Kenwood X891? Eclipse

[Big Daddy Kane]

Kenwood Excelon KDC-X891 - $399 at Crutchfield:

Anyone have any idea about this HU? What's up with the no preset buttons? I can't find any info/pics other than what Crutchfield has!

I am sick and tired of the non-MP3 factory HU in my Sentra, but love the rest of the system. A [suprisingly] good thread in B15Sentra.net forums says to get a HU with high voltage preouts and splice some RCAs to your harness kit and use them with the factory amp.

Now, my requirements for a HU are the following:
• MUST be able to tune into European stations (i.e. 100.2**)
• MUST have high voltage preouts (5V+)
• MUST be an MP3 capable unit
• MUST have an AUX input w/o buying a seperate unit
• $400 limit

With the European tuning, it throws the majority of US HUs out of the window. On Crutchfield, I saw only Eclipse and Kenwood units that meet all my requirements. I'd rather order from the US since stuff is cheaper than here.

This Kenwood goes a few steps further with the USB integrated into the HU. Plus it has a 2 year warranty... by that time I plan on having a brand new vehicle with MP3 cabability from the factory. The Eclipse has a nifty areashot feature where you burn a CD with directions, and it will display them on the HU

Eclipse CD3100 - $249 at Crutchfield:

I don't like the display, and the 1 year warranty is another drawback. For me, I'd rather pay the $150 for the USB and other stuff the Kenwood has.

Before anyone tells me about how crappy factory systems are, lemme tell you that the 'Rockford Fosgate' (actually made by Clarion) system in the car ROCKS. It's the best factory system I've ever heard. Has 300W max run to 4 full range speakers (rear are coax), 2 tweeters, and an 8" sub (180 of the watts are fed to it). I am absolutely not going to bypass the amp and install aftermarket speakers and subs. I like it how it is!

So... I'm looking for A) More info on the Kenwood and/or B) If the Kenwood is a POS

**Just me ranting... WTF was AFN (American Forces Network) thinking when they chose the frequency for their local radio station here? No US car I've been in can tune to even frequencies! We have to tune to 100.3 and get static... Almost every other AFN station in Germany is on an odd frequency, so why us? This is the largest concentration of Americans outside the US... think they would have thought of that :shrug:

 

[SVT3Rivieres]

the eXcelon is way above the CD3100... you should compare it to the CD5100

personaly i have a CD5000 and im more than satisfied with it

btw you should check sounddomain.com for shipping outside US... for canada they use USPS so you dont have to pay the criminal UPS brokerage fees.. and they also have a 5% price beat if you find it cheaper elsewhere before ordering

 

[Big Daddy Kane]

I think Crutchfield does the free shipping to APO, but I'll check before I buy. I'll also compare the prices elsewhere (noting that Crutchfield has free install kit for my car and possibly free shipping... looks like Sound Domain does it too...).

The CD5100 is nice, but out of my price range (actually, the kenwood is pushing it!).

I wish some retailers had a serach option for european tuning... Most places list it under features, but don't provide a way to narrow down results with it.

 

[2000SilverSVT]

First, look on Ebay. I was debating between that Kenwood, the Eclipse 7100 or the Pioneer P980BT. I was mainly concerned with the 5v output and a 24bit DAC. I ended up buying the Pioneer but now wish I spent the extra for the Eclipse. I have owned 2 Kenwood decks and 2 Eclipse Decks and 1 Panasonic and now the Pioneer. No question the Eclipse decks were the best. The Sound Quality blew the kenwood away. At the time both the Kenwood and Eclipse were at the top of their lines.

My Pioneer SQ is very good but the functionality of the features sucks.

The Pioneer retails for $570 and I paid $324 + shipping for a Brand New Pioneer Elite.

Between the two you are looking at the Kenwood has much better specs than the Eclipse. The Eclipse will be higher quality but unless you go up to the 7100 you will not get a 24bit DAC and that to me makes a big difference.

