Keg versus Phatbox

[PhatAl]

Hi all!

I am thinking of replacing my VW OEM Headunit (Monsoon) with a Kenwood HU to improve sound quality of my system. (Everything has been replaced except for the HU.)

What I am curious about is are there any differences in the way the Phatbox and Keg display tracks on the headunit and play them? My VW reads the names of the playlists to me and if I scroll thru them, I only see a number.

Will this be the same with a Kenwood HU (yes, I know that I will have to flash my DMS to Kenwood)?

And as far as the sound quality of playing the Keg back with a Kenwood HU, are they all the same? Or will different HU's give better sound quality as well as different playback and browsing capabilties?

Thanks

[sbingner]

It won't by default read it to you, but it will display it on the HU

[LloydDobler]

The cd changer controls will be the same on all Kenwood head units, but the sound quality will definitely vary by quality of head unit.  Higher end head units have more EQ features built in for finer tuning to your car.

If you get a single line head unit it will display either playlist name or filename, and you can tell the keg to display filename as artist-track.

If you get a multi-line display it will display artist - title on one line and playlist on another.  I recommend getting a multi line if it's not out of your price range.

[PhatAl]

I recently went thru the process of digitizing some old albums to .wav and burned some into CDs. One is one of those "Original Master Recordings" of I Robot. It is very clean sounding on the CD... though still probably only 98 percent CD quality. I also converted these .wav's to FLAC (with the highest compression using dBpowerAmp).
Playing the CD and then the FLAC's on my VW Monsoon HU I could hear that the FLAC's are much better than the mp3's I've been listening to. But the CD was still cleaner sounding.

I am assuming this is because the Moonsoon HU is lacking in quality (it also adds significant background hiss by itself.)

I do want to upgrade to a Kenwood and go thru the process of hacking the cable and firmware so that my VW Phatbox will work with it.

BUT is the Phatbox as good as the Music Keg? IF it isn't, then I'd rather get a Keg. I know a new HU (which Kenwood DD will give the best sound??) Of course money is something of an issue, so if the sound of the Keg versus the VW Phatbox isn't really noticeable, then I'll keep it.

I won't say that the rest of my car system is "audiophile" quality, but it is pretty good. The CDT Audio speakers along with the Infinity amp produce nice, clean sound.

[PhatAl]

I've been searching thru the posts but can't find anything that definitively says that the Keg is better than the Phatbox in sound quality. I would sure appreciate a comment.  

[amb]

I've been searching thru the posts but can't find anything that definitively says that the Keg is better than the Phatbox in sound quality. I would sure appreciate a comment.  

I don't have any personal experience with this, but it's likely that the audio portion of the circuitry is identical between the two, so there wouldn't be any difference as far as the box is concerned.  The HU's different, of course, between a kenwood and whatever the stock radio has.

[LloydDobler]

From what I've read, the guts on all kegs and phatboxes (of the same version) are the same.

On my system I cannot tell the difference between a 320 bit mp3 file played off the keg and the source CD.  And I have a near-audiophile quality system in my car.