Pioneer MVH-S230BT Bluetooth Car Stereo with USB Inputs, Smartphone Connectivity, Hands-Free Calling

In the last few months I re-riped my entire CD collection to a home database in the FLAC format. A number of years ago I had done the same thing but to the AAC format. Well, comparing the AAC to FLAC on several systems at home it was clear to me that FLAC is the way to go now. Much improved sound quality. Cant tell it from CD, which is the point.Trouble is the older Sony multimedia player in my Van only supported lossey formats like AAC. Looking around for something very similar to it, but with FLAC support I came across the S720. I picked this particular model over the other Pioneer choices with FLAC because it also has the other features I had come to need with my Sony (DSX-310BTX), had a couple more, and it fit into the same 1 DIN standard depth slot in the van.Installation was typical. While the wire harness color code is standard so in theory a straight swap in should be possible, the actual connectors are different, so i cut out the old harness and wired in the pigtail (minus the speaker wires) that came with the Pioneer. I use an Alpine 4x45W amp for the JL Audio midrange and tweeters and a Sony 300W sub amp for a Pioneer subwoofer so do I used the pre-outs from the S720. I also took advantage of the of the Pioneer internal 3 way crossover not in my Sony to eliminate the JL Audio passive crossovers. Funny thing about the S720 pre-outs…The Front/Hi out is the middle pair, the Rear/Mid is on top, and the sub on the bottom. While the chassis is labeled with stampings to this effect, it is nowhere in the user manual and pretty hard to read when the head unit is half installed. I initially put the tweeters into the top set and mids into the middle (which is logical to me, and in fact the way most similar units including a Pioneer or two do it). It was pretty obvious to me when the tweeters were trying to play midrange.Playing FLAC files is not as straight forward as one would think. First issue is that the CD ripper/FLAC converter I used didnt produce files that the S720 recognized as music. I used EAC with the XPIS FLAC plugin, which works great everywhere except in the S720. Eventually I found that by “re-converting” my existing FLAC files to FLAC using the dBpoweramp app, I was able to fix whatever the Pioneer doesnt like about the XPIS conversion. It was probably related to file info and not the actual compression. Once that was solved I next found there is some upper limit to either the number of files or the size of the end package of files the S720 will support. I know that when I put the entire reconverted set of files (72GB and 3800 files on a 128G flashdrive) I get an Error 19 when plugging the flashdrive into the S720. When I deleted a number of folders and was below 64GB (not sure what the final file count is, but still on the same 128G flashdrive), it worked fine.Next I went thru the S720 driver time alignment, then a leveling and EQ process using an Android based app with white noise, spectrum analyzer and calibrated mic as a reference to get a relatively flat frequency response. Time consuming, but worth the trouble.The best part is how great it sounds. Not just because of the FLAC format, but even AAC and analog sound better. I am sure the ability to time align and fine tune the eq contribute a lot but it also looks like Pioneer did a nice job of implementing the digital and analog in the head unit.Complaints? I cant believe head units havent begun using non-volatile memory for configurations. Pull the power and you get to start over. This sucks if you sent a lot of time setting it up. There is literally no installation manual. You get a quick start guide with the unit, but it doesnt even have a picture of the I/O on the back. There are a bunch of videos on the Pioneer product page for the unit, but they only cover the connector wiring color meanings and a bunch of how-to’s on various functions once you get it up and running. By the way, these videos are way better than the user manual explaining how to set up and use features. Finally, who needs a really, really large BASS button? Its the second largest function on the units face next to the rotary encoder. So far the Smart Sync app is a mixed blessing. It makes it possible to find my way thru the FLAC files in short order, where the front panel interface is hopeless (all the music files are presented on the S720 as though in a single folder and in alphabetical order by file name). My biggest complaint with it is that it seems to want to take over all functions on the phone and it puts itself on top of all other apps. I found a way to prevent it from automatically starting up when the phone connects to the head unit, but then it wont even connect after the bluetooth connection is established. I cant seem to locate the 31 band EQ that some of the literature touts is available thru Smart Sync, and when Smart Sync is connected I cant change the contents of my custom EQ. I hope this app is a work in progress and not what Pioneer considers THE app. It needs lots of work.