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6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
What the doctor ordered Jun 02, 2011
By R. Jones
"Tech fiend"
Got this to replace my factory Bose "Premium" system; I've owned many Kenwood's in the past, and their sound quality is top-notch, so it was a no brainer to find this one. Truthfully, I didn't need the blutooth on this, but there was an open box one on crutchfield that was only $5 more than the DDX318, so I said, why not? I use my Garmin 3790 for calls, so I didn't hook up the blutooth portion yet; I may when I pull it back out to install the steering wheel controls module.
Sound quality wise, I was not disappointed at all! What helps, I suppose, is that I replaced the factory front component speakers with Infinity components, and they sound great. I wired my sub in with a rigging from the factory amp (don't ask, Mazda made it a pain in the tuckus to upgrade anything with this stereo, everything has to be rigged unless you are replacing EVERYTHING), and now I can hear those low-low bass notes with my Resonant Engineering 15" sealed sub, and yet it still sounds musical for my jazz and classical recordings! If you're wondering if you will hear an improvement over factory, worry no more.
BTW if you're thinking of adding the NAV module, don't bother buying this, buy a radio that already has it built in, the price for the add-on is outrageous. I bought this mainly for sound quality, and being able to watch my ipod touch videos on a larger screen, and this product delivers. Yes, it is technically a 3-band eq, but it is not as restrictive as you might think, with the ability to choose which frequencies are boosted by each, and how wide you want that "bump" to spread across the spectrum. The "Loudness" toggle, for bumping bass and treble at low volumes, works very well, the frequencies chosen really do kick up the frequencies you'd want bumped up. There is also a Bass Extension toggle, it does change the sound somewhat, but I don't know about it really being "extended," and the manual barely grazes over this feature.
Ipod control - works very well, not too much lag except at the beginning of turning on the radio, it takes 5-10 seconds to show my lists; after this, it's fairly snappy. My first thing I didn't like, though, was that the cable needed to watch video and control the ipod ($30) can only be hooked up in the front! It's a pretty thick cable, and I like to hide my Ipod Touch in the car, in the glovebox, so this means a thick cable snaked across the front of the radio (the hookup is on the left, so that's even worse), then into my glovebox. Messy. I would have liked the option to have that in the back of the radio, out of sight. If you can have all the other hookups back there, why not that one? Second thing I didn't like - if my finger touches the screen while I'm trying to, say, change the volume knob, it skips whatever I was watching back to the beginning, like I hit the key "|<<" even though it's not currently on the screen. and since you can't choose chapters, or fast forward a certain amount of time, like 1 minute, it's aggravating to be 83 minutes into the movie, the characters are whispering, you can't hear them so you reach to turn it up a little, and bam - you see the Universal splash screen from the beginning of the movie. Fast forwarding and rewinding is pretty choppy. And you better hit "FN" often, so that when you want to stop fast forwarding or rewinding, that you'll light up the transport buttons on the screen to do so, which disappear 5 seconds after not touching anything (regardless of if you're rewinding or fast forwarding). Or buy the remote control - which actually is pretty poorly laid out, "Play" is at the top right, ff and rew are 2/3 of the way down on the left (but not next to each other), and volume is 1/2 way down on the right.
So yes, there are some caveats, but all the same, for under $400 (before buying extras like the remote and ipod cable), you get great sound quality, and functional ipod support. Oh, by the way, once video IS playing, it looks great. Worth the trouble (especially if you go ahead and ground the parking brake sensor wire to the black radio ground while you're doing all your wiring).
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 So and so unit, which could be great with future improvements Apr 18, 2011
By Felix L. Rodriguez
Cons: Bluetooth call quality is poor. Callers
tell me I sound like very far away, and a lot of echo is perceived. I have tried
changing the position of the mic, lowering/increasing mic volume, changing
the BT options for this stereo from my Blackberry's BT options, in order to
activate echo control, etc., to no avail. Kenwood customer service's reply was
to move mic farther away from speakers and/or use another phone. So, not
too helpful.