Also look here http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-07-KENWOOD-...ryZ39751QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

You can buy the Kenwood on Ebay for ~$200.

 

[SVT3Rivieres]

the only headunit brand that i know for sure that can switch tuning mode is blaupunkt (obviously!)

but you can still drop a little email to the support on the compagny website to be safe

 

[icysvt]

First, look on Ebay. I was debating between that Kenwood, the Eclipse 7100 or the Pioneer P980BT. I was mainly concerned with the 5v output and a 24bit DAC. I ended up buying the Pioneer but now wish I spent the extra for the Eclipse. I have owned 2 Kenwood decks and 2 Eclipse Decks and 1 Panasonic and now the Pioneer. No question the Eclipse decks were the best. The Sound Quality blew the kenwood away. At the time both the Kenwood and Eclipse were at the top of their lines.

My Pioneer SQ is very good but the functionality of the features sucks.

The Pioneer retails for $570 and I paid $324 + shipping for a Brand New Pioneer Elite.

Between the two you are looking at the Kenwood has much better specs than the Eclipse. The Eclipse will be higher quality but unless you go up to the 7100 you will not get a 24bit DAC and that to me makes a big difference.

Also look here http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-07-KENWOOD-...ryZ39751QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

You can buy the Kenwood on Ebay for ~$200.

Ya the 980bt is not really an SQ unit. It just has cool features like the bluetooth and color screen etc... The 880mp is the SQ unit of the line up.
Now to the OP If those are your 2 choices then go with the Kenwood. Excelons are great units you wont be dissappointed

 

[SVT3Rivieres]

just check n the 891 is RDS tuner so you should be ok with that one !

 

[Big Daddy Kane]

just check n the 891 is RDS tuner so you should be ok with that one !

Yeah, I noticed that... RDS is cool. Just about every newish European car has it.

----

On an unrelated note... the Scirocco I just got needs a ton of work to the audio system! Wires that pulled out of the speakers, wires hanging from an amp in the hatch, cheap JVC head unit, etc.

 

[CSVT_2004]

I love working on audio systems... the only problem is I'm no where close to you to help out.... I didn't know though if you had looked at and JVC units, I'm pretty sure they have a system setting for changing them between US an EU for tuning.... IIRC... You'd have to read through the units though and see which ones do and don't... plus which would meet your specifications... Just my 2 cents...

 

[mrfatride]

i am actually waiting for the X891 to come off backorder for my car...great lil head unit especially if you have an ipod...the ipod interface is just wicked fast and works extremely well....if you dont have an ipod you can still use the usb input for a flash drive or i have even seen people use external hard drives and hooked those up to it...

 

[Big Daddy Kane]

you can still use the usb input for a flash drive or i have even seen people use external hard drives and hooked those up to it...

See, that would be the hotness. It could give me an excuse to upgrade the HD in my laptop, and use the old 80GB to house my entire music collection in my car.

For example, I was in the BX the other day shopping for a 37-42" LCD/Plasma TV, and I saw an off brand DVD player with 720p/1080i upscaling and HDMI port for $80.

Figured the upscaling was crap, but it's region free and multi format (NTSC/PAL/SECAM, which is all too important here), plus had a USB port on it.

Got home and was toying with it's settings to work properly on my wife's ghetto PAL-ONLY TV (even only has an RF and SCART input... nothing else), and plugged in a 500GB hard drive I have full of movies (planned on plugging it into my Shuttle when I got the lcd/plasma screen)... lo and behold, it plays MPEG/MP3/AVI (even Divx)... Tried a drive formatted in NTFS, but it wouldn't read it... oh well!

Even if the upscaling sucks, the USB port is totally worth it.

 

[muntus]

Maybe you should buy it here for $234? I got one from these guys, but it was refurb'd for $180 a while ago. The USB? It has a 1m pigtail that I put in the glove box. It's out of the way and awesome. I haven't burnt a single cd since I installed it.

