Mike Milillo

Sirius at home using Kenwood DT-7000S tuner?

I have sirius in my car and was looking to add it to my home theater. I wasn't sure if I wanted to use this kenwood unit with the optical input, or go with the cheaper plug and play unit with the RCA jacks. Have any of you guys used the optical kenwood unit. Will there be a big difference in the sound quality, I know there is with my digital cable TV, but I wanted to know if it would be worth the extra money. thanks for your help guys..


http://kenwoodusa.com/excelon/HomeSatRadio.jsp

Dean_S

I have that tuner and posted my initial impressions here a while back. The difference on this tuner between the analog and digital outputs is noticable and worthwhile IMHO. Overall the SQ is about the same, but the soundstage is better with the digital and the presentation is a little forward (and natural sounding). It still suffers from all the SQ problems that are expected when dealing with compression and the outdated codec that Sirius is using.

Mike Milillo

thanks for replying. I ordered it, should get it tommorrow. I was going to compare the two outputs for myself. How does the RCA output sound compare to that of one of the standard plug and play units. If I feel the sound isn't much different, I will return this and get a cheaper plug and play. But I'm sure I will like this. Have you had any problems with this unit? Also, how far is your antenna cable running. I am going to use one 50 foot extension. Is it critical to have it in a west window. I am in NY. thanks for your help

Dean_S

I can't really compare it to other plug and play units since I don't have one. I only can compare it to the Kenwood unit in my car and that's apples and oranges. I did not need to the extention for my antenna and just ran it out the window to a rafter on patio. Mine is on the southside of my building and I mounted the antenna far enough out from the condo so it's not under the overhang. Reception is excellent. The unit has no problems and works well. Decent little remote, too (I haven't programmed this remote to my Home Theatre Master remote yet, but I imagine this will be easy.

Mike Milillo

Picked up the tuner last night and set it up. Sounds pretty good, not quite CD quality, but that was to be expected. I like the unit, and I had heard that you can't turn it off, but mine does have a standby mode where the display does turn off. Maybe they changed it or something.

I didn't have much time to play with it last night, but does yours lock up? I was using the category right and left buttons and it would lock up when I went down towards where the talk stations end and the music stations begin. I actually had to turn off the unit and turn it back on, because none of the buttons on the remote or the unit itself were working. For example, I would be in the low 100's and hit the left category button and it wouldn't go into the music streams. This happened a few times, and rebooting was the only way to get the buttons to work again. I hope this isn't a problem, but like I said I will have to play with it some more tonight. I am not an audio expert by any means, but I did notice a slight difference in the optical and RCA outputs. The bass sounded great coming through my system as well. I hear that they are going to be starting to add 5.1 support and that some streams may already have this, does anybody know anything about this?? thanks

Mike Milillo

I can't believe it. I placed the antenna on top of my home entertainment center, not even near a window and it works perfectly. Full signal strength even