Clarion Showcase 2007

I’ve been having severe journalistic urges in Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay’s direction for many years. I even met him at a Motor show press day and tried to lead him up the mountain with offers of free audio kit. However, my best efforts were to no avail. This year, though, Jay is on the front of Clarion catalogues worldwide&;
Instructions for use: For information on the stuff they make and an overview of the whole range. Check out The Lowdown. For showing off in public how much you know about the stuff and the brand.

Instant Expert Clarion is possibly the most important specialist car audio company of all. It is certainly the single biggest maker of car electronics in the world, supplying other makers with components as well as making its own products. It has the most incredible history of bringing things to the market and creating new products that are the first of their kind. And I mean LOTS. Just check out the Timeline at the end of this bit.
Clarion recently re-branded worldwide with a new ‘Azzurro’ blue look and refreshed logo. Uniting its world markets, the company is using Jay Kay as the figurehead, who’s seen in the latest catalogue and via promotional film with the drop dead gorgeous Moray concept car, from the world-famous Italian styling house Giugiaro, which reflects Clarion’s HMI (Human-Mobile-Music-Media Interface)
No car electronics brochure has ever looked cooler, with Jay Kay on the front, and we know his taste in cars runs to the very best. He is a good lad from Acton in North London and has resisted urges from journos for years to show off about his cars. He is serious about engineering and this association comes from the heart, I’m certain.
Clarion is not afraid of doing bold things. Its legendary 32 inch (yes that isn’t a web typo) diameter woofer was called Thunderdome over here and a bloke called Gareth Hammond had two of them in his car. He was such a crazed Clarion enthusiast that he ended up being sponsored by them and took his astonishing car all over the place to shows.
Things have developed a good bit in recent years, as Clarion has raised the image of the brand and is more visible. (I was a part of that, working on the Clarion rig with those gorgeous dancing girls for two seasons – I was gutted when they changed tack a little to allow greater access to the product at shows by the public). Clarion didn’t always have the top-end image in the UK that it enjoyed in the USA, which was always way past strange. If you were to buy an American car audio magazine (like Car Audio & Electronics) with awesome installs inside them, there would be only a few brands of car audio products these dudes tended to use in their top cars as front ends, no matter how insanely rarefied their amps and speakers are. One of those was Clarion.
In the USA and increasingly worldwide, Clarion is said in the same breath as Alpine and Eclipse for sheer sound and electronics quality. I once had a feature to write about an astounding cost-no-object Russian Peugeot sound off car that had 1,000 watt monoblocks working on each tweeter, (only turned right down) with various parts of the install, like door handle surrounds and the plastic fascia frame of the headunit replaced with chromed brass parts.
The process of moulding from a plastic part to end up with a brass casting, polished and chrome plated was so involved, the install bay employed a full time metallurgist as well as an airbrush spray painter for the naff lion on the bonnet. The car was incredible, had been built with ‘new ‘ (and seemingly limitless) money and had a Clarion top end CD tuner headunit with a specification right up to the limit of what was technically possible with CD audio.
It had to be set up with a laptop computer and the guy had bought the rarity of a headunit for £2,000. Back when that was a lot of money for a second hand head unit. He had limitless money and that’s what he wanted.
Coming bang up to date, Clarion sent me to Las Vegas to the CES, along with a couple of other sponsoring companies to bring back a demo car feature. There,  I found a monster of a BMW that was due to be filmed with an eleven camera shoot for a DVD. The guy didn’t want to tell me how many horsepower, as it was going to be rolling-roaded and filmed. The car had a massive Clarion install in it that necessitated the removal of the rear bulkhead between boot and cabin and thus stiffening of the chassis. The whole thing was bloody awesome.
Fact is, Clarion make some of the most exciting toys ever sold for use in car and are particularly strong in Double DIN units with more functions than a big old Swiss army knife has blades and at least as much cunning functionality. And they have earned and won lots of gongs over the years. Check out their new top end double DIN multimedia unit.  Its just won EISA’s gong for the best in-car AV unit.
Jay Kay ROCKS. In a jazz funk sort of a way of course&;

