A few years back i had a alpine cda 7893R headunit and paid a fortune for it, i had it running 3 amps and loved it.

I sold it with car as front on it was starting to rattling but took rest of system out, i then bought a cheap pioneer unit as a put me on as volvo didn't play mp3's and 5 years later i still have it and its been in 3 differant cars

Finally getting round to sorting octys sound system out and fancy a new headunit with more preouts to run amps and wondered if newer headunits are as good as older ones

IMO more modern units tend to have the edge in onboard power and EQ over the older designs. Prices have plummetted though. £150 gets a pretty decent unit with multiple tweakable EQ curves.

Ultimately, SQ will cost.... pretty much what it used to. Look at Genesis amps prices, still pretty much what they used to be.

Have you wandered over to talkaudio forums?

J.