What head unit?

[HotJambalaya]

Ok so I know zero about this area... I'm getting my old Nissan Pulsar Gti-R on the road again, and its time to rip out the old japanese head unit with band expander in it and stick in something modern.

My only particular criteria are that I need bluetooth, and streaming from iphone. I'm vaguely toying with DAB, but everyone says the reception on the window aerials is terrible, so I'm not too sure.

I spoke to one company and they recommended the Kenwood BT73 DAB. They recommended Kenwood as being easier to use?

http://www.kenwood-electronics.co.uk/car/rec/dab/K...

But they want £125 to install it. So I'd be in for about £285

I can't particularly tell the difference, but the lower model is the BT 39 DAB

http://www.halfords.com/technology/car-audio/dab-c...

which halfords do, and are much cheaper to install. I think I'd be in for about £150-£170

Firstly, is it particularly worth the difference, secondly is there anything else thats worth a look at. since being told that I wouldn't be able to control my cd changer in the boot with anything, I'm totally open to suggestions. This car is hardly used (undriven in 7 years to give some idea!) so no point going crazy!

[tankplanker]

You'll get a lot more head unit for the money buying an older model that has been discounted and even more head unit if you buy a second hand one. At that price point anything remotely near RRP will be average at best.

Are you replacing the speakers as well? Most OEM speakers literally cost a couple of pounds, so you can imagine the quality of them.

[HotJambalaya]

Not replacing the speakers, it came with after market speakers, complete with large rear shelf ones that rather tasteful neon logos on the back....

[tankplanker]

Does it have a seperate amp or two?

[HotJambalaya]

No amps at all

[markmullen]

I bought a Sony MEX-N6001BD for my winter car.

As you say window DAB aerial is crap but I've just received a mag mount external, see my thread about it, so that should sort that.

The head unit is good, £130 from Halfords, had BT handsfree which works well, BT streaming, front USB socket which supplies enough power to charge my iPhone even whilst running Waze, has an app to use your phone to control the head unit, and can operate Siri for making calls etc.

All in all I'm well happy with it.

http://www.halfords.com/technology/car-audio/dab-c...

[C70R]

This is an absolute bargain. Alpine quality, with bluetooth, aux and USB connectivity. No CD mech though, if you're one of those types.
http://www.halfords.com/technology/car-audio/car-s...

[defblade]

I've got the Kenwood BT73.

The only (and I'm a fussy bugger) gripe I have about it is that it has to re-read the USB source each time you change back to it - my previous HU would just read it once on start-up, then remember until you switched off again.

CD changer totally negated by rear USB - just run the cable to the glove box, mine's got a 64Gb flash drive attached with well over 4000 tracks on it!

A very MAJOR advantage of this HU is that the volume control doesn't allow you to turn the power up into clipping. Clipping the signal is what really kills speakers. Also, if you do expand your desires/system a little, you can turn the internal amp off completely to give the cleanest pre-amp output (again, no clipping).

I did run it for a few weeks using the internal amp until I had time to fit my externals; it was pretty impressive for a HU; if I didn't know just how good an amped fronts + sub set up sounds, I'd have been quite happy with it.



BTW, man up, fit it yourself! Chances are you'll need little more than a wiring adaptor to connect the HU loom to the car's loom (normally only issue is which power is ignition switched and which is permanent live; the HU loom has plugs on those 2 wires to make it easy to swap them over) and an aerial plug converter. You''ll need to take off or loosen the a-pillar trim as well (if it's got any?), otherwise it's 90% poking wires around behind the dash to get the DAB aerial and the microphone installed.

[HotJambalaya]

defblade said:

I've got the Kenwood BT73.

The only (and I'm a fussy bugger) gripe I have about it is that it has to re-read the USB source each time you change back to it - my previous HU would just read it once on start-up, then remember until you switched off again.

CD changer totally negated by rear USB - just run the cable to the glove box, mine's got a 64Gb flash drive attached with well over 4000 tracks on it!

A very MAJOR advantage of this HU is that the volume control doesn't allow you to turn the power up into clipping. Clipping the signal is what really kills speakers. Also, if you do expand your desires/system a little, you can turn the internal amp off completely to give the cleanest pre-amp output (again, no clipping).

I did run it for a few weeks using the internal amp until I had time to fit my externals; it was pretty impressive for a HU; if I didn't know just how good an amped fronts + sub set up sounds, I'd have been quite happy with it.



BTW, man up, fit it yourself! Chances are you'll need little more than a wiring adaptor to connect the HU loom to the car's loom (normally only issue is which power is ignition switched and which is permanent live; the HU loom has plugs on those 2 wires to make it easy to swap them over) and an aerial plug converter. You''ll need to take off or loosen the a-pillar trim as well (if it's got any?), otherwise it's 90% poking wires around behind the dash to get the DAB aerial and the microphone installed.

Hmmm, I was getting swayed by other units, but you seem to like it.

There is no way on gods earth I will be attempting to fit anything, I can follow flat pack dining table instructions and end up with firewood.

How is stuff on the flash drive presented? Do you put tracks into folders? or just dump them all in and search? How long does it take to re-read the USB source?

[defblade]

HotJambalaya said:

Hmmm, I was getting swayed by other units, but you seem to like it.

There is no way on gods earth I will be attempting to fit anything, I can follow flat pack dining table instructions and end up with firewood.

How is stuff on the flash drive presented? Do you put tracks into folders? or just dump them all in and search? How long does it take to re-read the USB source?

I do like it. The selector wheel works well for me (I've had no end of trouble before with "jogsticks" - what a stupid idea bouncing along in a car!); the on-board Digital Signal Processing makes a noticeable improvement to the staging; the DAB, despite the horror stories, works well (or did, until I fitted a cheap dashcam which interfered... sorted now though) and that's around rural Wales where the signal is not great; the internal amp is good; and as I said before - no clipping!

