One thing that was very important to me when planning my setup was stealth and simplicity. I didn't want any extra eq or crossover units, so the headunit I chose had to be able to handle these duties. I fully believe in an all active system. It gives the flexibility to properly tune the speakers to a given setup. I would say 75% of the performance of a stereo system lies in the proper implementation of time alignment, equalizers, and crossover.

My pioneer p1r. I picked this up off ebay for around $250. It had an excellent 3 way crossover section, time alignment, and a decent 13 band eq. It was old though, and had trouble reading cd's and the display washed out in sunlight.

This is my current headunit. An alpine 7897. It does everything the p1r did, except it has an adjustable 5 band parametric eq instead of the 13 band. I actually prefer the alpine eq. I also like the display, which is much brighter and doesn't wash out in sunlight. The deck also reads mp3's, and while the load time is pretty fast the track search is just awful. So for now I just stick to regular cd's.

My latest headunit an eclipse 8443. It has all the processing of the p1r and the 7897, but the equalizer is far more powerful. The transport is also superior to the alpine or pioneer, in that it reads almost any disc and much faster as well. The unit features 8v output, which I think is nice but I am very doubtful that it imparts any performance benefits. My only complaint about this unit is the non-detachable face and the poor, non-intuitive layout of button controls.