I've had this source unit for about a month now and have had virtually no trouble with it. I purchased it for CAD$550 (~USD$370) +tax. It is rather expensive, but when you consider that it is basically the same unit as the Clarion DXZ615, a very good deck at CAD$400, PLUS the MP3 functionality built-in, it's not a bad deal. You would pay at least $200 for a seperate MP3 CD player, with the added headache of having to hook it up each time you get in your car, fussing with the tiny buttons and display, etc.

The deck has numerous higher-end features, aside from the MP3 playback, such as 6-Channel / 4-Volt RCA Line-Level Output with Non-Fade Subwoofer Output, EQ / DSP / Crossover Control, Adjustable 3-Band Parametric Equalizer, and Dual 1-Bit D/A Converters. Because of this, the sound quality is terrific.

And now on to the important stuff: the MP3 playback. The MP3 sound quality is beautiful, with no sound defects, blips, bleeps, skips, jumps, squawks, etc, and with no trouble playing files with bitrates of 64kbps through 192kbps (I haven't tried VBR). When you insert a disc into the deck, it takes between 5 and 15 seconds to initialize, depending on the directory structure of the disc. Once "loaded", though, skipping through tracks and directories is as fast as if you were using an audio CD. As pointed out in another post, however, there are some details in the support that are missing:

: the mp3 support sucks, the player can only display the
: directory name, and not the track name.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the MP3 support sucks, as the sound quality and playback stability are exceptional, but it is TRUE that only the directory name is visible. This seems to me like a no-brainer: the deck has to read the filename anyway, why not display it? This can be a big problem, especially on "mix" CDs where you don't necessarily know the tracklist because you own the audio CD. There is NO ID3 tag support of any kind. I would strongly urge Clarion to include this in the next revision of this deck in order to give the impression of a polished product. C'mon, when you think MP3 features, you think ID3 tags. Duh.

: When you want to change to another dir you have to push 3
: buttons.

This is not necessarily true. You can change directories with 1 button by pressing either the "2" (to go back) or "5" (to go forwards) station-preset buttons on the front panel. This will immediately change to and play the first MP3 track in the directory. If you want to browse your directories _while a track is playing_, then you do need to press "BND", then possibly "<<" to go to a parent directory, then "2" or "5" to browse, and possibly ">>" to go to a subdirectory, and finally a button to confirm the desired directory choice. But really, in my experience, using the "2" and "5" buttons to just move forward and backwards through the directories works just fine, and is very fast.

: The front panel is difficult to put in.

I owned a DXZ615 (same deck, minus MP3) and had this problem as well, but with my new DZX815MP, the faceplate goes in very easily. Maybe some manufacturing problems at Clarion?


: The camels scrolling in the LED display looks nice, but
: after one time you have seen this.

Yes, this does get very boring. I tried to turn this "screen saver" off in the options menus, but when I got to the "Auto SS" setting, it wouldn't let me change the setting from "On" to "Off". Therefore, the screen saver always comes on a minute or two after the last action on the deck. They should have skipped the programming involved in putting in little camels, hurdlers, and bowling balls (or whatever those are) and made the display show a spectrum analyzer, or for god's sake, the FILE NAME!

And with all that out of the way, I CAN say that I LOVE the fact I can carry a tiny 12-disc CD case that is actually holding 100 CDs of music. If I lose it or it gets stolen, WHO CARES, just burn 'em again. Cost: $20 versus $2000 to replace real CDs. Also, the deck looks beautiful... the aluminum faceplate is very nice. And when it comes right down to it, the audio quality is what matters most, and this deck will NOT disappoint. It sounds fabulous! It doesn't skip when you go over bumps, it has multi-changer control, has multimedia (TV, DVD, etc) control, a seperate non-fading output and volume control for your sub amp, and did I mention that it sounds GRRRREEEAT?!
I think that's it... hope this helps.

/rp


Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 350.00