[Peleg]

Bought the unit 2 weeks ago. Install was ALOT of work, a whole day in the garage running wires, antenas, getting the harness soldered and many other things.

The good: this system does almost everything, awesome graphics, very good nav, supports xm, sirius and hd radio, supports bluetooth phones, plays DVD/CD/Divx/CDRW, has EQ functions, POI's.

The bad: no internal hard disk drive to store POI's, some bugs such as CD tracks not showing up, doesn't show a call waiting.

The verdict: Worth it but be ready to call the manufacture to report issues.

Now the unit is finally installed, so here are my impressions of it.

Price paid: $1138 (NAV and optional XM reciever)

1. First thing I notice is how loud the fan on the rear of the unit is. This is pretty annoying to be quiet honest.

Pioneer's rep response: I would expect this during this time of year

This is funny considering I was playing with the unit late last night when I was 60 degrees outside.

2. There is NO internal hard disk drive in this unit. This is LAME. My Garmin Nuvi that barely costs $300 at Costco has a 4GB internal drive. Why is the internal drive important? I'll tell you why, so you can load up POI (Points of Interest) and have them remain on the map.

So not only the Pioneer unit doesn't read CSV files, and not only their Avic FEED software can't handle a database with more than 300 records, but the unit can't even save the POI's to the map. Take the SD card out and its bye bye POI. Can you say, this is LAME?

3. The consistancy of the buttons isn't very good. They lag in some of the time.

4. It's very hard to figure out how to zoom in when you got a route in the NAV and to view all the turns on a list.

5. Pioneers Tech Support is disappointing. 10 minutes wait time just to tell me that it can't do this and can't do that.

Then the rep tries to defend the product by telling me it's "first of its kind that can do all this".....riiiiiiiiiiiiiight. It can't even save a POI database.........

Then when I don't agree with him about why this product is not mature enough for the market, he just tells me that maybe an In-dash system isn't for me.





My .002 cents.

[couchflambeau]

Hate to say it, but that sounds about right....

About five years ago I had an AVH-P7500 in my last WRX, which was a single din flip out with a hide-away 5.1 DSP which I tucked under the seat. The indash unit had two micro fans and the outboard unit had one slightly larger one. I design my systems to be sound quality systems... and given the dynamic range of some of the music I listen to (classical for example) there are a lot of quiet passages to the music. I'm also one of those goofballs that sit in their car in the garage at 1AM listening to a good Telarc CD with the engine off. And the experience is utterly destroyed by those damn fans whirring away.... So a few weeks of this and I get disgusted and call up Pioneer tech support. After all, the deck is Pioneer's flagship deck and MSRP's for $2700.00. You should be getting top of the line sound quality and no mechanical noise right?? LOL!!

So I call up tech support and get into a conversation with some guy who's obviously an english-as-a-second language type (honestly I normally don't have much problem with that but they have no business working in tech support/customer service jobs) who doesn't seem to understand why I'm so upset over a little fan noise!! I'm at a dead end with this guy, and it really doesn't pay to explain what the term "audiophile" means in hindi or whatever....

I'd already had the deck for six months so I was pretty much stuck with it....

So here was my solution since I already had made the investment and I was stuck with the deck anyways.

(And I assume NO liability if anyone tries this... you better know your way around electronics!)

I dissassembled the head unit and removed the two fans... stupid thing is pioneer used two TINY little fans rather than one larger unit, smaller ones have to make up for capacity with RPM which increases the associated noise exponentially. I soldered a couple of resistors inline with the fans so the voltage to the fans was dropped. Obviously you don't get nearly the amount of airflow but the noise level dropped significantly. Obviously this is gonna void any warranty you might have too.

I then took the DSP module, opened that up and padded down the fan with a resistor, then dynamatted the top panel of the module from the inside since the flat sheetmetal of the cover acted like a resonator.

All in all the noise level dropped significantly with the mods, and even living in AZ I never had a single overheat/shutdown. A few years later I removed the resistors and sold the deck on EBAY when I decided I wanted a double DIN.... and went with a Kenwood.

Here's the real deal....

In the day that MP3 is king and people listen to their music on computer speakers and listen to Bose speakers that they think sound good and they "look cute", sound quality has been the sacrifice on the alter of convenience simple ignorance. Things like extraneous mechanical noise on a $2000.00 piece of audio equipment are just things that the consumer has to deal with... at least in the opinion of the mass market manufacturer. And ya know, 99% of consumers are too anesthetised, ignorant, or otherwise non-cognizant of the fact that they are being taken for top-dollar for substandard product.

I know this to be true too because I've brought this fact up on forums in the past (diyma and carsound before it took a dump) and got remarkably little concurrence from other alleged "audiophiles" on these forums, and I know for a fact my hearing isn't that good! But I suppose maybe it might be expected since IMO AV decks really aren't audiophile product to begin with... though for the premium prices the bring they certainly SHOULD be!

That was my complaint with Pioneer products five years ago... I see things haven't changed with them a bit.

Sorry you had to find this out the hard way.

