Expensive, but well rounded. External Amp Recommended for bass
Pros:
Customizable soundstaging, down to 30hz front and rear independent highpass, excellent mids and highs
Cons:
Decent bass from internal amp but should be better for $649.
The Bottom Line:
Buy it, but do shell out for a cheap, CEA compliant, bass boosting amp to cover for Kenwood HU's weakness.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
Well, after messing with this radio's wealth of S.M.S. and S.R.S. WOW HD settings I've settled upon a sound that I like, which contains superior midrange and high clarity as well as better stereo expansion\soundstaging to that of my stolen Alpine CDA-9853's with the Media Expander set to maximum. Unfortunately the Alpines with BBE or Media Expanders are better at bass integration and depth. Trying to get the same level of bass as the Alpine by messing with the EQs on top of Trubass causes distortion. Maybe it's poorer amp quality, the Wolfson DACs, or that Trubass can't do what MX can.
USB Indexing speed is around 3/4 of the speed possessed by the Pioneer UB-6900 I had for like 2 weeks prior, which stills seems acceptable for me (so ~25 seconds). The 2nd is that it can only index 500 folders instead of 1,500, a limit I'll reach well before filling up my Maxtor 80gb hard drive, which sits in the glove compartment where I ran a cigarette lighter adaptor to accomodate the hard drive's y-cable.
The SRS processing does amazing things to analogue radio. Classical music over FM sounds like a 44khz recording with a sweet high end! Reception is just as good as my Alpine's, which is hard to top, and static reduction is nearly as good.
This is the only radio that can hack large usb storage devices with a reasonable file and folder limit and high quality sound. It's expensive, the amp isn't CEA compliant, and its standalone bass capabilities are a little dissapointing. But if you're set on a USB Hard Drive and clear, spatialized, neutral audio then this is the HU to get.
firmware version: 3.61
