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-   -   Clarion Vs Alpine Vs Pioneer Vs Kenwood EDIT - Its a Clarion DXZ 785 USB (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/car-entertainment/54194-clarion-vs-alpine-vs-pioneer-vs-kenwood-edit-its-clarion-dxz-785-usb-21.html)

i doubt this is available in Indian market through proper channel and i think all those using this hu has bought it from some online web store.

Yes this HU is not available in India, almost all of us have sourced it from USA

*I cant seem to stop reviewing this HU and my ICE - blame it partly on Frank and the rest on the mood that the Clarion creates* :)

I borrowed Franky's music collection (well, actually half of it only), which consisted of a lot of HQ lossless tracks (FLACS). We had earlier connected Frank's iPod Classic to the HU and it played these tracks very smoothly. However, I have the iPod Mini 6gb and Clarion is not compatible with that version.

So I used dbPoweramp Converter and converted all these flacs into very high quality mp3s. I tried various combinations between VBR, CBR, Bitrate adjustments and DSP effects. But in all permutations, quality was kept at the maximum (320 kbps).

I put these all on my trusted Corsair 8gb flash drive and plugged it in. I was very happy to hear the resultant output. The tracks play brilliantly and they sound much much better than an audio CD ripped at 320 kbps. The detail given out through the Clarion is way way better than my previous Pioneer.

Vocals were extremely detailed and clear, not at all harsh or bright. Each and every instrument could be individually identified and with a very high degree of detail (e.g. I could actually distinguish between different guitar strings as well!). Clarion does a very good job of balancing out the lows, mids and the highs and none of the ranges feel out of sync or over the top. The clarity only increases at higher volumes and with eyes closed, I could feel sitting in a live concert.

Thanks Franky boy :thumbs up

P.S. Now the next exercise is to put these converted tracks on an Audio CD and test what kind of a difference does the 24 bit DAC make to the sound. This is of course on the assumption that DAC is not coming into play when you select USB as the source. I would like to believe the same tracks on a CD would sound more delicious!
Techno, its my sincere request to you to download/source better quality mp3s. I heard 128kbps tracks in Amit's car on Sunday and then we put an audio CD with 320kbps tracks. The difference in bass, as well as the overall sound was immediate.

I was, till now, happy with normal 320kbps mp3s playing off the USB. But after listening to converted FLACS, I can tell you that playing 128kbps on your Clarion and ICE is pure sacrilege.

thanks Nishant :thumbsup:
glad you liked the songs. these FLACs do have a tendency to sound quite awesome!
one point: the 24Bit DAC is ALWAYS in use, regardless of whether its the USB or CD. so you are listening to the same music, regardless of the source. WELL, you could make the difference larger by burning an Audio cD from the FLACS (not mp3 cd).

as far as the Head unit is concerned, its just WOW. for the price! cheers!

Hey Frank you back from Ajay's

Yeah man trying to source them since some time. Btw why are you comparing my ICE with Amit's? we have very different setups.

No no, I am not comparing your setup with Amit's. I just wanted to point out that 128kbps mp3s bring out the worst in ANY system. And since you have the Clarion, why not extract the best by giving it the best?

oh ok. yeah man I know but I am just not able to source some nice mp3s. Lets see, I will check with some Pune team bhp guys.

OR you can call ME when you're in mumbai ;-)

Thanks Frank :) Will surely call you & Nishant next time I am there :)

I am happy to report that the Clarion does an exceptional job of playing through an external HDD very easily.

I formatted my old 40 GB external HDD into FAT32 and plonked in around 30 GB of songs. All types - mp3s and wma.

The HU instantly recognized the disk and started playing the songs - probably as fast as it does from my 8 gb Corsair flash disk. I was actually amazed to see the responsiveness of the player. On my colleague's JVC player, even a 4 gb flash disk takes about 2-3 seconds to load!

That's good news my friend. I too read in some other forum where one of them had its 80GB HDD playing with it.
But with 32gb and 64gb pendrive on it's way HDD will be a passy. ;)

No passy- there are 1.5 TB HDDs around and pendrives will take a little while to get there :)

Btw how do you power your HDD? Is there a standard plug-n-play solution available (sorry if the question is stupid)?

i bought a 250Gb Buffalo hard drive a couple of weeks back and i was surprised to see an AUXILIARY power cable coming with the hard drive in order to power the USB drive off the cigarette lighter socket, or some other external power source just in case the source you connect it to is not fit to power the drive.
Clever! And perfect :-)

Awesome, Frank! I think now we can throw this Buffalo at anyone who talks about lossy vs lossless formats again! A 500 GB Buffalo (sounds nice) should be able to digest plenty of music. Do I see the end-of-road for CD changers here?