I'm now on my second Kenwood, lastly a DDX-817 and most recently a DDX812.... I require onboard 5.1 processing and crossovers since I run an audiocontrol 6 channel 3rd octave EQ. I have my gripes with the GUI interface, and soundquality certainly isn't that of an Alpine 7909, McIntosh, Nac, or oldschool denon... it has a few pops and clicks on turn on and when changing sources, but you can't beat all of the features crammed into the little box and the fan noise is minimal. You really have to listen for it in most situations. Perhaps eclipse might be overall a better SQ deck, but their Nav doesn't touch the KGA-510 Garmin unit.

It's the best compromise of SQ vs. features that I was able to find.

Regarding some of your other gripes... the lag on the controls is pretty common... I have the same with my Kenwood. I'm guessing it's because these aren't analog switches to controls, rather you're working thru a GUI (graphic user interface) with software involved. You know how sometimes a blackberry lags a bit? I imagine it's a similar issue.

The KGA-510 (Kenwood/Garmin Nav system) IS HD or flashdrive based... and other than an initial software bug, i've had no issue. Funny thing is Kenwood either knew nothing about the bug or more likely was refusing to admit the problem, but when I went to garmin's website, lo and behold they had the software patch and the instructions on how to upload it to the GPS.... lol! Kenwood FAIL! But other than that the unit is very user friendly. Very happy with it.

So Pioneer? Pffft! dump it....

Cheers!

-b

[Peleg]

It is a shame. I heard some good things about Pioneer.

I was reading about the Kenwood DNX8120, but I didn't like the GUI on it, it looked kinda cheap, plus to get the DVD in the screen flips down.

Not sure what's going to happen. I will play with this unit this weekend and see where it goes.

I mean, it's not a total catastrophy, just for the price you pay, you'd expect it would be ready set to go.

[Biznatch231]

You could buy a prebuilt carputer for that from mp3car.com that would do everything it does + more. Then just put the PC portion in the trunk and you won't even hear the fans. Can store all your music on it at once, and anything else you can think of. Plus it will be more reliable and easier to update the software/drivers if somethins is improved. Just pull in your driveway and log on to your wireless network and DL. As soon as I get money that's the first thing I'm going to build for my STI (Plus being a CompSci major it will be a fun project for me).

[Peleg]

Originally Posted by Biznatch231

You could buy a prebuilt carputer for that from mp3car.com that would do everything it does + more. Then just put the PC portion in the trunk and you won't even hear the fans. Can store all your music on it at once, and anything else you can think of. Plus it will be more reliable and easier to update the software/drivers if somethins is improved. Just pull in your driveway and log on to your wireless network and DL. As soon as I get money that's the first thing I'm going to build for my STI (Plus being a CompSci major it will be a fun project for me).

I googled it. Seems pretty cool. I'll look into it.

[Peleg]

Update: Got home this afternoon and seriously started playing with the unit.

- The hands free phone/voice dialing works great, no complaints there.

- The NAV works fine as well.

More updates soon.

[Peleg]

Call waiting doesn't show up on the unit.

Called Pioneer. The guy agreed to add that to their list of "things to do".

[halfelite]

Originally Posted by Peleg

Call waiting doesn't show up on the unit.

It cant. its a limitation of bluetooth on most phone in the way it handles call waiting.


We have the MS sync in my wifes car and my phone will handle call waiting but hers wont. But hers allowed the phonebook to be downloaded and my didnt until the latest MS mobile upgrade.

[XxSCAxX]

i've only had my 900bt for two days, but so far i love it. only thing that kinda sucks is the long start up time, but then again, i always let my car warm up anyway. so not really that big of a deal. everything else has been working pretty much on point. i posted some pics of it in the other thread, and also how i mounted my microphone in my pillar.

[Peleg]

Update: while playing a CD, the track names don't appear. This happened with every CD I played, with the exception of a CD I burned myself.

Weird.

[halfelite]

Originally Posted by Peleg

Update: while playing a CD, the track names don't appear. This happened with every CD I played, with the exception of a CD I burned myself.

Weird.

only newer cds have id3 tag info. Anytime you burn mp3s they will add the id tag.

[Peleg]

Fan is not as loud anymore...........

[karleric]

Originally Posted by Peleg

Fan is not as loud anymore...........

Dang bro - Sorry to hear about these issues. I'm definitely keeping an eye on this thread now. I'm curious to see how the long term ownership of this model turns out for you as I was interested in this model myself.

[Peleg]

A few days now, I'm actually liking it. Maybe I was over criticizing too much.

The bluetooth is great. I don't miss a call now. It pauses the radio and I can talk hands free.


The XM works awesome, 180 channels.

Pictures soon.

[Peleg]

Tech Notes

* I noticed the voice recognition works better if the microphone is placed on the sunvisor rather than on the A pillar top. I'm going to experiment with that this week, but most likely move the mic back to the sunvisor.

* Having said that, when you install the system and there is slack in the cables (gps, xm, mic) leave the slack zip tied close to where you'll mount the device, meaning, don't zip tie it near the unit under the dash. This just gives you flexibility to relocate the device later on if adjustments are neeeded.