[Greg]

As this seems to come up on regular basis, I thought it’d get this started with the list of vendors I’m familiar with. Feel free to add your favorite vendor, a link and a short description of their product line, service levels and personal experiences. Please use balanced, descriptive sentences and avoid meaningless endorsements such as “FTW”.

Crutchfield - Great service, expect to pay high prices. This is definitely a “get what you pay” for kind of place. They have an excellent return policy for most stuff, 30 days, no questions asked. Credit Crutchfield for raising the service standards for eTailors. They are an excellent reference for most car audio products, and have PDF versions of user manuals for most everything they ever carried. In addition they are one of the few factory authorized dealers on the internet. You can save quite a bit of money shopping elseware. However you may end up paying a much higher price in other ways. This is the kind of eTailor that gives the internet a good name.

eTronics - Etailor with great prices. They carry far more than car audio. Just about anything electronic. However, they rarely carry any accessories items and their prices are usually the lowest I’ve found. Service is OK, but I've rarely needed it. Most stuff is gray market so the warranty is through them. I've never had a problem with them, or the products. So I haven't had chance to test out their warranty. Selection on some stuff is pretty limited and their web page has extremely limited product info. Don’t expect user manuals or close up shots of the products.

SonicElectronix – Another gray market eTailor with eBay like prices. Product focus is more toward car audio and they have more car products than Etronics, but the prices are not always as good. Its one of the few places you can find most accessories. Also gray market, so warranty is through them. I recently had a service issue open with them now for a DOA product. Though it took some time to resolve, (over a month) I was pleased with the outcome and ended up getting a better unit. If you can’t be patient about warranty issues, spend the extra money and either buy local or use Crutchfield.

PartsExpress - Lots of "parts" not so many head units and amps. Good prices and service. Also lots of home stuff and parts galore. Speaker kits and raw drivers all over the place. If you want to build some home speakers they can help you out. When I was young we had a local store called Speaker Lab. They sold mostly kits. It was cool for the diy'r. This sort of reminds me of that approach. But with tons of other stuff. They have a lot of raw drivers. Not to many boxed speaker sets for cars. Web page tends to be a bit slow at time, but its worth the wait. Get on their mailing list for the their weeklky specials. I’m always tempted when that thing arrives in my inbox.

Raamaudio - A dynamat like product. Along with closed cell foam in sheets called Ensolite. The owner, Rick is very helpful and provided me with an STI specific set of instructions for sound deadening. Rick is also famous for building the best underseat sub for the Impreza body. It fits under the passenger seat, and bosts a massive .6 cubic feet and a 10” driver. Impressive use of space. Sadly it was a limited run. Rick is currently looking for a manufacture to build them for him, so we may see more of these in the future.

AudioIntgrations - STI specific sub enclosures and amp racks. The enclosures are high quality direct fit for the STI and Impreza bodied cars.

Darvex – Lots of parts, cables, power distribution blocks and more. Prices are OK.

Woofers Etc - HUs amps, speakers. Authorized for Image Dynamics gear, famous for thier higher end IDMAX subs. Their prices seem to the highest of the gray market bunch. Their main advantage seems that they have stock on some items you can’t find anywhere else.

www.mobilesq.com Source for higher end equipment that is hard to find elseware. They carry the drivers by Seas of Norway including the Lotus reference car audio series. They also carry DLS drivers and amps, Brax amps and Helix amps. Leon and Eng are great guys and are authorized for all the stuff they sell.

www.infinitecaraudio.com They are authorized for quite a few of the brands they sell as they have a retail store.

Jazzy Engineering Makers of the "Aux-IN" and Ipod adapters for the stock 05 and 06 six disk changer. Provides a nice alternative for those that want to keep the OEM radio but need a bit more flexibility. They also sell cable and various other parts that you might need for this mod.

Dave Navone Engineering Makers of high quality Line level to RCA converters, plus alot more. Other interesing items are a pop delay that helps delay the power up of the amps to prevent that annoying POP you get with some setups. They also sell low pass filters, tone generators, cables and a bunch of different styles of audio converters. A good place to start if you keeping the stock HU but want after market amps.

MillionBuy Another low price eTailor with surprisingly low prices. Stock seems to vary and you might not always find the parts you need. They carry HU, amps, and much more electronic stuff. Presumably gray market, with associated service levels.

Common Installation Parts
KartBoy .5 Speaker Spacers - Made of solid "cutting board" plastic, milled on Tom's CNC machine. Very nice quality. Each spacer is half an inch, so you may need to get two sets for speakers that need a 2.7"-2.9" mounting depth. Stock is limited so be sure to get them when they are in stock.