Timeline 1940 Hakusan Wireless Electric Company sells domestic battery powered radios in Japan
1947 Clarion born
1953 Clarion are first to supply automotive industry with audio units in Japan
1959 Clarion develop world’s first truly transistorised car radio
1963 Japan’s first stereo radio for cars produced by Clarion
1964 CA802, Japan’s first stereo tape player for cars is produced
1978 First component system for cars produced by Clarion
1987 Clarion produce world’s first in-car DAT player
1992 Clarion release first voice guidance navigation system in Japan
1993 CMX270CD is one of the first motorised fascia decks, wins ECAP Euro award
1995 Clarion introduce Europe’s first single-DIN motorised screen CD tuner
1995 ADX8155 is released – first two DIN unit in industry
1998 Clarion release world’s first in car PC the AutoPC in US in collaboration with Microsoft
2002 AutoPC CADIAS is first AutoPC in Japan, with Windows CE as OS
2005 VRX755VD is first headunit with iPod full control

The idea of a range of car audio that all talks to each other via a bus system is by no means limited to one maker. The Clarion CeNET has been around for yonks, making the Clarion line up a powerful multimedia force that can be connected into serious multi source systems. They have always been very hot on screen based technology (they were one of the very first to offer in car television tuners – controlled by the headunit) and remain the very best supplier of reversing cameras, complete with iris and remote zoom functions. I could be ignorant but I don’t know of any other supplier who does this, let alone three-camera direct input control boxes. (Like the £229 EA1246A) Lots of brands exist that you can plug a fixed camera into, but none with control over the cameras. The Human Machine Interface or HMI, or simply how it feels to twiddle and use, is something that Clarion are so keen on that they use the concept as their main marketing theme, along with the integration of technology and how the kit makes you feel. ‘Emotion and Performance’ is how they put it.

HDD to the Max

We’ll kick off with something utterly unique in all the UK scene right now, which is a double DIN unit with a 7 inch touch screen and Hard Disc Drive navigation inside, as well as an SD card reader. The £1,499 MAX973HD’s storage is a whacking 30GB and there is a feature called Music Catcher which means you can use the drive to store up to 4,000 songs in high quality ATRAC3/132kbps format. This is not a new feature but the size of storage is new. It can rip at eight times normal speed. A handsome item, it has only a few buttons but huge functionality. The sloping LCD TV screen panel is motorised to reveal the DVD slot and to find a comfy viewing angle. You have audio/video inputs and outputs for feeding second-zone entertainment to a possible extra monitor in the back for passengers. You even get a microphone, as you can talk to the voice recognition circuits in German, French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch and it’ll even spell your English words in English, not Yankee spellings. You can also connect a rear view camera and with a £129 BLT573 CeNET Bluetooth interface, you can use your phone handsfree via the sound system with voice recognition. One lovely thing is the Gracenote system featured within the Clarion Navi manager PC application. If the database within the hard drive doesn’t have the title information for each song ripped to it, you can synchronise the data with the Gracenotes website that keeps updates lists of what song is which. It’s all done by the CD’s unique TOC or table of contents file, which is used to link up to the stored data on that disc’s music. Dead clever. Ready for iPod video or sound, of course, the MAX973HD will play DVDs or CD or show the navigation images. These can be customised in various ways to make it fit your taste better. All this is backed up by fat 4x53w MOSFET onboard amplifier and of course you can add amps via the line outs. This is one hell of a beast.

HDD to the Nax

The £799 NAX973HD is the stand alone navigation box. It has a monster 30GB hard drive inside and can connect to lots of the Clarion range. Like the navigator in the 973, it too has TMC or Traffic Message Channel, which is used to update the navigation data with real time traffic hold up information. Thirty European countries are covered with the leading (in the UK) Navteq mapping and the features of the system all add up to a very high end navigation experience. It’ll calculate multiple routes all at once. Like fastest, shortest distance, avoiding toll roads or motorways, with rapidity – in fact there’s nothing faster.
It has a superb address database and you can even search by telephone number, which speaks of a huge power. It comes with a microphone for the voice recognition and just about every other feature you have read about with ‘normal’ navigators, it can do. Stuff like Estimated Time of Arrival and storing up to 200 points you have driven to for future use. The system supports Windows Automotive V5 for upgradeability. Evidence of Clarion’s long involvement with in car computing. So next time you have an audience at the Vatican but can’t recall how to get there, you’ll know the way. The unit is only 29mm thick so can be tucked just about anywhere.

