Kenwood eXcelon Z919 CD-MP3 Receiver

Prior to recent times, I had a large collection of MP3's that I had to begrudgingly burn as audio CD’s, in order to play them in my car. My friend, Howard Stern, accompanied me during the morning rush but on the way home, I prefer my own music. Thus, I spent time creating homemade "mixes" of MP3 files. As most of you know, the limit of a CD-R is only about 80 minutes and my Teac 16X recorder burns these rather quickly. However, I have a single-disc CD head unit so swapping discs takes place more often than not. Then, I heard about the new car head units that can actually read MP3 files off of a CD. So I thought, "Wow, wouldn't that be nice!" I was able to acquire the Kenwood eXcelon Z919 ($700), which was released in the summer of 2000 as Kenwood's first MP3 head unit. Their only other mass-market competition, at that time, was an Aiwa CDC-MP3, which retailed at about half the price. Overall, the unit works rather well. As I said before, it is the Kenwood eXcelon model, so it is a higher quality head unit than their standard units. I know what you're thinking, "name schmame, what does it really do for me?" After some investigation, I found that the eXcelon's like to give their users options. And I don't mean just the ability to repeat tracks or set FM presets; I'm talking about fancy equalizer settings that allow users to make a wide variety of changes to their music. You can change the amount of bass/treble output by tweaking the level of the frequency’s output. You can also save these options as user-defined presets so Junior’s Limp Bizkit can destroy all passengers' ear drums with bass and Dad’s John Denver can destroy all passengers' ear drums with whiny, treble-infused lyrics.

Another nice feature of the Z919 is that it has 3 pre-amp outputs. For the uneducated in car audio-ese, these nifty hookups come on the back of the player and are used for attaching the player to an external amplifier(s) instead of using the head unit's internal power. The outputs are labeled as "Front", "Rear" and "Non-fading". I currently have two external amplifiers powering my car stereo. One powers the front and rear speakers and the other juices the subwoofer. My prior head unit (an Alpine 7857) had only two pre-amp outputs but with the new player I can attach the subwoofer amp to the 3rd pre-amp input which is labeled as "Non-Fading". This allows me to increase the volume of the subwoofer separately from the main speakers. This is a great feature since I take in an occasional John Williams’ track and it doesn’t fare particularly well with excessive "bass boom".

In addition, the unit allows you to playback MP3’s that are stored in separate “folders”. For example, let's say you want to make an MP3-CD with all Beatles songs, but you want each Beatles album in its own folder. The Z919 allows you to do this. You can also create folders within folders and the unit allows you to traverse through them as if you were changing discs in a CD changer. It's a handy feature, for those who want it.

But, how does the MP3 playing feature work, which is why we bought it in the first place?

It does this rather well. You pop a CD in the player and the unit performs a "File Check" for about five seconds, which makes sure the inserted files are all MP3. Then it begins to play starting at the first track. At this point, you have a few possible display options. You can display the track number and time passed, the folder name, the track name (that you titled yourself using the included remote), or the name of the MP3, as per your PC/Mac. It would have been neat to have the file name, track number and time passed all at once or have all three scroll through but this isn’t available.

The actual layout of the unit, unfortunately, isn't great. The left side, of the unit, has the volume control, the Audio Control button (to edit the bass, treble, fader, and all other EQ options), and the button to change the music input (radio or CD). The right side has a thumb-driven "joystick" which can be moved in 360 degrees. If you move it to the right or left, it switches tracks. If you move it up and down, it moves to a different folder. The first problem is that it is on the right side of the unit and, as most smart passengers know, the driver controls the tunes. Thus, the driver has to lean over to the right side of the unit to change tracks. Not too safe, Kenwood. To add insult to injury, the joystick is difficult to use because if you move the joystick just a little too much in the upward direction rather than sideways, you switch folders instead of switching tracks. Switching MP3 tracks takes a few seconds longer than changing tracks on a CD, so backtracking takes a bit of time. Luckily, there is an included remote control which makes it easier to go through the songs.

The Kenwood player, unfortunately, has a few other issues. It doesn't have any security measures to deter theft, such as a removable faceplate. It also doesn't support CD-R's that were burned in the Joliet format (the format Windows’ uses to read file names up to 256 characters). It only supports ISO9660, which only displays a maximum of 31 characters for each file name. The format change simply takes place in your CD-burning program, but it would have been nice to display the full title of every track. Finally, the unit can't read ID3 tags, which is the text that appears when you play MP3’s on your PC. It only displays what the actual file is called, up to the aforementioned 31 characters.

At $700, I think the unit is overpriced. The ridiculous joystick, lack of ID3 tag support, and no anti-theft features really detract from this unit's value. However, it does have a large number of EQ settings, 3 preouts, and plays MP3's perfectly. So, if you can find one for a decent price on eBay then you may want to place a bid. Kenwood's KDC-MP8017 is their 2nd generation model that has a street price of about $300. It scrapped the joystick but still placed the "track change" controls on the right side! It also has much fewer EQ settings, only 2 preouts, and no standard remote (one can be ordered for $40). If you don't need all the fancy audio settings, then you may want to look into getting the newer model.