I have been thinking about upgrading my Clatronic AR 817 head unit in the Corvette. Its sound quality was not that good and for some reason the USB port did not work correctly. While playing music from my memory stick, the head unit turned off completely at times and started playing again after a few seconds. It was really annoying and made the USB useless. At least the radio worked normally.
Now that I have the subwoofer in the car, I started thinking that a better head unit would be nice. But soon I learned the one good thing about the Clatronic: it was really shallow. Only 12 cm (4.7 inches) deep while most are between 16 and 18 cm (around 6.5 inches). I measured the car and the maximum installation depth was 16.5 cm (6.5 inches) but the wiring took at least another inch so the full size head units did not fit.
This meant that at least equipment with CD player were out the window. I did not need that anyway so I started looking for a mechless unit. But for some reason the manufacturers like to make even those the same length so they did not fit. Finally after hours of going through Kenwood, JVC, Pioneer, Alpine and Sony selections and reading many discussions I managed to find a few possibilities:
- Sony DSX-A50BT
- Sony DSX-A30
- Parrot Asteroid
The Parrot seemed interesting and really small but it is not available in Finland. This leaves the Sony models. According to their descriptions they were 12 cm deep, which is perfect. They were identical except that the A50BT has Bluetooth support. A major missing feature (for me) is that they do not have iPod support but I can live with it as long as they have better quality than the Clatronic and they fit in the car. I'll have to order one soon if I can't find something better as they are already older models.
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