sat in a friends car the other day with a Eclipse deck with digital time alignment and was very impressed. so i go down to AVE and pick up a Kenwood Excelon KDC-X889 with digital time alignment. i already had a kenwood deck so i wouldn't have to re-program my dash mounted radio controls and wouldn't have to make a new adaptor harness (i know easy job..but i'm lazy).

so i get it installed and start messing with DTA and it isnt workign for a shit. 0.00 feet to 20.33 ft of pathlength difference makes no change.

position left front makes the stage center come form the left of the left mirror. right front makes it come close to center but sound out of phase.

so i go back into DTA and adjust thinking i have it set wrong. but 0.00 to 20.33 ft still has NO effect on the sound of the unit or the location of stage center.

HRmmm

call kenwood tech help. waste 45 minutes of anytime minutes and they cant give me an answer but say they will call me back in under two hours. 3 hours go by, they close for the day and no one calls me back.

so i get up this morning and call again. this time i am on the phone for 30 min and they say to me:

KW - are you runnign an external amp?
ME - Yes
KW - how many channels?
ME - just two right now, front stage only
KW - well thats your problem
ME - what is my problem
KW - the time alignment is front to back.
ME - well then go tell you engineers to design somethign that works correctly i am returning the unit - click (me hanging up)

so i get an Alpine CDA-9853 in exchange and lo and behold it works just liek it should pick a channel (LF-RF-LR-RR-LS-RS) and add delay to that channel.

works liek a charm. centers and lifts the stage. great for drivers or passengers only when the car doesnt have room for good kick panels like my S2000.

cliff notes - Kenwood DTA sucks dont buy it, alpine and eclipse are good.