Ubunoir

I put in the CX-609. Clarion CX609 CD receiver at Crutchfield.com . I wanted something that looked close to stock and wasn't interested in video or nav... just better audio and ipod controls.

I have to say, the install was not smooth. I was thrwarted at every turn. The common wisdom that all 2009 nissan harnesses are the same, apparently doesn't apply to crutchfield's harnesses. I ended up not using a harness, and hard-soldering everything directly. The focal polyglass woofers needed spacers that I didn't have. I had to fabricate mounts for the tweeters from raw metal I bought at Home Depot. The crossovers were difficult to fit inside the doors. Whoever invented that molex connector that goes between the door and car interior should be shot (why does it lock into the open position, and why are the unlocking tabs on the passenger side facing the wrong direction?) I never did the PAC SWI-Jack to function, despite being pretty certain that it's wired correctly with the right resistors.

In the end, it sounds.... pretty good for car audio. I guess I'm a little dissapointed with the focal speakers, or maybe it's just the acoustics of the car. When I read about how good the "imaging" is with the polyglass speakers, I was expecting... well... I've got a pair of Tannoy studio monitors in my bedroom recording studio where you can close your eyes and literally point out where each instrument it. These are FAR from that. There's basically no imaging at all. In fact, I thought maybe i'd wired them out of phase, so I reversed them, and there was very little difference. I suspect it's just a limitation of the acoustics of the car, or my expectations were too high. I should've known that I'd never get any kind of imaging with a big panel of glass above the tweets (duh!). If I had to do it again, I'd probably buy cheaper speakers and skip the PAC SWI-Jack altogether. It's 1000x better than the factory sound though. In fact, I laughed when I pulled the factory speakers and saw how tiny the magnet was.