Car Stereo Setup?

Sharp10r

My wife has a 1998 (or 9) Saturn SL2. For her birthday I'm surprising her with a car stereo system (her stock one doesn't even have a TAPE deck! Just Radio.) Check out what I'm thinking and let me know what you think. The main thing is: ~120-150 faceplate thing, and 100 for speakers.

Faceplate: Both of these JVCs have HD Radio built in, and are mp3 player capable. The more expensive one has a USB port on the front to plug her iPod touch right in!
JVC - 50W x 4 MOSFET iPod®/Satellite Radio-Ready In-Dash CD Deck w/HD Radio Tuner $108
JVC - 50W x 4 MOSFET Apple® iPod®/Satellite Radio-Ready In-Dash CD Deck $144

As for speakers
Infinity - 6-1/2" 2-Way Car Speakers with Plus One Cones (Pair) $99
Kenwood - 6-1/2" 3-Way Car Speakers with Polypropylene Cones (Pair) $74
Sony - 6-1/2" 2-Way Coaxial Car Speakers (Pair) $70

Thoughts? I don't know what 2-way vs. 3-way means, and you should know- she will be listening to mostly art music ("classical") not booming techno or anything.

McViking

As I understand it, a 2-way speaker would have a woofer and a tweeter built in, and a 3-way would also have a mid-range cone. Any of those would have a built-in crossover, which means that the high frequencies get sent to the tweeter, and the low frequencies get sent to the woofer. Unless she's a pretty serious audiophile, I doubt she'd notice much difference between the two.

I wouldn't get too hung up on the USB port -- it just means that you can browse the iPod music library from the JVC head. Even with the cheaper unit, you can still plug the iPod into the auxiliary input via the headphone jack and hit Play on the iPod; it just means you're controlling the playlist from the iPod instead of the head unit. YMMV, but I don't know if that's worth the extra $40 to me.

As for the speakers, I can personally vouch for the Inifinities, as I have them in my car. I like them fine. Keep in mind that there are probably four speakers in her car now -- two front and two rear. If you replace just a pair of them, she'll have to adjust the fader to drive most of the power to those speakers instead of the factory speakers. I would recommend doing all four if you can. Maybe buy the cheaper head and get two pairs of the Kenwood speakers instead?

For her next birthday, get her a subwoofer I'm actually only half-joking. I never liked classical music much until I started listening to it in my car with a very modest sub. Those low notes really stand my hair on end now...

eternalbl

Maybe I'm just being a snob, but if she enjoys classical music I'd suggest getting the infinity's over the other 2 sets of speakers.

I'd also suggest getting an amp to power the speakers, otherwise they just won't perform half as well as they could.

Edit: Actually, scrap that snobbery. Take in a disc that she listens to frequently and listen to how the speakers sound in the store. They won't sound the same as in the car, but it'll still give you a good idea.

MushroomStick

A 98 Saturn? How much longer do you think she's gonna be driving this car? I'd stop at the head unit and save getting speakers for the next car, unless you think she's gonna have this car a long time.

Sharp10r

Sweet! Thanks for the advice! We plan on running the car into the ground since it's paid for! it's only got 40k miles on it, so with maintenance, we should have a long life for it.
I'll have to think about the back speakers...