I strongly agree with Contouraholic.
I understand the whole "I want to show off" aspect of a mega-dollar sound system.
However you can get the same or even better sound quality from just a few well chosen components. Thus saving you hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
For instance I have a nice Kenwood MP3 deck, Infinity 6.5's in the doors (powered by a 300x4 Mosfet amp ~50 each RMS), and a Mosfet 200 watt amp & subwoofer box (2x 10" - 1 each channel for realistic double bass
) in the trunk.
All components give the lowest available distortion and my cash outlay was about $400. (Yes I am a very smart shopper!)
I'd put it's sound quality up against about anything and it can definitely get loud enough to do permanent hearing damage inside the car. (Not that I force others to listen to my music anyway or like hearing damage myself)
If you have a mega dollar stereo, lots of neon shtuff, DVD, electronics, et cetera then you will always be a #1 target for thieves.
No alarm system will stop them from cleaning the car out. It just alerts the general area that a car is being broken into.
It may stop prolonged theft but not if the thief is experienced.
So if you are that paranoid and have to keep your car outside then a paging alarm system is the only real way to actually know it's your car that is being broken into. Now you are talking a lot more money for the alarm alone and you still as hampered by how long it takes you to get back to your car.
If you don't want them to steal the car itself then the factory PATS does a great job already. It's as good as any amount of money spent on an alarm system that does not page you.
It blows it's horns and allows no power to run through the car better then any aftermarket setup could.
Yes you could state that window shock sensors on an alarm system are better since the thief could slide in the broken window. However he'd still have to take the time and make more noise to break out the entire window.
As for true audiophile sound quality. I leave that to my home stereo setups.
