Just picked one up yesterday morning. I have to say that this is one nice head unit. I know the new ones are coming out later, but I prefer the look of this unit. I was using an Alpine CDA-7998 for a while, but was not totally happy with the sound that it produced. No matter how much I tried I could never get it dialed in right. The MX function is a joke. I was apprehensive about going with Eclipse because their units do not have detachable faces, but I really missed the sound that my previous set up put out, it had better DAC's than the 7998 (Alpine 7949 paired with a PXA-H600) so I decided to give Eclipse a shot.

Once I got the 8454 dialed in, my only thought was wow! I should have done this a while ago . It reminded me of my older setup, something that the 7998 was incapable of doing.

 

Glad you like it. I absolutely love mine. Just out of curiosty, when you set your time alignment, did you set the delay time for the speaker FARTHEST away from you like the manual states? Because common sense would say that you add delay time to the speaker that's CLOSEST to you. Whatever the case, it sounds best to me when you follow the instructions in the manual, even though technically you should ADD delay to the CLOSEST speaker. Weird.

Tony

 

+1 Eclipse owns. Next paycheck (or the one after that if I have to) the Balanced Line Adapter will be ordered. And I have the Commander waiting to go in with it, on the CD8053.

-kevin

 

In my setup the speaker closest to me has the most delay. I had it all measured out from years back, so I just plug in the same #'s as before.

 

Yes. But did you read the manual? At least in mine, it specifically says to select the speaker farthest away from you and add the appropriate delay. It goes against logic, but this method actually sounds by far the best to me in my car. The only thing I can think of is by selecting the farthest speaker (the passenger side) and adding delay, the HU is actually adding it to the other side. I just thought it was really odd, that's all.

Don? Any thoughts on this?

Tony

 

I read the part where it says "The basic adjustment method involves measuring the actual distances to each speaker and calculating the differences in distance relative to the most distant speaker in order to derive the delay time for the sound from each speaker", this was on pg 102. This is correct.

I think I see what you mean. It is on pg. 128 at the bottom. I think it is a typo. The speaker that is the furthest away should have the least amount of delay. For my setup it is the subwoofer, and I have the delay at 0.0 ms.

 

I've had the HU for several months now and I've listened to it extensively by adding delay to both the far and near speakers. I've found that the setup sounds better when I've added delay to the passenger side speakers. This defies logic! Maybe it's not a typo...

FWIW...I measured the distances to my speakers and so forth and come to the conclusion that they're useless. It's best to adjust by ear.

I've also found that if I add delay to my subs (which are by far the farthest away) I can move their image up front dramatically. This also defies logic!Not sure if I like it, becuase at times it seems to interfere with my midbass up front, though.

Tony