I tried asking this at the Kenwood forum, but that place is a ghost town.....

I installed the 892 a few weeks ago. I don't drive the car that much, but when I do, I fiddle with this HU, trying to optimize sound quality. When I installed it, I did the most recent firmware update, and I figured out how to change the splash screen. I also swapped out the Bose speakers and amp and sound proofed the car. Front's are Morel Virtus 602s and rear are just Morel two-way for fills. Kenwood amps drive them all and a 10" sub in the back.

My first question is more general in nature. I'm hoping there might be a guide or something "for dummies" that might help me set up the speakers. Specifically: X-over, slopes, distance, EQ. I've found that tweaking each of these, without really knowing why isn't getting me anywhere. I think I'm going through sensory overload with the seemingly limitless setup options.

My second question is regarding USB playback. There are a few threads about USB file structure. Not sure that's my problem. The HU reads my USB just fine. I can select artist, album, song, genre; and I can see and play any song. I am having an issue when I play any category in random mix mode. No problem at first, but after I turn the car off and get back in it. When I re-start the car, the HU will remember the last song that was selected and play it just fine, but it no longer remembers the rest of the songs. It will only play the last song that was playing prior to being shut down, and the album that song was in. It's almost like it only remembers the album folder the song was in. Would this be a file naming/folder structure problem on my USB drive, or a HU limitation?

 

Well after much research, these Kenwood nav units have very limited USB playback capabilities. Or in other words, they suck. If your primary listening source is USB, don't think about getting one of these Head Units. I'm so irritated with it, I'm probably going to yank it out and put something else in the car...take the $1000 hit.

They don't have any real persistent memory, or it is woefully lacking. I've gone through several iterations of file folder storage, keeping the max capacity under Kenwood's 256 rule format.

I'm limited to 256 folders, and 256 files per folder. Quite a large number of songs, but terribly inconvenient if you like to listen to genre's on random. And random playback will not resume where you left off after the unit is turned off. You will resume playback on the same song, but the HU is looking at that folder, not the genre. So what that means, is that every friggin time you shut the car down, you get the pleasure of going all the way through the process of: Hit search>select category > select the category you want (song/album/artist/genre/playlist) > find the file or folder > select the song > find the random button and select it > hide the slider panel where the random button is hidden..... Now you are in random play of whatever you selected. Turn off car..... Turn on car..... Wait for HU to boot up (takes a couple minutes). The last song you were listening to will cue up. You are now stuck on that album. If you want to go back to the random selection you were at before, you go through the entire process again. And as a bonus, the random mix of songs is in the exact same order. What a total POS.

I think for USB playback, one would be better off just building a few playlists. I might give that a whirl and see if the HU can screw that up too.

 

Have you ran across any head units in your research that handle this better?Getting ready to upgrade my stock head unit and this one was on the list.

 

Not yet. I've been trying to figure this one out.

 

Get yourself a used dockable ipod (one of the old ones with the 30 pin dock), works great

 

iPods work great, when they work.... Other than that, a memory stick is just soooooo much simpler and better in many ways. That does assume the HU doesn't have limitations like these Kenwoods.

I'm pretty shocked that a $1000 HU can't do any better than this.

 

I'd be pretty unhappy too! I have a single DIN Pioneer 8200BT. (cost about $200) It has an internal 8GB SD card. I ran into the same file limit, so I just set up about six directories with about 200 songs each and set it to random play-all works great, always remembers exactly where is was when last shut down. I use the front USB for podcasts. It also restarts exactly where you were if listening to USB.