The H701 is da bomb. Any AINET head unit can turn it on remotely and control its volume (from what I'm told), but only the IVAs and the DVAs can change its settings from the HU.

true 5.1 surround in a car is extremely difficult.... the reasons for this boil down to ONE main issue..... and that is the fact that all 5 drivers should have the same acoustic propertys & the same response.... the same timbre...... & should all cover the same freq. spread as each other............

here lys the problem...... it's easy to get relatively full freq coverage with the left & right fronts..... the door cabin will allow usable frequencys down to 80-100 htz with even mediocre drivers..... but to have the center match this with the same intensity is very difficult... you will need a relatively large enclosure to be able to reproduce the lower frequencies & have the same response...... very difficult with a stock dash.......

now most guys will argue that the center is only for voice & it doesn't make a difference...... this is simply not true....... there is other information also on the center channel...... even skipping this fact for a moment & focusing on voice.... & even though most voices energywill be originate in the 650- 1.8k range..... there are other artifacts of a voice that are called reverbs.... basically every sound has reverbs that reach far below & far above the original sound....like a ripple when throwing a stone into standing water.... a tone at 400 htz has reverbs that reach both far above & below said freq....

what this translates to is simple..... say your watching a 5.1 movie with densel washington standing on the left & speaking..... most of the voice energy will be coming from the left front speaker...... now say while talking he moves to the center of the screen..... dolby will put most of the voice energy to the center speaker.... he then moves right.... again the energy is transfered to the appropriate drivers.......

with a wimpy center speaker his voice WILL CHANGE as he moves across the screen..... this can be extremely annoying & will ruin the reason you went 5.1 in the first place..... you would get much better results using a processor that does a phantom center image..... basically creating a center by summing the left & right.... without handing the info off to an inadiquate center driver......

it doesn't matter too much even if you use the same speaker in the dash that your using in your doors.... unless there in similar enclosures they will not do the same job..... the end results are inacuracys & loss of information that should be there, but can't be reproduced by a wimpy center channel....

the best attempt at an acurate 5.1 in a car will either have major modifications to the dash to allow both a proper sized driver & enclosure, as well as angleing the speaker twards the center of the car....... I won't even get into the problems with having the center point straight up to the windshield & delivering both off axis sound AND reflected sound at the same time.......

OR.... downgrade the left & rights to match the center....... draw back there will be loss of overall energy & bass localization in the rear.....

bottom line.... a phantom center will almost always sound better & more accurate than an unmatched inadiquate center channel driver.....

the 700 is a pre-amp & ideally you should adjust the volume through it if it's not connected to an ai-net head, but you can do it with the head unit, just have to fine tune your gains & balance the system, but with multiple inputs you may be better off using the 700/01 as master volume control with all seperate sources pre adjusted (pc & head)

don't bother to keep going into the menus to switch inputs, what I do is modify the usb cable to my soundcard.... interupt the 5v power & the soundcard turns off, & "shuts the lights out" on the toslink.... when the alpine doesn't see light anymore on the digital in, it then reverts back to the rca inputs automatically...... when you turn the 5v back on..... sound card powers & then output lights.... the alpine will automatically switch back to the optical in.......

so basically a switch can be used to switch the inputs.... temp it out for testing, as I'm doing this with a direct ai-net head connection, but it should work the same for you... just unplug the soundcard & see if it switches automatically for you too.... this will solve a lot of your issues I think, as far as presets & inputs

no way to name presets... each preset can use the parametric OR the graphic, both can't be used at the same time at all, let alone in the same preset.

the alpine can upsource a 2 channel input to 5.1, you can do this with stereo input, no problem

5.1 in a car is much more difficult to acheive than it would first seem. from another post:

*Finally, is the European version the same as the American one as the European site is the only one that actually has the manual (for the European version).