DIN Dinner

The first single-DIN cool box is the VRX878RVD, It’ll cost you £799 And is a classic multimedia station with motorised 7 inch touch screen, 4x50w MOSFET innards and a DVD slot. It is MP3 capable like most of Clarion’s kit, and it uses iD3-TAG on MP3 as well as being able to play with your iPod. There’s a three band parametric equaliser and you can play different sources using the two-zone facility. It can also boss a TV tuner, a CD changer and one of the HDD navigation units. You get A/V line outs and inputs and lots of preouts for amplifiers. You can add the Bluetooth module and if you want, you can see where you are going when in reverse with a camera feed. As this is so desirable, it features a small removable panel for security. This is not always the case with this sort of unit, so it makes sense. A serious piece of kit that comes with an included remote control.

Double Dinner

The HDD navigation may be something you would like to add later, so the double DIN unit with 7 inch touch screen is also available in the form of the £699 MAX678RVD – which has just won the EISA mobile A/V head unit of the year accolade – with almost all of the features of the higher numbered unit, less the navigation. Of course, if you want to add it later, you can ever so easily connect the 973HD box above. Meanwhile, it sports a 4x50w MOSFET amplifier and has the same high quality 24-Bit Digital to Analogue Converter (DAC – this changes the digital signal back into music and matters like hell for quality) as does the 973 and 878. This means really high quality sound from CD and DVD. You get lots of inputs and outputs in both audio and video. There’s a remote control and a three band parametric equaliser, also as found on the other models so far. You can boss a CD changer, TV tuner or the HDD navi box. A rear view camera can be appended (or placed inside the car so you can watch yourself cavort on TV when frolicking parked.) and the colour of the display’s general look can be adjusted to better match your dash illumination. The unit is protected by code and like its bigger brother, it too can do the twin-zone thing and play two different sources. iPoddery includes the MAX678RVD’s display showing your iPod’s wallpaper as well as full iPod video functions. Posh.

Arthouse and USB

USB has taken over the world of computing as a way to plug in things as diverse as cameras, hard drives and foam missile launchers from M&S. The £499 Clarion VRX578USB is a very good looking and well thought out easy-HMI unit with the additional features of a USB connector on the back and being an Official DivX certified product. That means that all those movies on the web, also using the world’s most popular video compression format, can be thine. Most seem to be adult material but that is de-rigueur in the UK in car market anyway. MP3 with iD3-TAG is featured as is the WMA format and now the AAC format via that USB hole for use with iTunes. Dual zone, lots of inputs and outputs and that sexy 24 Bit DAC are still in the party. This unit is for lovers of simple intuitive kit with no makee-learnee needed to just play some tunes or run a flick. The VRX578USB has the Clarion Z-Enhancer sound customisation features and a two-band parametric equaliser. It has a separate subwoofer volume control and the built-in 4x50w MOSFET amplifier can be turned off for better SQ when used with their high end amplifiers. It comes with an included remote control. This is a grown-ups’ piece for those with real taste.

Big On Features Yet Not Huge

The £399 VRX378RUSB has an awful lot of the bigger double DIN units’ functionality but packs it all into a single DIN environment. It must be crowded in there. It’s obvious feature is the small screen right on the front of the deck, which is a 3.5incher. It is a 4x50w MOSFET powered DVD deck that can read home burned discs and has a USB port in the rear. It’ll read WMA and MP3 from disc and happily decipher iTunes AAC from the USB source. It bristles with features like the high and low pass crossovers and the two zone function. The 378 has lots of ways to plug things in and send signals off to other screens and of course Bluetooth readiness and the ability to interface with OEM steering wheel controls. All the sound features are in place too, like the Z-Enhancer and Magna Bass EX Dynamic Bass Enhancement – which I have to hear – and that peachy 24 Bit DAC. Bit of a pocket rocket with a cool, slightly retro look. Remote included.

