Kenwood’s flagship receiver now has a little brother
While listening to consumer feedback is nothing new, Kenwood tend to inject a little wisdom when doing so. When the flagship DDX- 8032BT monitor arrived recently there were few complaints because the deck seemed to do what most consumers desired and with the addition of an external navigation system it literally could do everything. But then some people asked what they should buy if they already had Bluetooth but still wanted the rest? Well Kenwood answered this question with the release of the DDX7032 unit.
Gone are the blues
The DDX7032 is a double DIN multimedia head unit which is similar to the DDX8032BT but instead of having Bluetooth and external plug and play navigation ability, Kenwood ditched the Bluetooth and built the navigation into this unit instead. If you still want Bluetooth then you can always buy the KCA-BT200. In doing this Kenwood has allowed you to choose the deck which best suits your application rather than making you shell-out an extra $1,000 for something you don’t want.
The dimensions of the DDX7032’s colour thin film transistor active matrix screen are actually a tad different to its big brother but with roughly the same area, measuring 154mm x 87mm. The pixel count is the same though and at 336960 it guarantees good image quality. The system supports both NTSC and PAL and the list of media and file formats is extensive. Just some of them are CD, VCD, DVD, WMA, AAC, MPEG 1, 2 and 4 (DivX) and MP3. The unit is equipped with the ‘K3i Clear Reception Tuner Circuit’ which offers a much clearer radio reception with stations that can be stored on numerous presets (18 FM, 6 AM and LW). It’s equipped with all the standard sound controls such as balance, fader and subwoofer level and also comes with high pass crossover for both front and rear speakers (adjustable at 40Hz/60Hz/ 80Hz/100Hz/120Hz/150Hz/180Hz/220Hz) and low pass crossover for the subwoofer (adjustable 50Hz/60Hz/80Hz/100Hz/120Hz). When you turn the low pass crossover on you also get the phase control for the subwoofer which is not helpful if you wish to utilise external crossovers.
Sadly, time alignment is missing from this unit (Kenwood don’t seem to place much emphasis on this most important ability) but a basic 3-channel parametric equalizer is included which appeases me a little. Also installed are six preset EQ curves and of all of these Rock is the only semi-usable one (I’m guessing you’ll be tuning it yourself). Inputs and outputs are abundant with the main audio pre-outs being front, rear and subwoofer however these only output 2-volts maximum. Audio- visual-wise you have one input and one output in addition to a rear view camera input
Using the external Bus-port you can also connect USB, shuttles, TV tuners and other devices. For those not overly interested in external power amplifiers the unit comes with a built in 4 x 23 watts continuous (or 4 x 50 watts maximum) MOSFET amplifier.
Moving to the physical design of the deck, the face is finished with a clean matt black look, very similar to the other screen units Kenwood offer. This is probably the best colour to have for this type of unit because the screen itself takes up most of the real estate and black generally looks at home in just about any colour dash board. The screen is anti-reflective and is coated with a fingerprint resistant cover and along the bottom of the face are buttons to control volume, navigation and source (most of these can also be controlled via the touch screen).
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