Deck of the Year

This headunit will literally blow your mind. Everything on the deck works exactly as you would expect it. The menus are laid out wonderfully, and they are very responsive.

The sound quality on this deck will take your breath away. With the built-in 16-Band DSP, you have more options at your fingertips than most high-end home theater setups. You have various ways of compensating for crappy stock speakers, including bass, treble, and other 'coloring' controls.

Included with the unit, are two separate microphones. One is for automatically setting the equalizer and Time Alignment of the deck. This works fairly well, if you have an aftermarket system, otherwise it's colored by crappy stock speakers and amplifiers. There is another microphone that you typically clip to your sun visor, or mount on your steering column, which is used for hands-free cellular phone communication. To switch between the two microphones, you just swap the cables somewhere, typically in the glove box, or somewhere similarly convenient.

That brings me on to the Bluetooth integration. Simply put, it's ASTOUNDING. Strong reception, and great voice quality. The implementation is the best in the industry. I have friends with high-end luxury cars that are trying to get this deck put in instead of their top-dollar BT integration.... When you are listening to music, and the phone rings, all you have to do is click the big wheel to answer, or hit cancel to resume your music. Even if you answer the phone by hand, the music will stay paused until you hang up your cell. Once you're done, music resumes right where you left of. Works as advertised, perfectly. The one thing you need to check on, is microphone placement. If it's extremely windy, or far away from you, or dangling, then the other party will hear a great deal of noise. It is imperative that you use common sense when mounting the mic.

The deck also supports audio playback from Bluetooth sources... I have not been able to test this, because I don't have any players that support this... but, according to the manual, you can CONTROL the source from the headunit, via BT. You also get text readout, same as playing a CD.

Ipod integration is lacking, but it's still the best that's available, for now. With the second-generation interface, you get INSTANT audio playback from unit power-on, and instant text readout. Changing from one song to another is also instantaneous, and the text is rather quick as well... Not as quick as when you play a disc, however. Overall, I am highly dissatisfied with the implementation of the Ipod interface. It is much too slow to actually navigate your music collection. You are forced to create a few playlists before-hand, and play them randomly in the car. You cannot modify or create ON-THE-GO playlists.

What it boils down to, is a low-speed link between the deck and the Ipod. The problem resides inside the interface. When you are 'browsing' the Ipod, either by Artist or what-have-you, you can essentially scroll about 5 selections in a second. That can become quite time-consuming if you have 8,000 songs on your 60GB Ipod, which is not out of the question these days. Worst of all, the deck/interface, 'forgets' where you left off in your desperate search for a song. Say you scroll through for LITERALLY 10 minutes to find an Artist you want, (not even the song, because that would take an unrealistic amount of time,) and you select the song for playback, you are taken back to the home screen where information is displayed. When you re-enter browse mode, you are starting from square one each and every time. This becomes HIGHLY aggravating and is most definitely a problem with the interface, not the headunit. I feel it to be noteworthy, however, because it is my experience with the deck.

CD and Radio use are a pleasure to use. The CD playback browse menu actually remembers where you left off in your ventures, unlike the Ipod interface. You also have the ability to put in album art, once you properly format it using the downloadable (free, of course,) Pioneer customization software. This also allows you to modify 10 background pictures, one visualizer, and a 15-second movie. The visualizer is a bit tricky to master, but it is related to the sound you are hearing when you play a source. The 10 background pictures can be played as a slideshow, or as a static background.

Each display mode has typically a 'front,' and a 'back.' The front is usually the important information, like song specifics, but can be a few other things as well. You can pick a visualizer, random visualizers(scans through them all,) two 15-second movies, three different ways of displaying your tachometer and battery voltage, and a few "no frill" ways of displaying your song information. You can even turn off the background completely, leaving it black.

The unit comes with the standard credit-card remote, which is not going to win any awards. Honestly, the only reason I would ever use a remote in the car, is to control it from the OUTSIDE, and seeing how none of these remotes are radio-based, my dream will never come true. Essentially worthless in my book, however, it does allow direct-access to track numbers, and audio/source settings, if you feel so inclined. I find the headunit's interface so joyous, that you really don't need the remote, really.

Lastly, I cannot recommend the SIR-PNR2 Sirius satellite radio tuner for this deck. While changing channels was very responsive, compared to other decks, the audio quality was so poor that I assumed my tuner was defective. I exchanged it twice before I decided to just get my money back. Others will argue with you, but in my personal opinion, a strong FM radio station will have crisper highs, and more defined, deeper bass when compared to a Sirius station. This is mostly because of the compression algorithm they have adopted, as well as the current station over-crowding. This is true of both XM and Sirius, and the only solution is to cut the number of stations to increase audio quality. I cannot blame the deck for this drawback, however, but since it is directly related to the unit and it's use, I feel it is highly important information.

Bottom Line: Best non-DVD, non-competition deck on the market, and the price reflects that.