Screens

The screen selection comprises two that flip down from the roof and two that can be installed as you wish. Either within a headrest or other custom location, or else upon a stand on the dash or wherever. The VMA773 and VMA573 are 7 inch and 5.6 inch monitors with two A/V inputs and dual channel infra red outputs to feed their WH143H wireless headphones or the dual system I/R WH253H headphones. Cans’ll cost you £29 for a single channel set and £35 for ones that can tune to two different systems. The screens are £149 or £169 for the 7 inch. OHM1073 and OHM773 are a mighty ten incher and a 7 inch flip-down roof mount module complete with a remote control. Each can be accessorised with a unique-to-Clarion idea. A skinny DVD deck (DivX approved) that fits between the screen module and the roof if you wish to upgrade. A screen thus becomes a whole player with screen system. The add ons with the DVD player mechanisms inside are called VS1078HM and VS778HM. They cost £349 or £249 for the screens dependent upon size, and £249 for either of the add-on players. The case size is all they vary by. Hidey-away box VA463 (£TBA) acts as a distribution amplifier for multi screen installs and the TTX752 is the £199 PAL TV tuner that can get involved at this level.

Portable NavigationMost of the smaller Clarion navigation devices have far less countries in their innards than the flagship jobs – you choose a model dependent upon where you live. Ours would be the UKI suffixed variant which includes major roads in Europe as well as full UK and Eire mapping, and of course full UK postcode search. The MAP770 and 670 series are priced at £289 and £249 respectively and they have 4.3 inch touch screens. The MAP370 is listed at £179 and has a 3.5 inch touch screen. All models feature an SD card slot, which allows you to expand your satnav’s functionality, and play back MP3 audio files and pictures from an SD/MMC card. They all have wee loudspeakers in their guts and while the 770/670s can manage your phone wirelessly by built in Bluetooth functionality, the MAP370 can’t. The 370 can have a rear view camera appended to it, as can the 770 and 670. The Mapping is by Teleatlas (Clarion being the only brand I know that uses both TeleAtlas and Navteq) and in the best MAP770 unit covers 28 countries. These are more powerful than most and better priced for what you get than a lot of the Tom, Dick & Harry products out there. Well worth checking out.

Headunits with Clever Bits. The £249 DXZ778RUSB has a long number and is dead clever. First off, it’s a 4x53w MOSFET internal amped CeNET headunit that has MP3, WMA and the iTunes AAC via a USB slot that is now featured on the front of the unit. The display features something called Slidetrak whereby you control key features with a fingertip swiped across the display surface touch screen style. This screen can be seen in any of 728 vario-colours. It has an incredible features list. How about full-on Time Alignment? (That’s when you can delay the sounds from speakers like a pro-audio engineer to make it more accurately stereo by equalising the virtual distance sound must travel to your ears from each speaker.) Or perhaps the nest of whacking high quality 6-volt line outs and internal amplifier canceller for better sound – this is pure audiophile stuff. The full dot display has screensaver functions and you can control an iPod by adding a £99 EA1276 adapter. It even features three-way active crossovers, which is excellent. And let’s not overlook Clarion’s ‘Sound Restorer’, this truly amazing optimisation circuitry rebuilds audio file compression loss – MP3/WMA playback never has sounded so good!
For a saving of £80, you can have the DXZ578RUSB. You get most of the goodies within the bigger 778 but lose the time alignment, 6V preout level and the amp canceller. You keep just about everything else, including the big old MOSFET 4x53w amp and that lovely Slidetrak control. As with the 778, a remote control is included.
The DB568RUSB is a much more classically styled CD tuner. It lists at only £119 and has, incredibly at the price, a USB slot on the front. Power is a healthy 4x50w MOSFET again and MP3, WMA and AAC are still party pals. You get cellular input and phone mute as on all the higher models and you even get the same remote control unit as the flashier decks, too.
DXZ378RMP is one of the design-led products in the range and there are more in this line up than any I have seen, just wait It’ll set you back the same £119 as the DB568 but has a different approach to life. The look is like a shooting star or comet with all buttons to the left of the central knob. Although not MOSFET, the amp has a punchy 4x50w output and yet can be switched off by the amp canceller for better quality sound with external amplifiers, as the power supply of the headunit will have less to do. It has a four channel set of line outs rather than six and can be controlled via OEM steering wheel control interfaces. It’ll handle MP3 and WMA but no AAC as there’s no USB on this one.
The DB178RMP is keenly priced at £79 yet has a meaty 4x50w amp and will deal with MP3 and WMA files off CDs. Just like its more expensive brother, it has a front input on microjack for any sort of music player’s analogue output. It has a level control on its aux, too, so if your player doesn’t put out a huge signal, you can compensate for its shortcomings. Even the single line display has screensavers that show on the detachable panel when left to its own devices.
At £149, the FB278RBT is a bargain. It is one of a tiny class of no-mechanism headunits, the only other one of which is the Alpine iDA-X001 device made for iPods. It has nowt but an SD slot behind its lovely ‘Shark’s Gill’ designer-lit fascia. It deals with MP3 and has a built-in Bluetooth facility with A2DP and AVRCP audio streaming, so you can play your phone’s ditties via the sound system. For telephone calls you need to add your own separate microphone and plug it into the 3.5mm jack. A good option with this deck is to get a £57 DGL373 iPod transmitter and £12 BC001N/002M or 003V cradle and transmit your audio, from iPod to headunit via Bluetooth. It does of course feature an FM tuner and a 4x50w amplifier inside, as well as offering a single RCA preout. It’s gills can glow in any of 728 colours using the same vario-colour system as the others.

