Need MP3 playback for the car? Deal on Kenwood 8017. (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Sun]

I will have finally join the ranks of those with a CD player in their cars.
6 Ave. is selling the Kenwood KDCMP8017 for a dirt cheap price of $199.99 plus shipping (around $11 for US addresses). Check on the right side of their webpage for the "internet deals". The usual price on the internet is $250-$360 for this unit (not sure if it's being phased out, but the reviews are very good for this model).
The feature that sold me on the deck was the MP3 playback capability. The only drawbacks I've heard is that there's a delay between playing MP3 tracks, and you can only do random play within directories of MP3s, but that's not too big a deal for me who's been hobbling along with a tape deck for all these years.
It'll read CD/CD-R/CD-RW, and has 22W/ch (4 channels). The faceplate can be removed, or rotated to look like it's been removed.
Hopefully I'll get it early next week. Can't wait to start making some CD-RWs with over 140 songs on them!
I had to phone my order in, but the CSR was nice enough to include a wire harness for $10.

 

[Jeff D]

I like mine, but I paid more and it was stolen so I had to get a second one. I have made a theft deterant device to help protect the new stereo.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Care to elaborate on the theft deterrent device?

 

[Ed Francisco]

I have a Rockford-Fosgate RFX9000 CD/MP3 player that I bought from Best Buy about 6 months ago. It was about $270 when I got it, and I must say that it's one of the best investments I've made for my car. It comes in handy especially if you've got a long daily commute or if you're stuck in traffic.

Although there's a slight delay between tracks, it's not much longer than the delay between tracks on regular CDs.

 

[David Lawson]

I was strongly considering the Kenwood, but ended up going with the Jensen MP3510 instead. Capabilities were a wash between these two, so I just based my decision on price (which became more of a factor once I discovered that you had to buy the Kenwood remote separately). I've had the MP3510 for almost two weeks now.
There is a delay between tracks on the Jensen, but I doubt it's more than half a second. My main complaints with the deck at this point are:
1. You can't scroll the artist name and the song name at the same time, unless they're both contained in the same field in the ID3 tag.
2. It only reads ID3v1 tags, so I have to batch convert my MP3s encoded from iTunes with ID3v2 tags in a separate program to "downgrade" them.
3. It only reads ISO 9660 Level 1 formatted discs, which truncates all file names to an 8.3 format, making things interesting when I'm trying to locate a specific song on a Mac or a PC.
They're relatively minor complaints, though, and none of the disc format quirks caught me by surprise since I read up on the deck at Highway MP3 before purchasing it. Encoding at 128K, I've been able to fit 196 songs on one CD, and 203 on the other. I'm still in the process of encoding stuff for the third one.
The MP3510 is 45Wx4, by the way. I'll freely admit that means almost nothing to me.
EDIT: I forgot that the Kenwood deck can switch between green and red for its display color. If I owned a Volkswagen, I might have gone with the Kenwood after all, since a red display would match the rest of the dashboard.

 

[Jeff D]

Pat, I actually created a cover for the radio in my grand cherokee. If you were to look in there is nothing in my dash for the thief to see. It's made out of RTV rubber and looks like one of those plates that covers an empty hole in the console.

 

[Jeff D]

David, even though the Kenwood gives the same specs about the disc, ISO-9660, 650MB, CD-R, 128 bit I've found the 8017 plays joliet discs, on 700MB discs with variable bit rate (up to 256kbits) MP3s to play fine and sound really good.

I don't like that the remote was extra!

 

[David Lawson]

Jeff, I haven't had problems with 700 MB CD-Rs, either. Both of the discs I've burned have almost 690 MB of music on them. I haven't tried VBR encoding yet, but the Jensen can supposedly handle VBR files encoded at up to 320K.

I do have another complaint about the Jensen deck, though...no audible fast forward/rewind. Hell, the Jensen has no fast forward/rewind, period. This would be more of an issue if the Jensen didn't have the ability to resume playing after it's been shut down, but I still miss this feature from every (normal) CD deck I've owned.

 

[Alex Spindler]

Hey David - I have the same Jensen model you do. I'm very pleased with it. My only gripes (and they are minor):
-An occasional unhappiness with some low quality CD-RW's
-Doesn't save the Random selection when power is switched off
-The method of navigating menus is kind of silly (no direct access to menu# and song#? What's up with that?)
-The random seems to hate my last directory (5 in my current CD's case). It just sticks to 2 through 4 until it is forced to go to 5. Bizarre.
I love this one nonetheless. Right now I recommend that anyone computer literate with a burner to make sure their next car CD player has MP3 playback. It really opens up worlds of possibilities.

 

[Bryan Toth]

I've had the Kenwood model since last summer (got it in July) and have gotten great use of it ever since. I already had a bunch of MP3 CDs burned (for my Rio Volt) and they all played flawlessly in this deck. The delay between tracks is really only noticable when listening to a live recording or "concept" type albums that segue straight from one song to the next. Other than those situations, the delay doesn't bother me.... to be honest, I really couldn't be happier with this deck. At $199, it's a steal....

Bryan

 

[Patrick Sun]

JeffD, wanna make me a cover?

 

[Jeff D]

Patrick, it was a fun process, I was already toying with RTV (Room Tempature Vulcanizing) Rubber. This was a no brainer to do as I was installing the radio. It took a day but was well worth it.
My stereo in my car had been stolen back in early summer. 4 months later I finally got around to replacing the dash and damaged console. I did all the work myself. My new radio was the 8017.
Four days later while I had the face plate in my posession the car was broken into again. 8017 now gone... Both times the same spot, a pretty safe spot. For 4 days I had been jazzed about the 8017 and all the cool features. I was depressed and determined to prevent this from happening again.
Check out the picts if you want...
http://www.geocities.com/iceweasel_14/images/cover/

 

[Patrick Sun]

So where do you get this RTV rubber stuff? Looks like a nice deterrent for would-be thieves.

 

[Patrick Sun]

On Tuesday I got the UPS note that they tried to deliver the package, but I wasn't home and they needed a signature. So I came home early on Wednesday and puttered around until the UPS guy finally shows up with the package, which was double-boxed with plenty of styro-peanuts, and a nifty HT magazine from the place I order from. It was so cold on Wednesday, I decided to not install it that day.
So it's now Thursday, and I wanted to report that installation of the unit went fine without a hitch. At work we have shrink tubing and a heat gun, so I spent some time connecting the wiring harness for my car to the unit's wire connector module. I made that part look real professional looking (too bad no one will ever see my handywork).
I was frankly amazed at how easy it was once I figured out what screws to take out to get the plastic panels of the console out the way. The wiring harness made it a snap to connect everything up. Connected the antenna hook-up, shoved the unit snugly into the dashboard hole, slapped on the face plate trim ring and I was good to go.
This unit puts out some bass (compared to my puny old factoy Honda tape deck), and I was tempted to take a drive somewhere, anywhere just to listen to the MP3s, but, alas, it was rush hour, so I decided I could put off my drive until later.
I actually read the manual and got used to most of the buttons on the panel to get the feel of their functionality, and so far things are laid out pretty logically.
I'd rate this quite a nice bargain!