Summary: I am a sound quality junkie. I strive to get the best out of any system I have ever owned be it home theater or car audio. Pioneer seems to have a veritable knack for the pure sound enthusiast. For the past several years, I have only owned Pioneer decks in my vehicles given what they offer as far as customizing and tailoring your sound in any given price range. The "8600" is absolutely no exception and actually supersedes my expectations on sound shaping and customizing. The 13 band equalizer, while VERY COOL in my book, only begins to scratch the surface of the potential of this deck. To start, there are several "generic" EQ presets that are well thought out given a specific style of music, but more importantly is the ability to cut out frequencies on either the front or rear speakers of your vehicle. The ability to "throw" the sound in a way that home theater can with distance ratings per speaker is an incredible touch. Pioneer includes a microphone, of which it simply needs to be placed where your head is in the vehicle and the sound engine sets the parameters per speaker to allow all the music to focus on a single point...your ears! Absolutely awesome! Another nice feature is the ability to customize your subwoofer settings almost exponentially. While this is not a new concept to Pioneer, there are far more features than previous models to aid with your "thump" fix. Be it the double bass drums of metal, or the chest rupturing dance/pop music, you can tune it all in with remarkable precision. After your sound settings are complete, let us not forget the display. The OEL on this deck is absolutely beautiful. There are a great deal of options to allow you to suit your taste on screen displays; be it movie, background animation, static pictures or sound level controls...there is something programmed in this deck for everyone. Advanced features such as BBE sound leveling, XM radio, MP3, WMA, DVD audio, TV audio etc, etc, etc, only promote this product easily to suit the enthusiast who is on a long trip or has small children that need to be occupied while on that trip. In literal terms, there is nothing you cannot do with this deck to customize the sound quality you desire...period!
Strengths: The speed at which this deck can pick out your typical 75+ song MP3 CD is remarkable. Dial in a number of the song off your remote and it is playing in mere seconds...I mean it is that fast. The remote is easy to use and packed with features that makes operating the deck nearly obsolete aside from advanced features. The remotes "joystick" is precise and a great feature for menu scrolling. Sound customizing is rivaled by almost no current deck on the market and will give the sound purest a great satisfaction on how the sound is played back from this deck. This unit absolutely rivals even the highest end home theater receivers as far as sound customizing. Subwoofer, front and rear pre-outs only aid you with this. Another nice feature is the "don't forget me" motorized function on the deck which, after the vehicle is turned off, there is an audible beeping sound combined with the faceplate motoring down to be easily detached and stored for security. Well done as far as attention to simple details.
Weaknesses: It will take you a solid DAY to figure this deck out in its entirety...there are THAT many sound and entertainment features on it. If this is a con, so be it, but I had a great deal of fun learning all of the "in's" and "out's" of this deck. A little tweak here and there brought out even more sound quality, but as I said, it is time consuming. With all the adjustments come patience as well. it takes almost nothing to accidentally press a wrong button or menu option to get lost in all the features, but fortunately there is an "ESC" button that allows you to exit out and restart what you began...do not learn this deck while driving...it is an accident waiting to happen! :(
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Summary: I just purchased this stereo yesterday and I am very happy with it...
the only issue with this one is that its a pain in the .... to pause or ATT the song without the remote! Why would you do this pioneer? This is the only thing that ruins this unit!
Strengths: -Sound settings are unbelievable (include mic tunes stereo to your car specififcally) plus its a 13 band equalizer!
-good enough internal amp 22 RMS
-screen is okay...
-HAS AUTOMATIC TIME ADJUSTMENT!! OMFG this is amazing! it makes your front speakers sound like they are the subwoofers! It times all the sounds of all your speakers to reach your ears at the same time so they sound more real.... it does this by using the mic, and it actually finds and stores the exact difference in inches or CM between the mic and all the speakers, using some formula that the deck has programmed into it and using pulsing sounds from each individual speaker.
- EXTREMELY fast track-to-track seeking! and the text pops up quick when you change songs
Weaknesses: -screen can be hard to see during the day
-volume knob is horrible compared to any kenwood (especially the kdc-mp922)... its too short, and if you accidentally push it in, it switches sources, instead of just Attunating the sound,(like every other deck in the world)..
- pausing the song requires AT LEAST 3 actions.. push the right wheel 3 times, but only if the last action you did was pause, otherwise you have to push it twice, then SCROLL to pause!!! what a joke! just make a pause button, this is rediculous!
-no ATT button on unit
-takes 1 push, 1 rotation, and another push, and/or about 10 rotations and a few twists of the second knob to get to subwoofer settings! Why don't they make a subwoofer level control knob on the unit? This is a very important thing to me because almost every song requires you to change this because its either too much bass or not enough.
-you can only store 1 video, 1 bacground animation, and 4 pictures on the deck, when it can obviously can/should hold much more than that.
- only a 4-ish color display... not 256 like everyone else (or sony 32,000 with colors)
Similar Products Used: I chose this over the Sony CDX-M9900 even though it had the DVD-capable screen (money was no significance here)... because the songs took forever to play... if you like fast track-to-track mp3/cd skipping, then go with this one, this is literally the fastest one on the market (besides the Jensen MP3510 which really is the fastest ever no joke!)
Kenwood KDC-MP922 - Recommended Highly
Pioneer DEH-9600MP - Really slow track times
JVC KD-SHX700 - same thing... really slow
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Summary: What can I say? Pioneer has really out done themselves this time. This receiver is truly amazing!
Let's start with looks. The display is really cool, talk about bling-bling. Its got two movies, 4 moving backgrounds, 6 image backgrounds, 4 level-indicator displays, etc. Be careful, this can be distracting on the road.
This receiver has a lot of advanced sound shaping features which I won't list here, you can read the specs. But my favorite is separate high-pass filters for the front and rear. I've got 4x6's in front and 6x9's in back so this feature allows me to drop the bass from the front speakers but not the rear. The 13-band equalizer is a nice touch which should really be included in more receivers. MUCH easier to use than Alpine's EQ. All you do is select the band and adjust up or down.
In fact, thanks to the display, all of the features on this unit are very easy to understand and adjust. Also, it's got a very sensitive AM/FM antenna that pulls in stations nicely and displays signal strength much like a cell phone.
Strengths: Too many to list
Bottom line: sounds incredible
Weaknesses: I dare you to find one
Similar Products Used: Low-end Pioneer, Alpine CDA-9830 (sucks, see review)
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