$900 SONY H/U VS equivelent $500 Pioneer
a $900 head unit is only equivalent to yet another $900 head unit. on sale for $500 means nothing, its still technically a 900 buck head unit, so you should have measured it up against something similar. but i do know what your saying, your 500 was better spent on the sony rather than equivalent pioneer.
Personally despise sony, couldnt even get my RCA leads right. i mistakenly used their RCA leads thinking that "hey, never been used, they should be fine". picked up mass amounts of whistle through my tweeters, swapped to aerpro RCA's, 9 bucks cheaper and no whistle.
also, everyones order is different. my personal order: PIONEER, KENWOOD, CLARION, SONY.
but other people have had problems with clarion, ive had problems with kenwood and sony, and only rate clarions expensive top end gear...