Kenwood KDC-BT742U WMA/MP3 CD Receiver with Built-in Bluetooth and Satellite/HD Radio/iPhone Ready

2 Comments

1. David Luis Pereira says:

   September 13, 2009 at 6:20 am

   Bought this receiver at Frys after getting recommended by the sales floor associate. After banging my head for an hour trying to figure out how to use this thing while reading through a poorly written manual, I finally managed to get the phone connected and figure out how to shuffle through music.

   — A HUGE Drawback —-
   
   Unfortunately we found out this device only supports within folder shuffle for usb connected devices (not including ipod). The next logical thing is to then put all your music in one folder. Unfortunately the device won’t recognize more than 255 files within one folder. This is a real pain. Especially when you consider a mp3 CD could hold close to 255 mp3s. My whole point for getting this was to get away with having to burn mp3 cds all the time.

   Pros
   
   - nice to have caller id and phonebook support
   
   - internal mic worked pretty good

   Cons
   
   - Music presets were not that different. Previous Scion stock radio had much better variety of audio equalizer presets.
   
   - Navigation through menus is not intuitive and difficult using the knob

   Rating: 2 / 5
2. A. Dorfman says:

   September 13, 2009 at 9:16 am

   (In case anyone read this review before I updated it, the major changes are that I’ve spoken to Kenwood about the bluetooth issues, and I’ve realized the interface isn’t as difficult as it seemed at first – if Amazon would let me, I would upgrade my rating to 3 stars).

   First the bad news. When I talk to people with my iPhone 3G via the bluetooth capability, they can barely understand me. My voice sounds heavily digitized at best, “like a robot.” During any given conversation, about half of what I say sounds like digital noise and is unintelligible. [edit:]After talking to Kenwood tech support, they acknowledged that several of their older units had exactly this problem, and it was fixed with a firmware update. They were not aware of an issue with this unit, and have now escalated a problem report to get it fixed. The current theory is that they have only tested the unit with iPhone firmware 2.1, and my iPhone has the latest firmware 2.2, and there may be an interoperability issue with it.[:edit]

   I did try my iPhone with a Pioneer DEH-BT7000, and it sounds fine through that unit, not digitized or robotic at all.

   [edit:]I have completely rewritten my account of the unit’s interface. Originally I said it was horrible, and if you google this unit, you’ll find similar complaints. With more time, I’ve realized that there is a decent logical consistency to this interface that makes most features fairly easy to remember. The problem is the manual does not explain it. Every button on the unit has a dual purpose; one by pressing it quickly, and one by holding it down for 1 sec.

   Every button is labeled on the face plate with both it’s primary and secondary purpose. All of the “secondary” purposes are indicated by a small solid white square. Some of the labels are a little too terse to realize what they mean before reading the manual, but once you realize what the label means, you won’t forget.

   For example, to turn FM station find on and off, you hold down the “AUTO” button for 1 sec. However AUTO is the secondary function for a button who’s primary function is to activate/deactivate the bluetooth hands-free feature. The secondary label happens to be on a silver highlight while the button and primary label are in a black area, so they don’t appear to have anything to do with each other, and the AUTO label appears to have nothing to do with anything.

   Another good example is information scrolling on the display. The default is to constantly scroll the artist and song name across the display. However, you can set it to not scroll, if you find that distracting. But then how do you read the rest of it if you want to? The 7-way knob has a legend next to it. UP and Down switch between FM and AM in radio mode. However, up has a secondary label of SCRL. That means “to scroll the display, press this for 1 sec”. I would never have guessed, but now that I know, I’ll never forget.

   So, I don’t hate the interface any more. I would just say the manual does not explain this pattern, and it took a while for me to recognize it on my own. [:edit]

   Another complaint is that it is difficult to press the knob without also tilting it, which often causes you to change what you’re trying to select before you select it.

   On the plus side, it sounds fantastic, and it has a ton of really cool features. I was particularly impressed by the ability to fine-tune the delay of audio generated by the different speakers to compensate for differences in speaker placement in different cars. This enables you to fine-tune the “audio center” of your car to coincide with the true physical center of the cabin – although I can’t currently claim to be able to tell the difference after doing so.

   Another silly plus is that this unit is gorgeous. I hate to admit it, but I love looking at it. The display is substantially clearer & more readable than the previous unit (the BT838u) and than the Pioneer BT700/70000 units.

   I really hope Kenwood can get me past this bluetooth audio problem [edit] b/c I really want this unit to end up working for me. I like the features, display readability, non-flip-down face-plate, and front-mounted USB and AUX ports.

   Other minor notes: the voice recognition function is a little weak, and tedious to program, but it works fine. [edit:]I was mistaken; the display auto-dims when you turn your headlights on[:edit]. The unit has a “play/pause” button [edit:which sounds obvious, but many mp3-focused units these days no longer have this throwback to the days of removable media; they expect you to turn the unit off when you don't want it to play.[:edit]

   Rating: 3 / 5