I just recently bought this deck from a local car audio store and way overpaid, geuss thats what you get for not looking at prices elsewhere. But i am pretty satisfied with this product. I have previously had panasonic and clarion decks so i would deffinately say its sound quality and power are awesome. But its not the most user friendly deck i have had, plus the instructions that came with it were only in spanish and french. But over all its good!!
The manual has one booklet dedicated to English, and a separate booklet with French and Spanish. I'm going up from a 1999 Kenwood KDC-x711. The only feature I'll complain about is lack of MASK on this model. The slide down face is nice but I've never been a fan of detachable faces. The x711 from 1999 has the MASK feature, yet the excelon for the same price 5 years later does not. Other than that 100% improvement, great head unit.
This deck is better than an Alpine CDA-9813, Sony 7700 or any of the JVC Arsenal series decks. I know because I tried them all. 24 bit Burr-Brown DAC. Need I say more? O.K. I will. 110 s/n ratio, internal amp defeat, 3 very configurable and effective crossovers, three band EQ in which you can select from many center frequencies (the right choices, too) and q-factors for each frequency. Once you have that set in the ballpark, you can filter the choices so that while in tweak mode you only have to scroll through bass/mid/treble levels. That is a big advantage over the Alpines. Totally independant left and right channels so there is absolute separation. Zero mute for absolute silence between tracks. Loads tracks fairly quickly. Three things keep this deck from being perfect: No contrast level control for the display, only one user-defineable preset (but again it is easy to tweak), boring but informative display.
Great features and easy interface. Could be a little more attractive and with few minor additions would be amazing. Great sound quality and accuracy, also the AMS is great with an excelon amp.
This is actually the first deck I bought for myself after installing dozens for everyone else. I am more than wowwed by the unit. The features are more than enough for novice and audio nuts alike. Although I gave it plain ratings you get a solid deck for the buck. Overall excellent deck.
Tons of features. The diplay is very pixalated. It is fairly complicated to use. It dident really seem to make any improvment in sound quality compared to my 1996 kenwood deck, I think it actually sounds worse. I have only had it a week and the cd's dont eject properly, sometimes you have to pull the cd's out cause they stick halfway. I also dont like how you have to have it in standby to change some setting on the deck. I can never seem to adjust the mid, hi, and lows properly, the mids and hi's always seem to overpower the lows no matter what the settings are. Needless to say I am not very happy with it and will be returning it for a different deck.
I have owned this deck for 10 months, and I have already had problems with distorted signal from the pre outs. Radio seems weak. Because of the fold down face, it protrudes about 1 inch from the dash. Not recommended.
I have this deck for 1 1/2 years. the sound is beautiful. blows away any deck in it's price range. The graphics are lame compares to sony but sound makes up for it.
