One by me is... Have a whole wall of Alpine....

 

Get it from Crutchfield, so all the adapter bits are free, and install it yourself. I agree that most installers at places like that are hack artists. I won't trust my truck to them.
Here's the 9847 in a Ranger....looks and sounds great.

 

What is that underneath the stereo?

 

its a temp/humitiy thingy... from a cigar shop or sumthin...

 

Ah thanx.

 

What excactly does that mean? Crutchfield defines two random modes for MP3:
Random Folder Play: The receiver can play the contents of a folder in a random order.
Random File Play: The receiver can play the contents of an MP3 file in random order.

Kenwood has a random play for MP3s, I know as I use it all the time. But I fail to see the point of random file play. Does it randomly skip to a different point in the file? If it means it plays a random file, then Kenwood does in fact support this feature, at least it does on my deck.

As for Kenwood vs Alpine & the rest, I was a die hard Kenwood fan until my latest deck. My friends and I all had Kenwoods in HS and college and I loved them. When I bought the new truck I bought a Kenwood KDC-X569 under the very strong recommendaion of my buddy who had one. I was going to get the next model down, basically the non 'Excelon' equivalent, but it only came in silver and wanted a black head unit. I found my deck on sale and just pulled the trigger, w/o doing much more research, which is most decidedly out of character for me.

The sound on my X569 is excellent, more than good enough for me. I have a set of aftermarket Boston medium/high end 5x7's up front and the stock Ford speakers in back. The sound is more than good enough for me.

What drives me nuts about the thing is that they removed the mute button (called 'ATT' in Kenwood speak) from the front pannel of the decks in the era of mine! I can't begin go describe how fustrating this is! My old deck (which was fantastic btw) had the ATT switch easily accessable right on the front but had no pause. Truth be told I never once missed the pause button. The new deck has the pause button, but no ATT.. and that I definitely miss.

However I see they've seen the error of their ways. The MP228 you were looking at apears to have the ATT switch right below and to the left of the volume ****.

Still, I'd probably look very very closely at Alpine were I to do it over again. At the time I bought Alpine only supported XM while Kenwood only supported Sirius. I wanted Sirius so it sort of dictated which way I went. Now Alpine and Kenwood both seem to support both satellite brands.

 

Beats me, Crutchfield is the one saying it. I know my alpine has two random settings. "Random Disc" or "random folder" which will stay within the current folder. I would imagine the Kenwood lacks one of these options, and because each manufacturer has a different name for these features they had to combine similar terms.

 

Got me the Alpine 9847... Will be here thursday... Thanks!

 

congrads!!!!

 

Got all of mine installed tonight minus the Sub, which I will buying tomorrow.

I will get pics tomorrow at work, since it is Le Darke outside.

Sounds awesome. But the Sub will be what makes it sound great.

Good thing about Best Buy installing it, only was 180 dollars more for me to get it installed, you CAN haggle with them to lower price and at anytime i need it repaired (i got the 4 year warranty) i dont have to pay to get it taken out or do it myself. Yay.

 

Sweet Doc. Good choice. With crutchfield the install should go smooth.

 

The '05 Kenwood models just rolled in at my audio store, the one they got me sold on has all the Alpine feature but not for the Alpine price, and like i've said in other posts, it has a nice display that's easy to read. Plus there are a few added bonuses like a G-Force meter, and rpm display.