More Doubles than Most. A large number of cars in the UK (>60%) now have a double DIN slot, or else the right structure behind the single DIN slot to cope with these lovely big boxes of tricks. This is a solid retro looking product that will cost you £349 and is called the WXZ468RMP. It is described as a 6-disc CD/MP3/WMA receiver with CeNET. As well as the regular tuner and 4x50w amp, it has a six disc changer actually in its guts. This can read MP3 / WMA files, so you can stash a savage amount of music away. It has a pretty VF (vacuum fluorescent) display with a 23-band spectrum analyser and also sports a 9-band graphic equaliser. There’s a feature called listening position optimiser, which is Time Alignment light in the way it works, which is good value.
Its sister unit, the £249 DUB278RMP is a contemporary looking could-be-retro-or-possibly-sci-fi depending upon your feelings but it is truly a designer item and a real statement in its own right. Indicative of the way Clarion is not afraid to explore new ideas and cater for the individual. Only one main knob and two lesser ones, the DUB278RMP is a USB/CD/MP3/WMA device and has a USB plughole in the front under a small cover. Some other controls appear a bit like a TV sets controls, from under a neat hinged hideaway panel to keep the clean, uncluttered fascia look. Vario-colour makes it well sexy during use.
The DCZ628 is a 6-disc CeNET CD changer and will set you back only £149.

Clarion Installer Program. Most makers have some serious OEM integration-issue products and Clarion’s are simply named. They comprise CAN-BUS systems to connect up to Audi, BMW, Citroen, Ford, Mercedes, Opel/Vauxhall, Peugeot, SEAT, Skoda and Volkswagen. They offer steering wheel remote interfaces for all the above, plus Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Kia, Honda, Hyundai, Lancia, Land Rover, Nissan, Range Rover, Nissan, Rover, Saab, Suzuki and Toyota. 2-DIN installation brackets for those big, drop dead gorgeous double DIN units are provided for GM and Volvo as well as lots of others.

Only really one amp, but packaged in a two or four channel box. The £249 APA4320 is rated at 4x80w RMS of MOSFET power into four ohms and has a bass boost circuit you can dial up to an extra 15dB of throb at 45Hz with if you wish. The crossovers are high and low pass and can be used either in the 55Hz to 550Hz range for bass or else 550Hz to 5.5kHz range for highs. There are speaker level inputs as well as RCA and the amp has a soft start/mute circuit to avoid turn off/on thumps. A healthy 100dB signal to noise ratio and up to 6V possible at the RCA inputs (to match their posh decks’ high end outputs) means it sounds good. The £149 APA2160 is the stereo version the above amp is based upon, with the same features, right down to the pretty gold plated speaker and power supply connectors.

The HX speaker line are Clarion’s top speakers. The SRM3093HX sub is priced at £130. It is a single voice coil design with dual Strontium magnets and gold plated terminals. The power rating is 300w RMS and it has an efficiency rating of 93dB, so it makes lots of bass for every watt put in. The SRS1752HX comps have glassfibre cones and 2cm silk dome tweeters that reach right up to 120kHz, which is miles into the bat-frequencies and means that they are utterly unstressed, no matter how high they play. The compos cost £190, the SRH292HX tweeters on their own £60.