IAPerformance Speaker Spacers - They've been providing speaker spacers for some time. They are not as nice as the kartboy spacers. They also sell the interior door handle bezzle, which can be hard to get off, and subsquently get damaged.

Forester DIN Pocket - For adding the OEM touch to a single DIN install. These are available at most Subaru parts house, link added for convience.

[holycow]

Originally Posted by Greg

Crutchfield - Great service, expect to pay high prices. This is definitely a “get what you pay” for kind of place. They have an excellent return policy for most stuff, 30 days, no questions asked.

I am typically the kind of guy that tries to get a deal when shopping online, (ebay, etc.) Remember that MOST places, are NOT authorized retailers for most audio brands. (online anyway). I believe crutchfield is one of the only.

Anyway, when building my GF's system, we got everything from crutchfield. The head unit we chose had two problems when we got it A) the knob on the face was defective, and B) we didnt like it as much in person once we got it. Not only did Crutchfield replace the head unit for a different head unit of choice, but they actually shipped the new one 5 minutes after I called in and told me to just ship the old one back as soon as I get the new one...

Try doing THAT on ebay.

If we hadn't gone through crutchfield, the install would of been delayed two weeks! And when you have all your parts ready to go and you're excited, two weeks is like a lifetime!

Anyway, my point is, paying a few extra bucks was WAY WAY worth it in our case. Way to go crutchfield!

-HC

[SoaReS]

wow greg thanks for the info. AudioIntgrations seems the way to go for my style. How good are those diamond subwoofers though?

edit: sorry to hijack

[Greg]

Originally Posted by SoaReS

wow greg thanks for the info. AudioIntgrations seems the way to go for my style. How good are those diamond subwoofers though?

edit: sorry to hijack

I'd like to keep the thread focused on vendors. Although I think I might be able to answer your question and stay on topic. The Audio Integrtations products are expensive and I had many reservations when I first saw them. I cooresponded with Todd of AI a number of times over the last two months and was very impressed with this quick and helpful responses. As a result I ordered the 12" enclosure earlier today. I opted for the one without the driver and will be supplying my own. I've never heard the Diamond subs, but they seem to get good comments. My only concern is price for the driver. They can be found for a bit cheaper. Regarding amps, I choose the Alpine PDX 1.600. If you are interested we can expand on these topics in new thread.

[daishi]

It's Darvex, not Darex.

For high end gear you have www.mobilesq.com Leon and Eng are great guys and are authorized for all the stuff they sell.

www.infinitecaraudio.com They are authorized for quite a few of the brands they sell as they have a retail store.

www.woofersetc.com are internet authorized for ID gear, but for the most part are grey market.

And my OT contribution. AI is not expensive at all. A shop will charge you upwards of $600 for the equivalent enclosure while fiberglassing yourself will run you around $250 for all equipment such as safety gear Also they charge more for drivers because they are a single shop...not a garage based internet dealer site.

[Greg]

Dashi,

Thanks for the contributions and corrections. I've incorporated them into the list in the first post. I can't believe I missed mobileSQ. That's were I bought my drivers, and have been very pleased with the product as well as Eng and Leon's service.

Greg

[tjamz]

Originally Posted by daishi

It's Darvex, not Darex.

For high end gear you have www.mobilesq.com Leon and Eng are great guys and are authorized for all the stuff they sell.

www.infinitecaraudio.com They are authorized for quite a few of the brands they sell as they have a retail store.

www.woofersetc.com are internet authorized for ID gear, but for the most part are grey market.

And my OT contribution. AI is not expensive at all. A shop will charge you upwards of $600 for the equivalent enclosure while fiberglassing yourself will run you around $250 for all equipment such as safety gear Also they charge more for drivers because they are a single shop...not a garage based internet dealer site.

Infinite Car Audio may be authorized for some of their lines, but a good chunk of the decent brands they carry do not allow online sales.

Woofersetc is for the most part a transhipping company that is not an authorized reseller of many of the products they carry.

[t-rob]

i know i am new to the forum but not so new to stereos...what i do know and have also herd from others is that highdesertaudio (ebay seller)(aka HDA) offers amazing deals on rockford fosgate stuff as HDA is rockfords own ebay dealer. Most of there stuff is refurbished but refurbished right from rockford techs them self. They come with a 90 day warrenty if refurbed. They also occasionally have brand news on there. As you should or need to know Rockford is great stuff and with HDA, now at a ebay price. my .02 cents

[WRXTek]

thats a good initiative, thats great

[roydriessens]

how about CarJamz.com, Inc., International Mobile Audio Wholesaler
Haven't ordered anything from them yet, but do seem to have alot of brands and good prices.