Pioneer DEH-80PRS CD Receiver with 3-Way Active Crossover Network, Auto EQ, and Auto Time Alignment

Let me make this clear; there are a million options on this stereo and not nearly enough time to explain what they do or how to adjust them. Thankfully, Pioneer has included a microphone to make all the proper adjustments for you. And, after you run the Auto EQ (the feature activated through the included microphone accessory) your sound system becomes a completely different being.This was the first of many things I swapped out while working on my cars sound system, and it has easily had the largest impact. I'm not sure how many car audio folks look for staging, but it's a big deal for me since my background is in home audio. Staging, or your speakers sound stage, is what allows you as a listener to discern not just what sounds you hear, but where they are on a hypothetical "stage". Standard stereos have directional tone to them, making it clear where the speakers are in your setup and what sounds are coming from them. A system with a great sound stage melts the speakers together and removes an idea of directional tone. This means, if you're listening to a live album you get a fantastic depth or sense of where all the artists are, the singer up front/ center, the bass player slightly off to the right, and guitarist slight center/ left, and the drummer center/ back. This all comes at you from a "wall" of sound, not from each individual speaker. That's not to say only live albums sound great, but it's the best example. It's not an easy idea to share with words. [If you have this unit, put Radiohead's OK Computer on and listen to it from beginning to end. You'll understand what I'm saying] My point is, this stereo creates an amazing sound stage for the driver using the Auto EQ feature. Even with my stock speakers up front, it completely changed the way I heard the music.As I started to add new equipment to the setup, I would consistently run the Auto EQ to adjust for the changes. Each time it would change the tone, pitch, and timing of my speakers according to their quality and individual sound. When I threw a powered Rockford Fosgate in the trunk, I tested it without the Auto EQ run. At half power, it produced an obnoxious womp that simply overwhelmed my speakers (test song: Lil Wayne - All My Homies). After I ran the Auto EQ, it cleaned the woofer up and created a fantastic blend with my aftermarket component JBL's. It still had a great depth to it, shook the inside, but no longer drowned out my other speakers.This is where some car audio folks might start to complain. The 80PRS is not for bass heads. This unit is about getting you the most pure and clear version of your music as possible. That means, songs that didn't have a heavy bass line before, won't suddenly have one now. It doesn't bring out any false tones, or add any non-existent sound to your music. Just like some people love Beats by Dre because they are tuned to bring out more bass, they won't like the 80PRS because it goes for clarity over an EQ'd sound. You can play with the settings, and change the EQ, but that really defeats the purpose of this stereo. Invest in something from Pioneer's 8000 line instead, and save yourself all the hassle of messing around in the settings of this unit.A couple of small things before I go. Bluetooth audio and calls works great, but doesn't display track or app info due to a lack of support for iOS 7. You can update the firmware, but that only supports up to iOS 6 at the moment. The SD card slot is great and supports up to 32gb SD cards. It reads and sorts your MP3's by their tags, not just folder location. The display is crisp and clean, although can be a little hard to see in direct sun light. There are also two rear USB's (with an included USB extension) and a front and rear (RCA) audio auxiliaries.

If you want real audiophile sound in a car, this is the best unit I've ever heard. It's one of the few on the market that even bothers to advertise their DAC - probably the most important and overlooked component in the sound path of turning your digital files into music. The DAC maker, Burr-Brown, has a reputation for making high-end home DACs in CD players such as the classic Denon 360. Coupled with a decent pre-amp (which Pioneer did), you have the potential for real hi-fi.The next remarkable (and I believe at this time a Pioneer exclusive) feature is the time-alignment feature. I was skeptical that this was more than a gimmick until I tried it out. It actually works! With just a few minutes of a fully automated tuning process, the normally muddy or harsh areas in the frequency spectrum where the tweeter crosses over to the mid-bass and the mid-bass to the sub turned into nice clean sound. An audible difference! another nice effect was the imaging - sitting in the drivers seat (I tuned the system by putting the mic on the drivers headrest), well recorded music places instruments and vocals on precise spots on the dashboard, or even appear to come from the drivers side window. It probably helps that I have a pair of good tweeters in the dashboard pointing UP at the windshield in such a way that only the reflected sound is heard, but still If I move my head more than a foot in any direction from the headrest the imaging starts to sound like an ordinary car stereo again. The sub especially blends wonderfully with the mid-bass (XO and 125 Hz) avoiding that cheesy thumping you get from poorly tuned subs..The integration of an active crossover may not be unique to pioneer, but it's another big helper for audiophile sound which is overlooked by the vast majority of head units. This feature can also be approximated by using the controls on JL audio amps, but the Pioneer allows me to adjust all the drivers - sub, mid-bass, and tweets - from the listening position. The ability to adjust the slope is nice too, and I've only ever seen that on a few amps.Have an sound technician who knows what he's doing (hard to find) match this unit with quality amp & speakers, and locate the tweeters carefully, and you have a car stereo as good or better than any in the world.On the down side, Pioneer did NOT include FLAC support. This almost cost them a star on this review. A head unit with sound this good will is totally wasted on MP3s, and WAV files waste flash space. I play all my music from WAV files on an SD card - I could fit twice as much music in the unit if it supported FLAC. FLAC is the format of choice for digital audiophile sound. Lots of MP3 players and PC music programs now support it, and it costs nothing to license it - why on earth did Pioneer leave it out?The other downer is the manual. The descriptions for using the crossover and time alignment features are muddled, as though the writer never actually used the product but instead just copied some engineers notes. It took me some trial and error to figure these out. Once I got the hang of it the features were easy to use, but the manual was very little help.One last nit - it would be nice if I could save two profiles of the time-alignment feature, so that I could demo it to people sitting in the passenger seat. As it is, one has to sit in the drivers seat if they want to get the "wow" experience of solid imaging in a car stereo.In summary, I've never heard of any other head unit with such audio potential. My old favorite audio-quality unit maker, Eclipse, has stopped making audio head units (I have no interest in an overpriced, oversize, NAV that also plays music) so I'm glad Pioneer has stepped up to fill the gap.My system:The pioneer DEH-80PRSMorel MDT-30 tweeters in the dashboardVifa P17w woofers in the doorsJL Audio JX360 4 channel amp for the frontAudiobahn Alum10 (vented, in trunk) sub on a JBL 600-1 mono-block....with a Mercedes E320 to move it around.