Even when you write about audio gear for a living, you still have to live in the real world. When my old CD receiver was rather rudely stolen from my truck, I needed a new receiver but found myself without a lot of spare change to spend. A lot of car audio buyers find themselves in the same fix — good sound and features are important, but they have to work within a budget.

The DEH-P3500 has a crisp, multicolor display that is both functional and attractive.

Fortunately, prices for car audio have dropped dramatically over the last few years. CD receivers with impressive feature lists and specs sell at prices that would have seemed ridiculously low only a few years ago. So I went shopping, looking for a receiver that would give me the performance and features I wanted at a reasonable price. In short, I wanted some good bang for my buck.

Narrowing the field
To begin, I set my budget at $200. The next thing to consider was what features were important. I needed two sets of preamp outputs (to accommodate my subwoofer amp, and allow for expansion to an additional amp in the future), a detachable face (remember, my old receiver got stolen), and XM tuner controls. I also wanted, if possible, a rotary knob for the volume, built-in high and low-pass filters for the full-range speakers, and an EQ with capabilities beyond basic bass and treble settings.

Narrowing the field was pretty easy in my case. I'd installed the Pioneer GEX-FM903XM add-on XM tuner to my previous system, routing the signal in through the old receiver's auxiliary input and operating the tuner through its own control panel. You can check out the roadtest of the old installation to see how I used to have the system wired.

While that had worked well, I liked the idea of controlling my XM tuner through the receiver itself. That narrowed my search to Pioneer receivers — they're the only ones capable of controlling the Pioneer XM tuner by themselves. I didn't want MP3 capability since I prefer the higher-resolution sound you get from a CD. Besides, I knew that I could count on my XM tuner to supply plenty of variety if I wasn't listening to a CD.