Three other subs exist, the SW3011, a £50 twelve-incher that can handle a continuous 250w RMS. It has a stamped steel chassis and classy looks. The PFW1051 is a handsome ten-incher,  rated at 300w RMS and costing £90, whilst the SW2511 is a £40 10′ sub that can use 200w RMS. They all have a shiny metallised cone with a rubber surround. Significantly, the PFW1051 has a shallow mounting depth of only 76mm.
As far as active subs are concerned SRV202 is an active (or self-powered) unit with an eight inch woofer inside it and a 60w RMS power amplifier. The SRV313 is an under-seat active sub design but it uses the patented Maxx Bass Circuitry – as used in Metallica’s PA engineer’s control rig in pro form – which makes the thing perform absurdly well for its size. It has a dual voice coil 6.5inch dual neodymium magnet driver, so this little wonder has more technology in it than most.

The In-Phase speakers use an ancient and well proven acoustic trick of having both the high frequency driver and the apex of the low frequency driver in the same plane. Tannoy loudspeakers do this and so do some others. It works well, giving a phase-coherent cleanliness to the sound. Enhanced by the use of glassfibre in the cones, which, although less expensive, gives a lot of the benefits of exotic fibre cones made of carbon or Kevlar.
The SRX6985 is the oval, the SRX1785 and 1385 the 6.5 and 5.25 inchers. They cost £75 or £65 a pair. The SRS speakers are called the Phase 1 as against In-Phase series, which is a little confusing but they comprise only a SRS1726 6.5 set and the SRS1326 5.25 inch component set for £50 or £65.
They have Titanium metalised cones and PEI balanced dome tweeters. Phase 1 also includes SRR coaxial speaker models in both three way and two-way designs. They range from an eight incher SRR2036 (£70) to a four inch SRR1028 (£20). Power handling ranges from 30w RMS to 50W RMS for the big ones. Sound Explorer are the better quality custom-fit grille-less product and the SRC series is the simple custom-fit stuff. These are about fitting into stock locations, so they have lots of mounting holes to fit different car makers’ hole spacings. The Sound Explorers go from £55 to £79. Custom fits from £35 to £25. These last include those hard to find 4×6 and 5×7 ovals.

Famous for their rear view systems, Clarion have no fewer than six camera products with shutters or without and from small to industrial grade. Some even come with systems for accurately working out how far you are from objects seen on the screen. There are dedicated reversing-use screen products and all the wiring and power boxes and camera signal splitters you could wish for in the range. Run as many as three cameras and even operate them with a remote control (wired) for operating iris and zoom functions. The top CC2001E camera costs £349, the small CC2011E £199. Camera cables cost from £30 to £65 depending upon length and they make them big enough for trucks. You can hook up one of these classy rear view cameras to a head unit like the award winning MAX678 RVD multimedia product and watch all the action from behind on the 7′ screen.

A Life on the Ocean Wave

Last but by no means least in this groovy world of wakeboarding and cool water sports in boats, the £249 CMD5 is a watertight marinised CD/MP3/WMA receiver. It has 4x50w power and can be connected to the £59 M301RCE marine wired remote control. It is built in a stainless steel chassis and has a drip shield over the connectors and a silicone coating on the circuit board to avoid sea air corrosion. You can get either two-way   or cheaper dual cone speakers in marine plastic housings, the CM1682A for £59 and the CM1680A for £49.  And because it’s a CeNET unit you can add on things such as a Clarion TV Tuber, 6-disc auto-changer  and of course iPod. This product is ASTM B117 certified, it has a HemiSeal coated PCB and sealed stainless steel chassis.

 

 

– Wonderful digital sound quality from 24-Bit DACs
– Brilliant Human Machine Interface – nice to use
– Excellent choice of many digital formats to buy into
– Lots of dual zone and 2-DIN product
– Leaders in camera technology
– Incredible history of innovation
– Marine stuff too

Clarion Customer support telephone number 01793 870 400
www.clarion.co.uk

Do go and visit the new Club Clarion website and join the club – it’s totally free – and you can enjoy special membership offers on all Clarion products: link