Man I love this stereo more than my car... almost...

anyways I thought I'd let you guys know that this thing has EVERYTHING... and its CHEAP!!! only $450 at bestbuy with a 30 buck mail in rebate that I always forget to do...

the best thing about this deck is the included microphone that tests the acoustics of your car... you put the mic on your headrest, and run the test... and it makes sure that all the speakers are outputting the exact right frequency... it also measures the distances between all the speakers and the microphone to do Automatic Timing Advance.. which makes all the sounds reach your ears at the same time... e.g. the bass plays slightly early so the subs sound like they are coming out of your dashboard.. its friggin amazing

the only downside is that the deck has very few buttons and pausing it is a PITA... but if you use the remote all the time like me then its really easy... I think I will velcro the remote between the window buttons...

if you guys have any questions feel free to ask... and I don't work for Pioneer or anything, I thought I would just let you know of a killer deal for a kick *** deck...

later,
-Steven

 

yeah i plan to get that one in the next month you got any pics of it in your car.

 

yeah, I'll take some in a minute...

the only problem with all these stereos, is that they really don't fit well...

it seems like there would be more room, if you simply took out that piece of metal that held in the stock radio in the rear...

but anyways, all I did, is I pushed all the wiring in that square hole underneath the radio pod where the console rests against it... When I had my console off I just pulled all the wiring down that hole a bit, then I hooked up the stereo to the antenna and harness and all the rca, then pushed it in and snapped it into the mounting bracket... I pushed all the wires back in the hole underneath the headunit so that this way the stereo goes back as far as possible and won't just pop out while you're driving....

 

1st pic

 

2nd pic

 

last one...

 

heh, my console is all dirty because I took it out, and I had it sitting in the lawn when I was installing my 3-way electric fan control.... 1-ignition controlled, 2-stock ecu controlled, 3-always on

I'm thinking of adding an aftermarket fan, and wiring the "ignition controlled" part of the switch to make it run through the included temperature sensor.

 

looks good did you get the xm tuner? if not you gota get it xm is sweet

 

I really might get one of these soon, I really like the microphone idea.....hrm.......anything you absolutely hate about it? does it read mp3 cds in a lengthy fashion (i have an awia mp3 cd player and it read them for about a week and now i get error 03 everytime i pop one in!)

 

I have the Premier version of that deck and the MP3 disc gets scanned in about a second on good media. Basically it'll read the disc as fast as a CD.

 

That sounds like a week optical pickup.
I love the bang for the buck you get with the 8600, but I'm drooling over the 860 for my truck.

 

i've had a premier 920r with the mic for years....i love pioneer/premier decks. upgrading with the AVIC-N1 soon.

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pn...169030,00.html

 

Hard to beat Pioneer car units. Seem to last really well. Word of caution. I'd guess more Pioneers are stolen than the others combined. Even the faceplates seem to be worth a smash and grab. Don't leave the car on the street with the face on the stereo.

 

FYI, On the premier 860MP deck, the autoeq only works in standard 2 way xover mode. In 3 way, the autoeq cannot be used.

 

The auto EQ is nice but I'd do the time alignment my self(probably the EQ to). In some cases the direction of the mic can skew the results as it picks up reflections.

AVIC-N1, that thing is unreal. Can't wait till I get to play with one.....

 

I love how you can display your own images on the headunit. I might have to look into getting one of those. Does the CD Text work well on that unit?

 

the cd text is fine, and the only problems with the unit I have seen....

1-you can hear a skip between songs when song is automatically skipping from one to another (many decks do this)
2-the interface is pretty bad... its all menus, that you have to use a scroll wheel to get to. I am really used to kenwood's direct-access buttons, so you hit "sound" and then 5 options show up, then there is a 'next' button etc... you can do it blindfolded...
on this deck, when you push in the "multi-control", it then takes you to a main menu where you can switch between 1-entertainment, function, and audio. You know the default setting is function, so you know to rotate the multi-control to the right, then push it in... The next step is to just hope that the last thing you did was adjust the subwoofer control or whatever you want, otherwise you HAVE to scroll to the option you want... unlike other units that have more clever interfaces...

what they should have done is a nice combo between "twisty-****" and direct-access... to accomodate different people (especially when the direct access keys are just being wasted 99% of the time)...

and the other things that **** me off are for instance when you are updating the screensavers and junk, it literally takes 12 minutes for the deck to update from the cd, and the software even tells me that before I burn the cd... kinda lame

the autoeq/ta is very impressive, every once-in-a-while, I turn off auto eq just to see the difference, and its unbelievable... the TA is nice too, but not as big of a difference, and you have to work with a few settings to make it not sound all whiny and high-pitched... "BBE sound"

also, the mp3 text system is just not very smart... I mean, for the most part, its awesome... they really got down the scrolling, and the placement of the text, but if you do not have an mp3 tag, you have to go into multicontol>function>scrolltoid3tag>turn off id3 tag... kinda lame... I am really used to kenwood's menu system where you go in and specifically set what the display shows

the last and final thing that I hate about this deck (and all others besides kenwood) is there is no auto-matic self-hiding faceplate! I have been saved so many times by this feature that I would pay extra for it... when you turn off your car the faceplate reverses itself and it looks like you took it out.. (I took it out most of the time just in case, but even so)

basically pioneer should buy out kenwood, and then mix the two products and make something worth having.

 

The problem is that causes like 95% of the failures with Kenwood.

 

thing is... this pioneer has the same exact mechanism... it just moves a slighty different way... to get the faceplate off... you even have to open the mechanism... the only difference here is the screen is on the faceplate, and on kenwood the faceplate was basically just a security chip.. and a screen protector..

 

hey one more thing... does anyone know if the ASL thing for pioneer even works? if so, HOW does it work? does it detect altenator pulses like my radar detector did? because it pretty much doesn't even work at all... at any setting... I know it doesn't use the mic, because for some reason they put the mic input on the edge of the faceplate, so the screen has to open itself up, and you can't have the mic on it while listening to music...

 

Just turn it on and a little ASL[ ] scale will come on. Now drive around and the more road noise the more bars will appear on the scale. Its not as good as the new Delcos with the speed sensor on them. I tried it for a few days. Now I just leave it off. I have the volume so loud I dont hear road noise anyways.

 

Not the same at all. The big problem is how Kenwood takes the slack out of the ribbon cable to the faceplate as it moves. Kenwood raps the ribbon cable around a roller on a spring and with some time the tension brakes the ribbon cable.

 

I'll double check next time I get one but every other pioneer uses a mic on the main PCB. They did some new stuff in this one so they may have done that different. And like Justins86bird said It doesn't work that well.

 

weird... when i turn on ASL... I don't see the meter next to the volume when I'm driving... I did see it once when I was on the tuner mode... but I think there is some conflict with my BGV and the display of the ASL... I think I will try turning off the BGV and see what happens... because I know this doesn't work well, but I'd like to know if it worked at ALL...

* I also wish they just did it by RPM's... not a mic, I loved my friends monsoon delco radio with the ASL built-in

 

mine works that way...really doesn't kick in til hwy speeds. hell the exhaust alone on the car would make it play at full volume.

 

ARG now I am mad... because I have gotten it to work finally... the whole problem is that you FOR SOME REASON cannot use ASL while you are playing an MP3 cd... only a standard disc, or the radio.... maybe an AUX input too, but I don't know... what the hell is that? That really makes me mad, almost like a complete design flaw... or maybe my unit is just broken... does anyone else have an ASL-capable mp3 deck that can check if that feature works with mp3s?