Originally Posted by Arubiccube

Just got my kenwood installed and this thing is ****ing amazing! Although i figured most of the functions out, theres one thing i cant seem to quite get.
First of all, when i play music of my ipod by going to Artist and when i select it an artist you must select one of the Albums to play music. Is there any way to play through all the albums instead of having to switch to another album like you would be able to on the Ipod?

Originally Posted by sry110

Well I didn't take step by step photos but I did before and after, and I have to say this unit looks right at home in the Z! Did the install yesterday, took me probably 4-5 hours all together because I had to take the car apart to find where Tweeter had installed my Sirius tuner box, where all the cables were run, etc.

Before: Alpine CDA-9857



After: Kenwood DDX512





I pulled the USB connection up into the cubby so that I can disconnect the iPod cable and easily connect a thumb drive if I ever need to.



I haven't had much time to play with this thing but so far I like it for its iPod capability. I must say though that I think its CD player function is a bit off. I put in one CD and it started playing it at the very end of track 1, then when it started playing track 2 it still called it track 1. When I skip from track to track it takes me to somewhere in the middle of the next track. So far it's only that one CD. Then another CD it starts each track about 0.5 to 1 second into the music, so I miss the very first note / beat. So far those are the only two discs that I have noticed that problem, but I guess it bums me out because a $40 discman could play them no problem. I then updated the firmware to version 1.4.0 (latest version) and it did not take care of the problem.

DVD playback is ok, although I had trouble figuring out how to start playing the movie from the main menu. I ended up hitting the FNC button on the left which brings up the playback controls, and then I had to hit a couple of buttons to get it to play. Maybe I need to read the manual on that one, but I assumed the controls would be more intuitive.

I used the Metra 2006 Z double DIN trim kit and in my opinion it looks pretty decent. I know some guys on here modified the OEM radio mounting brackets by slotting the holes so they could get the head unit to sit farther in, but I just left them as-is and mounted the thing. As you can see in the photos the sides of the unit protrude beyond the console while the middle is just about flush. I actually prefer this because a) the sides don't stick out that far, and b) now I don't have to look at a gap/step between the bottom center of the screen and the console.

I didn't buy the correct Sirius box so I'll have to take it all apart again and install that soon. Best Buy goons didn't stop me when I was buying the old version sirius interface box along with this new kenwood unit, so again it proves to me that I need to do every last bit of research before I go buy this stuff.

So overall I am happy with this unit, and it's definitely nice to be able to match the Z's dash lighting, the girlfriend likes that feature. I'll post again if I have any more comments / criticism.

EDIT - Sorry for the blurry pictures, I'm using an old 4 megapixel in addition with having no photography skills.

Originally Posted by andy_meng1024

Does anyone know if the ddx512/514 support other languages? I'm planning on buying one soon and want to know if it can display Chinese/Korean/Japanese like the iPhone does. Thanks.

Originally Posted by MikeBit

Thank god you posted this! Because I saw the first few pictures without the little cubby door on top of the unit, and thought it made the dash look so ugly. Now I know I can get this installed without having to remove that. Where did you get it installed? Or did you do it yourself?