i'm bias on alpine decks. the only other brands i'd consider are eclipse, nakamichi, and mayber pioneer.
as far as alpine amps, i'd stay away from the v-power ones. go with their v-12 amps, or even better yet, their pdx amps. the pdx are their new models and they're really compact but pack a lot of power. but there's other brands that make awesome amps that are more superior to alpines.
speakers, i feel the same as how i stated about amps. i'm currently running alpine type-r subs, type-s 6x9's, and mb quart components. i love it, it gets me by. i only went with these speakers cause 1) i already had the mb quarts after soo many years, 2) the rest of the speakers were affordable and sound awesome. if i had more dough at the time, i would've looked more into something more high end.