Is this true about Pioneer units?

[BobT99 10+ year member]

My installer suggested the Pioneer DEHP5100UB and since I used to sell Pioneer as one of the brands we stocked in my electronics store, I was happy at the installer's suggestion. The product has very good power and sound quality but it is very difficult to see the the station names or station ID numbers on the visual display. For whatever reason, Pioneer seemed to be more interested in showing a variety of graphics on the screen than in enlarging the display letters and numbers for easy view in daylight. I hate the fact that I can't see what station is playing and would like to sell the unit at a great discount to anyone who didn't care or return it for an exchange on something that has better channel visuals. Would not recommend this unit. Would not buy it again.

The key to playing 1000 songs on one digital medium like a USB drive is the user interface, of course. Sadly, this is where Pioneer cut corners. There's no way to skip ahead say 50 or 100 songs, and if you want to go back to the song that played before the current one it's incredibly bad, barely works. You can put the unit into random mode, which will skip around through your music. Unlike many consumer audio players, the random algorithm seems to work well. However, this is the very worst part. If I'm in random mode and I push the button to skip to the next song, it should go to the next song randomly, NOT the next song in alphabetical order. This is a very basic and stupid mistake in the UI design and it is excruciating for the user. Stuck in the middle of one of your daughter's Spice Girls songs and don't want to listen to it? You'd think you could push "next song" and it would jump to the next song in random order. Does it? No. It goes to the next Spice Girls song, then the next .. yow.
It's a good thing the remote works as well as it does, because that one-button-does-all thing doesn't work very precisely if you're driving. To make a radio station a preset, for example, requires that you hold that button exactly in its center for several seconds until the deck realizes what you're trying to do. I have yet to accomplish this while I'm driving - some tiny swerve will make my fingertip move just barely but enough to make the thing skip to the next radio station instead of adding the current one as a preset. Sigh. The remote works much better.

It's a shame, really. This could be a really killer product and it wouldn't have cost Pioneer any money in hardware, just needed to put someone on the UI design who knows something. The manual seems large at first glance until you realize it's one of those awful written-in-every-language manuals. The English section is skimpy, the index is uselessly terse, and whatever you're looking up is certain to refer to another section which itself may refer to another section .. just plain lazy tech writing. And the font is way way tiny. I have to take off my driving glasses and put on reading glasses to read it. Needless to say I have to pull over to do this. There is supposed to be a way to enter custom EQ data using a six-band equalizer, but the crummy manual has defeated me entirely.

So it's a great product with great limitations. I'm going to keep mine, hoping Pioneer comes out with a flashable upgrade to the UI. After all, I can still have my whole **** collection on one USB drive and the unit plays them and sounds great. That's cool.

Good sound, lousy interface, August 9, 2009 By Mixerman23 (Burbank, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This unit sounds quite good - custom 7 band eq allows you to compensate for speaker/car deficiencies very effectively. iPod interface is nicely done. Good bang for the buck. BUT - the user interface is really lousy. Far too easy to accidentally push the multicontrol when you're just trying to change the volume, or to acidentally trigger one of the up/down/side/side controls when trying to push straight in - really kind of sucks. Also, the knob feels very flimsy, and is hard to get a good purchase on.

I am looking to get a cd receiver with a good user interface with fast and easy to use/read ipod controls.

If these reviews are accurate, that takes Kenwood (slow, lagging search) and Pioneer out of the picture - what am I down to for options for a CD receiver with good ipod controls??

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[iamamp3pimp 5,000+ posts]

alp-ine is fase....pioneer is slow.

but i have 14k songs on mine so thats expected. it isnt that big of a deal though

 

[BobT99 10+ year member]

What Alpine unit should I get?

 

[t1990le 10+ year member]

i have a panasonic hu and a 80gb ipod with 20,000 songs on it and it never lags with me its a direct connect into the back of the hu and you control the whole ipod through the remote.

 

[pilyin 10+ year member]

Alpine is anything but fast. I have a 9886. The lag when skipping songs is incredible and there is no EQ (other than bass and treble) without the additional "imprint" unit. Try Eclipse. I have a CD5000. Great iPod control (The iPod connection is extra, got it for $30 or something like that, no lag, scroll quick), easy to use, very nice EQ, nice crossover. If I was doing the install with the 9886 over, I'd choose something different (Eclipse is in the other car).

 

[dappa5 10+ year member]

look into the new jvc's the dual i -pod control is nice and next to no lag