Also, my Itouch 3G has a problem with this unit. Artists starting with "R" will
start showing correct albums, but not the correct songs within those albums. I
noticed that the songs being shown are those of the artists starting with the
letter "A". Weird.
Problems reading custom DVD+Rs. Regular/brand new DVDs are read correctly.
Equalizer only for 3 bands (wished more bands).
Itouch/ipod needs a specific cable for audio/video. Expect to pay around $30
for it.
Pros: Sound improves over stock stereo (but not by a lot). I suppose mileage may vary for each user, according to the quality of each car's stock stereo. As well, getting better aftermarket speakers should help (although I did not do that, yet.)
Nice screen colors, resolution.
Quick connectivity to BT from my Blackberry, importing phonebook, missed
calls, etc. Calls can be made from screen or from the BB itself.
CD-R text is read correctly (if user has, indeed, added the appropiate info to the artist, song and album fields, on the ID3 tags.)
Easy scroll feature helps when searching for songs, playlists, albums, etc., making it faster.
Availability of various ambient colorings, to match your car interior, or as desired.
Clock could be adjusted/updated via RDS (radio) information.
--------------------------------
If Kenwood could come up with improving (vastly) the call quality, it would turn into a great stereo. Also, the weird problem with iTouch 3G (OS ver. 4.3.1) maybe caused by Apple OS SW update, but from experience, I believe it is more a Kenwood firmware/sw problem. Notice that the problem only happens when searching songs from the stereo screen, and by artist, not by albums/genres/playlists/etc.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Nice unit, bluetooth okay, DVD and Ipod options are great Dec 22, 2011
By goodtimes28
I expected the bluetooth on this device to work a little better. It does have the microphone that is wired up into the car, and according to the "experts" I consulted beforehand, this is the best type of bluetooth on the market. I find that sometimes it is great and other times the person I am talking to cannot hear me at all and I have to switch to the handset or hangup. Though it usually accepts and recognizes calls coming in and out it occasionally will not switch to the bluetooth in time and I am forced to do so manually.
The DVD works well, but I haven't used it much.
It is nice to be able to load songs onto a flash drive and play from that as well an an Ipod or Iphone. It scrolls through songs on flash drive with controls.
One thing I haven't been able to figure out how to do is to capture images to use as a home screen. It supposedly has this capability, but I can't figure it out.
I am happy with my purchase and enjoy the touchscreen.
 Audio good, bluetooth barely works Feb 27, 2012
By Ted Malone
I've had this unit for a few months now. I had it professionally installed by a Kenwood dealer and have to say I've been disappointed overall. The audio sound quality is good and the built-in amp was plenty for my needs - Four 3-way speakers in a relativley small car.
However, one of the main reasons I bought this unit was for bluetooth. I wanted hands-free phone use and bluetooth audio streaming. The audio quality for handsfree is terrible. It clearly has no noise canceling capabilities, and callers tell me they can barely hear me or that I sound like I'm in a tunnel. And, handsfree frequently doesn't even work. I'll initiate a call from the head unit and it will dial my phone but will keep playing music instead of switching over to the call. The same thing happens when I try to answer calls. I push the button on the screen to answer and it does pick up my phone but the audio never connects.
Bluetooth audio is equally bad. While I can stream audio from my phone, the radio randomly disconnects from my phone. I travel frequently and rent cars that are equipped with bluetooth, so I know this isn't an issue with my phone. It just drops the connection and my phone switches over to playing out of it's internal speaker. I have to disconnect bluetooth and reconnect in order to get it to play through the Kenwood again.
Very disappointing, and Kenwood has not issued any software updates to address these issues.
 awesome Dec 12, 2011
By wayward
This system is awesome. It was shipped quickly and installed just as easily. The system does not come with a remote so make sure you get one with it. Also you should look into a rear view camera as it has the input for it. when i purchased mine it showed what was usually was purchased with it and one of those was the flush mount camera. I wouldn't get that one. Go for the kind that mount on the license plate. I had to build a fiber glass mount for the camera to make the flush mount one work. I took me a while to get it to look right.
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