Excellent internal amp, strong am/fm reception and mindblowing multipath distortion reduction. The biggest plus to this receiver is it's ease of installation in GM vehicles. It was an almost perfect fit in my 92 Saturn SL2. It was almost perfect, because I had to drill out a small piece of plastic because the antenna plug was shifted over about .5 in from the factory position, so there was a bit of plastic in the way of the antenna wire. After that was removed, the receiver fit perfectly and looked like the car came with that receiver. I just used the factory metal braket with a spacer on top of the receiver that pioneer supplied.

As far as the cd player goes, it is acceptable, but it could be better. It's 2x as forgiving as the bose cd player in my 99 nissan maxima! The bose cd player has trouble reading cdr's sometimes, the pioneer reads them without a problem in the world.

The weak 1.6-1.7 volt preamp's could use ALOT of boosting! Especially for a top of the line GM fit model. 2v is minimum I would really appreciate 4v. The cd's high frequency roleoff and the amp's high distortion (5 percent THD) at high volumes creates harshness when coupled with high performance jbl tweaters. Comparitively, my 210 dollar dolby digital yamaha receiver in my living room has .07 percent THD and it makes that pioneer sound like a 10-20 year old cd player that you bought at a pawn shop. (really not that bad but it is a bit annoying.. I'm going to add some amps to see if the problem is actually the internal amp itself)

I paid 299 from Crutchfield and had it within 2 days of ordering it with all the necessary wiring and instructions to install it. Considering netmarket wanted 299 for it without any of that and UPS ground track (may get here may not in a week or two) for the same price I consider it a steal. However, a comperable receiver in features (deh4000) is much cheaper, $200, and give you much stronger 2+v preamps. Pioneer should consider their GM customers equal or more important, because of their market share of vehicles.

Similar Products Used:

ac/delco radios, pioneer deh1000 (the guts are the same excluding the tuner (no rds) exactly the same sound quality)

Radio abilities and possibilties are unparreled. Makes a simple am/fm radio into an amazing audio distributor.

Radio takes awhile to figure out who to operate everything with soo many features.

Great!