sub, and have considered other changes to my setup when I bring it back to life.

So now that Christmas has passed, it'* time to get this thing up and running again. The only changes will be:

Alpine CDA-117 head unit
Digital Designs 2512 sub
Custom designed/built sub box, 2.2 cubes tuned to 34Hz
Front components run with passive xovers
New amp rack

The head unit can't run active in stock form, but it can run Alpine'* Imprint software which will allow it to do so, and will give that deck all the tuning features the P880 has and then some. It also has a digital iPod connection built in, which should be a noticeable upgrade over my phono jack connected Zune to P880.....speaking of that, when the Zune was connected, overall volume was noticeably lower than when playing a cd and there was a noticeable hiss too...I hope the digital iPod connection takes care of that.

I'll be picking up my wood for the box build on Tuesday, deck will be ordered by then as well, box build will be Saturday the 22nd, and as long as my deck arrives in a timely manner I should be making noise by the end of the month. Can't wait, it'* been a long time coming.

what does run active mean?
i like the monte carlo dash adapter you have.

active means u use the Headunit for all the adjustability of the Highs, Mids and Lows... well if its 3 way active anyhow.

Cant wait to see the progress

Running active is when you have a sound processor in your system that allows you to tune your system before the signal gets amplified. This is alot more efficient than a passive setup because the tuning gets done after amplifiction so your amp will be amplifying frequencies you wont use whereas in an active setup your amp will only amplify the ones your going to use. In this case the sound processor was in my deck, not many out there anymore that will run active.

cant believe the negitive improvment my system has taken. LOL. ROCKIN THE 2 12" KICKER CVR'* NOW. LOL

the clarion I have does 2 way, lows and highs, and has lpf and gain for subs. it has a hpf and freq adjustments for the fronts.
I just bought the cz500 which has 4v preouts and 3 way adjustments.

The deck i'm getting, Alpine CDA-117 has all those adjustments too, but it'* not an "active" deck until you add the Imprint. It even has time alignment too. I think the only Clarion deck that can run active is old, none of their newer stuff is active. So based on the feature set, i'm going to go out on a limb and say your deck isn't active either.

i looked it up, i misunderstood what you were talking about thats pretty cool.

so no the clarions dont have that.

Active decks are a rarity nowadays. But I gotta say, they're a pain in the badunkadunk if you don't know what you're doing. After this experience with running active, I think I need to get a better handle on the art of tuning a system before I dive into that again.....kinda looking forward to going passive again.