Sound quality, real-time graphic analyzers, internal amp shut off, Signal to noise of 110db because of dual offset d.a.'s from burr brown, o.f.c., crossover, eq, and gfocre tools

could have been fully motorized but i under stand Kenwood not wanting to do tha because they fail so much.

This is an audio lover's dream. The internal amp off switch makes the high-end vocals and cymbals crystal clear on my McIntosh MC-440. I had Pioneer's deh-p860mp and the sound was good but i knew it lacked the depth and vocals of my previous Eclipse head unit, but the eclipse was graphic-less and had ok sounding bass so i kept looking. The new Kenwood XXV-01D sounds so sweet, i'm not going to repeat all the features because you can check out crutchfield yourself for those details. Here's what I found the most interesting. The deck has a seperate eq setting for the front and the rear, besides the digital crossover thats also indepent but no biggie there. Speaking of the crossover, I was impressed by the octives going up to 24db, which is brick wall unwanted farting bass in those 6.5" mids upfront; because it has frequences as high as 250khz, and as low as 30hz for the subs it makes for some serious sound staging. It also has a direct option to pass everything and use the unit in pure mode, and sounds beautiful. I listen to all kinds of music so tweaking the sound is essential to me, so the when I saw the timealignment it was no big deal, but the *(14ft plus feet from the head) XXV-01d's subwoofer is also included in the time alignment which so far is beyond any deck out in the market. i forgot to mention that the eq has wide and narrow settings that are so detailed in .0.25 steps; from 0.25 to 2.00. I was so happy to see that the rca cords were oxygen free copper with gold tips. I loved the rds function because it give me fm song details like hd radio, with the radio station i.d., and the t.i. function that will scroll any information about traffic that is sent by the highway patrol, I missed that feature when i would go to the mountains for snow boarding and the snow would become a serious problem on the roads. The cd function is so pure and silky sounding, i think the offset digital analyzers did the trick. The spectrum analyzer for the audio graphics work in real time which as funny as it sounds is actuall rare, most alpines and pioneers that i have owned would always be late in processing the bass, it just seemed like the bar graph was there for fun, but the kenwood was just so head bopin I couldn't help but get involved with the music. Oh yeh, the ipod adapher rocks, i can see the songs scroll with the full name up to 28 characters, but whats even cooler is that i could change the color of the text up to like 10+ colors. The unit comes with a limited edition card with the picture of the engineer that specially tuned and hand picked the capacitors and resistors in the audio section of the preamp, it is matched very well and balanced better than all of my previous eclpse head units i've owned. The deck has built in gforce, and acceleration gauges with no external things to buy to make it work, and again it works in real time without any delays. It is such a sweet deck, i know it is destin to become a rare and sought after unit. It has a blinking red light that comes on when the face comes off which is cool, but the car alarm i have takes care of that but its nice just to know that there is one more deterant to theives. There is also a personalized 4 digit code to put in just in case some jackas$ gets a hold of it, they can't use the unit. The full color screen and detailed dpi is hugely important when watching your music play and analyzed the spectrum. I love this headunit, it is so pure, rich ans tweakable that I will keep it as a competition headunit for years to come.

Similar Products Used:

Headunits: Eclipse 8443, Pioneer Premier DEX-P9, Pioneer DEH-P860MP,Kenwood KDC-919MP, JVC EXAD KD-SHX750. Amplifiers: Nakamichi 302, 304; Alpine V12 MRV F357, Pioneer class A amps, Sony XES Speakers: Morel