I have had my radio installed for a little while and thought I would provide a brief update.
The Alpine speakers sound great with pretty good bass when playing a dvd, fm, or MP3's from my flash drive. When using my USB hard drive the bass is pretty much non-existent for some reason. I will still consider adding the Kenwood sub-woofer as my budget permits. I haven't be able to try an iPod since I don't own one and don't have the cabling.
Through another forum someone provided a great tool for re-organizing all of your MP3 files and making sure you have album images for them. It is called MediaMonkey,
MediaMonkey » Free Media Jukebox, Music Manager, CD Ripper & Converter. Silly name but a great program. Only disadvantage is you have to pick each album or folder to find the right tags. This is a bit time consuming. However, it is nice to have the image appear on the Kenwood vs the standard no image available. That's the point of having one of these fancy receivers right?
I really like to Kenwood DDX512. My only gripe is that when you plug in a USB device you cannot just choose random for the entire device. You can only do it within a folder. So if you have all of your artists organized but would like to listen to all of them at once they will all have to be in the same single folder with no sub-folders. I.E. one big Rock folder. This is a minor annoyance. If you have an iPod plugged in the standard iPod features will work. The only other thing to be prepared for is a long load time as the receiver reads the USB device. I have found the flash usb sticks load faster. I currently have a 8gb card from Memorex. I should have bought a 16gb. While that is only about a 3rd of my music collection it is more than enough for my car. I have also found the flash drive to be more reliable. Sometimes the receiver doesn't see the hard drive and I have to unplug it and replug it in.
Video - Dvd works great. If you have a concert dvd and want to only listen to the tracks while driving this is possible. This will keep you out of trouble with local law enforcement when you are the only person in the car. I have not tried to put any movies on a USB device yet.
All in all I am very happy with the Kenwood. I kinda wish it had a graphics eq to "watch" instead of the boring song info or radio screen. Other than that it is great. At $459 online it was not outrageously expensive. You can add features like XM, Nav, or Bluetooth as your budget permits. Install was a piece of cake.
I think for most people my current setup would suffice. I am just the type of person that has to have too many toys. Having a sub-woofer will be one of them and I know it will complete the sound in the car without making it a boom box. If and when I install that I will update my blog.
Thanks for all the ideas from others. I am working on a USB plug in the glove box similar to what CubeFX has done. Not 100% necessary but a really nice add-on.
- Chris
Linear Mode
