I had to share my experience with Dennis. After reading so much about and from this fine gentleman I called him. Suffice to say that at 6 something PM Eastern yesterday with -50 temperatures in his part of the country I have become the proud purchaser of a new audio package for my C6. Dennis is probably the most knowledgable of many dealers I have spoken with as I considered how to proceed. He doesn't try to push you into something that won't work for you or convince you you need something you don't. His suggestions saved me money not only from the sale but on subscriptions, etc. I can't say enough good things. Dennis, you have a lifetime customer and a friend in Atlanta if you ever need one!

I will post some updates when I receive my new equipment and get it installed.

 

Dennis is awesome, knowledgeable, and probably the most patient and understanding vendor that I have dealt with.

 

Prayers sent

 

Thanks!!

 

So, after installing and riding with this for a week, I am ready to share a few items.

First, thanks for the prayers. It was pretty straightforward. Dennis had everything all set up and ready to go. If you have never taken your console off, I recommend you review a numerous threads here with many pictures to see how it is done. That was a big help. A couple of the screws are sort of hidden.

Second, as you remove the console be particularly careful of your traction control button. It seems the most delicate item in the whole set up. Needless to say, I broke it and will be replacing it. Seems a pretty inexpensive replacement and should be straightforward so no real worry there.

Third, the unit arrived in its sleeve. My good friend kept insisting it had to stay in the sleeve and it seemed to be it didn't. We tried it his way and he was wrong. Easily taken care of.

When all was said and done, I missed a connection that I had to go back and plug in. Some of the connectors on the module that gives you back your chimes and steering wheel controls are pretty small!

I did find the battery get very low and finally die in this process. If you have never had your C6 battery die, everything you read about happening with that on the forum is dead on. When it starts to get low, the car seems to loose its mind! Again, not unexpected after a bit of research and easily resolved.

Now on to the unit itself. First, to understand how I am using it, I have a first generation iPod Touch with 64 Gb that I use for: 1) a music "server" in the car and 2) in the gym, an iPhone 5s that I use as my personal phone and a Blackberry Z10 (horrible device) that I have for work only.

The Nav interface is exactly what you see in any other Garmin. If you have used one, nothing to add there. It works precisely as expected. Easily understood and very user friendly. The Navteq traffic info has become a real friend this week as there have been more than the usual accident delays on my way to the office this week. Just keeping the map up with traffic conditions displayed let me see I needed to route around them early enough to save myself.

The HD Radio Setting. Crystal clear and nicely done. Easy to program presets and search for other stations particularly using PTY. I have also used the capability to tag a song and have it show up on the iPod in a play list for later purchase. This could become an expensive habit! I have noted on a few occasions what seems to be almost an echo or reverb. It is short, not terribly noticeable and possibly due to something other than the device. It could also be that my mind is gone.

The iPod Interface. Again, clean and easy to use. Nothing much more I can ask for here.

The Phone Interface. Using it with the Blackberry works fine with one exception. It can't download the phonebook. I suspect this may have something to do with security software on the Blackberry that will only let you open the phonebook when a password is entered and that times out rather quickly by design. I don't find this to be a problem as I do all the dialing with voice control anyway. I have found one other oddity and that is I have no access to anything other than the voice control button until after I have given it one voice command. Again, no real issue here as I solely use voice control and this may be an artifact of the new (screwy) Blackberry.

I have also used this with my iPhone 5s. Phonebook downloads and everything works as expected. This is why I believe that the problems I am experiencing with the Blackberry are Blackberry and not Kenwood related.

I can not get Pandora or aHa radio to work with the iPod. Now keep in mind, it is first generation so it will not update to the most recent iOs. I have attempted to use it by connecting it via wifi to my iPhone 5s as a hotspot. So another possibility is that even though everything looks like it should work, the wifi connection rather than cellular connection to stream the Pandora and aHa content is off. These both work with the iPhone 5s.

I find two other downsides. One of which is not a real problem but rather an observation and one of which is an annoyance that may be unique to my setup. I had read before purchasing that the start up of the unit is slow. I can vouch for that. It is also a bit slow at times when changing music sources, or screens say from HD Radio to Nav. I can live with that. The other annoying issue is that it would seem is should be easy to switch the Bluetooth connection between the two phones. At times, I have simply gone to the Bluetooth screen and selected the inactive connection and it switched over without a hitch. At other time, it seems that everything sort of dies. It stops seeing any paired devices and I have to shut the unit down and turn off the Bluetooth on the phones then start up each individually again starting with the Kenwood. If I only had one hone I would never have noted this at all so again, its an annoyance but nothing critical and quite possibly rather unique to me.

In the end, I would say I am pretty happy! Thanks again Dennis for all the help and support and great service. You have made a customer and an advocate for life!