Just thought of another slightly minus point - I don't seem to be able to convince it to display DAB text (you know, the "now playing..." stuff) although I think it should.

Oh, and colour #24 is just right for BMW instrument lights orange, so it integrates well... it does a LOT of colours




Flash drive, like other HUs I have had.... I'm really struggling to remember, I know my previous HU needed the drive in FAT32 and I had to download a small program to do that as Windows won't use that format these days.... but I can't remember if I had to do the same on this one as it's no trouble at all once you've got a program (I was running a good old-fashioned portable HD with separate power up to this HU, but flash drives have got so cheap I decided to upgrade and save a bit of wiring this time).

If you're running on CDs still, you need to rip them all to MP3 (or if you're concerned about quality, a lossless format... make sure the HU will recognise it though before you start). As a car is not exactly a great hi-fi listening location to start with, I'll take a bit more volume over perfect reproduction every time I use LAME, with the Insanity preset Variable Bit Rate, I've never noticed a quality reduction though maybe some might. LAME will also download all the track, album, artist names etc for the songs and tag them for you (unless you have really obscure music!) from a free online database. You can decide how the tags are applied.

I then arrange mine in a normal tree structure alphabetically... that is, the top level folders are A, B, C... etc and then by group/artist and then by album. Someone I know puts the year at the front of each album name so they come up in chronological order, but I'd rather just have the name there! It's then easy to click back up the levels as required.

Kenwood do supply a neat little database program which scans your collection and lists it alphabetically by the various tags as you ask it to, but by track. When you've got a few hundred tracks, it would probably work well, but with a few thousand to scroll through, I quickly binned it and went back to my old directory structure ways.


It takes about 20 seconds or so to read my main flash drive. This is perfectly acceptable to me setting off, but a bit annoying when it does it each time you switch sources - could even be a problem if you have Traffic Info on.
Having said that, when I plug a stick in the front with just one album on, it only takes 2 or 3 seconds, so the delay is just down to the shear amount of files on my main stick.

I go with the 3 line display option, graphic equaliser/clock at the top; then song title, then album (I figure I know who the artist is! And for a while, I didn't have another reliable clock in the car). But you can choose the display you like, and what tags etc it shows to your choice.


HTH!

[HotJambalaya]

very very handy thanks! you're way way more technical then me on this, so think I'll just get the thing and be done with it!

Edit: Interestingly just spoke to halfords, their system shows it as discontinued, but they're still willing to fit it for £30. Strangely they don't know what has replaced it!

Edited by HotJambalaya on Saturday 13th February 16:49

[NiceCupOfTea]

My knowledge might be a bit out of date but I would go for Alpine - my last 2 Alpine units with USB and bluetooth have been great, but the Kenwood I bought, whilst being technically very good and a good sound is stupidly all menu based so you have to spend all your time faffing looking at the screen. The Alpines were a very simple pushbutton affair. Also had problems with the menus on the Kenwood.

Biggest annoyance with all of them was a limit on the number of files on the USB stick making it impossible to have all my music on them. The only thing I have found that will read a big USB stick with lots of files is a Parrot handsfree (which has its own issues)...

I'm hoping things have moved on in the last 3 or 4 years!

[defblade]

HotJambalaya said:

very very handy thanks! you're way way more technical then me on this, so think I'll just get the thing and be done with it!

Edit: Interestingly just spoke to halfords, their system shows it as discontinued, but they're still willing to fit it for £30. Strangely they don't know what has replaced it!

Edited by HotJambalaya on Saturday 13th February 16:49

I would just add that I am quite heavily biased towards having a rear USB - I like having ALL my music in my car, ALL the time. And front mounted sticks look scruffy and nickable to me. If you're happy having a stick stuck out the front of your HU, or only streaming from Bluetooth, other options may suit you better...

[markmullen]

defblade said:

I would just add that I am quite heavily biased towards having a rear USB - I like having ALL my music in my car, ALL the time. And front mounted sticks look scruffy and nickable to me. If you're happy having a stick stuck out the front of your HU, or only streaming from Bluetooth, other options may suit you better...

Whereas I prefer a front mount USB as I use Brodit mounts for my phone and a very short USB-Lightning cable so that my phone is charging all the time I am in the car and playing audio from it into the head unit. I could use Bluetooth streaming but then would still need power for long runs.

[HotJambalaya]

NiceCupOfTea said:

My knowledge might be a bit out of date but I would go for Alpine - my last 2 Alpine units with USB and bluetooth have been great, but the Kenwood I bought, whilst being technically very good and a good sound is stupidly all menu based so you have to spend all your time faffing looking at the screen. The Alpines were a very simple pushbutton affair. Also had problems with the menus on the Kenwood.

Biggest annoyance with all of them was a limit on the number of files on the USB stick making it impossible to have all my music on them. The only thing I have found that will read a big USB stick with lots of files is a Parrot handsfree (which has its own issues)...

I'm hoping things have moved on in the last 3 or 4 years!

Interesting, I was told by one audio company that the kenwood was specifically easier to use!

Messaged kenwood, and asked if this model was discontinued, they said no, I replied asking when their new model was out and they said in a couple of months, so I think I'll wait...

[C70R]

Honestly, the Alpine unit will be equally as good, if not better. At this end of the market, you won't really see a huge amount of difference...

[HotJambalaya]

C70R said:

Honestly, the Alpine unit will be equally as good, if not better. At this end of the market, you won't really see a huge amount of difference...

Yeah, I'm honestly not that fussed what I get as long as the music streams, theres a usb, and the bluetooth works ok. The other main thing is straight ease of use.