could be cabin gain and driver placement. i also had an old 1987 5.0 when i was much younger. car was stupid easy to get bass response in. a pair of infinity 12s would blur your vision and this was a basic 90s era 9mm xmax 150w driver

 

This. In my time as a car audio enthusiast (1985 to present day) I have owned at least a dozen different Alpine head units, one Sony, and one Pioneer (7200). The Sony was a single din cd player circa 1990 and it was cheaper built but by god it sounded pretty good. Every single Alpine head unit I have owned sounded very good to exceptional, not a stinker in the bunch. The one Pioneer I purchased almost a year ago sounded exactly as Racebum has described. I was convinced it couldn't be this high dollar Pioneer and was going to start swapping out other components. I was talked into swapping head units and wow, my speakers came back to life and sounded just like I remembered them sounding with a prior Alpine head unit. Although I do want to upgrade to a better Alpine model soon, what I have right now sounds great. Just what I was after. I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I have pretty well trained ears from years of listening to lots of different gear low end to high end and if you have the ability to hear that difference, and you may not even know you have it, The Alpine will sound completely different than the Pioneer. I am not knocking Pioneer, I just don't like the way they sound to me. A lot of guys love them and I get it, they have great specs, great feature set, and look gorgeous in the dash but just didn't do it for me in the SQ department.