 

[mrfatride]

I have heard guys have the most success with those external drives that use the usb for power....but if it needs 110 i don't see why you couldn't hardwire a power inverter in the car to power the HD

 

[hmouta]

Maybe you should buy it here for $234? I got one from these guys, but it was refurb'd for $180 a while ago. The USB? It has a 1m pigtail that I put in the glove box. It's out of the way and awesome. I haven't burnt a single cd since I installed it.

so does the usb read the song file tags and have the info show up on the hu display? can u scroll thru songs directly from the hu? does it also charge the usb mp3 player attached. i have a kenwood x979 that i use the aux input for my nonipod mp3 player but i've been thinking about getting a new kenwood hu with usb if i can control it directly from the hu? i'm tired of every new hu being ipod friendly and i have no desire to get an ipod. i love my x979 fold down face that folds up when not in use and then is completely black. no fancy buttons or faces for thieves to see and get bad thoughts about. but i'll gladly give that up for the newer kenwoods if usb works how i want it to.

 

[muntus]

so does the usb read the song file tags and have the info show up on the hu display? can u scroll thru songs directly from the hu? does it also charge the usb mp3 player attached. i have a kenwood x979 that i use the aux input for my nonipod mp3 player but i've been thinking about getting a new kenwood hu with usb if i can control it directly from the hu? i'm tired of every new hu being ipod friendly and i have no desire to get an ipod. i love my x979 fold down face that folds up when not in use and then is completely black. no fancy buttons or faces for thieves to see and get bad thoughts about. but i'll gladly give that up for the newer kenwoods if usb works how i want it to.

Seriously, I just plugged in the usb drive and it played songs. I haven't looked at the manual since. The info does not show up on the hu. It shows "Folder" and "File" if I'm not mistaken. It remains a possibility that it could show the file tags, but I never bothered to find out for certain. My first guess is no. Basically, it just finds whatever music files there are on the jump drive and plays them. If you have data on the drive intermingled with song files, it just ignores the data files.

If you organize your songs in folders, it is easy to navigate. Up and Down on the cursor pad cycles through the folders and left and right cycle through the files. So say you're listening to your Frank Sinatra mp3s and they are in one folder, you would press "right" on the pad(I use the remote) to skip to the next song within the Sinatra folder. Then, you're in the mood for your Tribe Called Quest songs, and you know they are two folders down on your jump drive, you press "down" twice and enjoy some of the "new school." Make sense?

It works on all my jump drives and a miniture 4gb hard drive that actually has a spinning disc. They are all usb powered. I have not plugged in an iPod to see if it works/charges through the usb, but I've heard it does work. Who knows what the navigation would be like, though. I'll try out my Shuffle this week and let you know.

On my mini hard drive(bus powered aka no power cord), sometimes it skips when I hit a bump, but the jump drives do not skip.

When you turn the car off and start it again, it rewinds the song about 20 seconds so you remember where you were at. It's a cool feature.

With the price of jump drives dropping fast and the fact that music files aren't getting bigger, you'd be a fool to buy a new deck without a usb port.

 

[mrfatride]

it will show the file name but if you were to read the manual it would show you how to change it from the folder name to the file name

 

[muntus]

it will show the file name but if you were to read the manual it would show you how to change it from the folder name to the file name

It sure does and it was easy to change. Now it shows artist name and song title.

By the way, I don't have the x891. I have the x890, but it is pretty much the same, just older.

I plugged in my Shuffle to the usb port, and t read it and said no data found. Since you can use part of the Shuffle as a jump drive, I'm sure if I had mp3s on the data portion of the Shuffle, it would have played them.

The usb feature on this radio is awesome for all your old jump drives. If you are looking for a Kenwood deck that integrates with iPods, I would get the adapter that plugs into the changer port. But personally, I would just buy a 4gb jump drive for $30 and call it good.