Clarion CZ509

The Clarion CZ509 is a great intermediate user head unit. Not the best in EQ settings(Parametric) BUT It come packed with ALOT of features.
Alot of people on ca & diyma complain about the controls being hard to navigate and the menus being hard to navigate but like anything new to you it will be odd at first but then you get used to it in a short time of use.
I disliked that the knob doesnt access menus or select anything its VOLUME CONTROL ONLY which means you have to hit the sound button far right bottom to gain menu access then remember to hit the up or down key to turn on/off features and hit the fwd/back buttons to switch to the next item on the menu, but now its simple and easy to do driving or sitting still and i kinda like it.
I switched from a Alpine 7894 unit to this primarily because i wanted the USB feature as i rip alot of music at full cd quality to my hard disks and want the best sounding music possible not the really compressed garabage you download that has background hiss and missing symbol or other sounds. Burning cd-rs packed with mp3's can get costly and it takes up space in your car and is limited by only 700MB of data so basically 80 or so high quality ripped mp3s, where as i can fit 500+ high quality mp3's onto a thumb drive and still have space available depending on size of the thumb drive.
I absolutely love the USB port on this unit, comes with a LONG usb cord so you can run the USB port to anywhere in the car. I put mine hidden inside a pull out drawer to the left of my steering column. I went and bought a Kingston HyperX 4GB thumbdrive instead of using my samsung mp3 player or cheaper slower thumb drives and it is sooo fast and easy to navigate through to find music with the 2 line display the unit has.
Its also very easy to read during the day, and it looks great. Many filename/tag/folder/album/artist and all kinds of information can be displayed. Quite simply put its awesome to navigate.
Aux through the front port is different however you must change the song using your aux device(mp3 player or whatever) and not the deck. BUT if you use the USB port with the mp3 player you can use the Clarion to navigate around in the mp3 player.

Im using the internal amplifier to power the Alpine 6.5 2 ways and Alpine 6x9 2 ways. The sound clarity from this deck is great. They sound good to great in all modes. The custom EQ settings can be difficult to setup at first but after you set them you can forget them, and then from that point you can tweak your mids, highs and sub freq using the filters or the boosting features on the deck.
One dislike for me thats easy to remedy if that there isnt much adjusting on the low pass filter for your sub amp, theres 50 hz, 90 hz and 120(i think) BUT you can always and should always have it adjusted on your amplifier anyway so what i do is leave it on 120(I listen to alot of rock) and allow my amplifiers subsonic filter to do the filtering down to 110hz for me.
Another dislike yet again you can get around it is the preset comibnations for sound, EQ off which sounds flat to me, then Bass boost which if using other enhancing features it adds WAY to much bass, Excite has a good bit of mids boosted and the sub bass seems to be added a little also, best preset mode for my setup. But the custom Eq takes a few minutes to setup if you know what your doing and know what the abbreviations are on the menu, but it is VERY worth using the custom Eq filter you will get alot more out of the parametric eq by using it and understanding it(read the manual!).

In closing i will say that I absolutely love this Clarion deck, it was weird at first compared to the Alpines and Eclipses Im used to. But it is a improvement over all those ive used before features wise, looks and user adjustability. The internal amplifier is strong for sure, be sure to ground the unit to your chassis !!!DO NOT USE THE WIRING HARNESS GROUND IT WILL INTRODUCE SYSTEM NOISE!!!

One thing for someone running all 3 way components this unit does NOT have time correction. So if you are running 2 ways no big deal, but if your running 3 ways and have the tweeter seperated from the mid farther apart than 12 inches(rule of thumb) its hard to bring your soundstage to be times correctly but you can use the fade and balance controls to help aid in it, but they wont work as well as actually time correction though. This doesnt affect me because i am using all aftermarket 2 way sets because this is only in my daily driving car.

TWO things i recommend to purchase with this unit is:
1. a line driver to boost your input voltage going to your amplifiers because this unit is only 2volts and that raises and lowers with impedance on the unit.
2. a fast and big USB thumb drive, its very fast and easy to add/remove songs and cheaper than buring cds all the time! Besides that you can always switch thumb drives out or you can always connect to someones cellphone wirelessly and play music off of the bluetooth connection, alot slower but it still works.

I only gave it a 4 on looks/design because they should have done something else with placement of the buttons needed to use and navigate the menu's to make it easier for using if you have to reach over to your deck to adjust it while driving. Also the 4 was because of the lack of voltage for the preouts, again curable with a line driver but still why not just make it a 4 volt from factory at least?

I gave it a 4 on ease of use because of the way the menus are setup and the buttons you have to use are spread out making it a little harder to get used to than the simple Alpines and Eclipses im used to in the past.