It’s complicated, Kenwood KDC-MP822

About a month ago, my year and a half old Aiwa CDC-MP32 in-dash died (yeah, I know, no great shakes as a player, but it was inexpensive at the time, had stealth faceplate and played MP3's).  Didn't feel like shelling the bucks as I'll probably only keep my car for another year, then found a special deal on the Kenwood KDC-MP822 (see http://www.crutchfield.com/S-WhescxDDcCB/cgi-bin/ProdView.asp?i=113MP822 and http://www.kenwoodusa.com/product/product.jsp?productid=2500 ), which for $249 (had a coupon) seemed to offer every feature I want at a truly bargain price.

The deck works great except for one thing.   When I start my car on a cold-to-mild Michigan morning (35-45F) I get a TOC error every time I pop in a new disc for about the first 25 minutes in the car, until the interior is warm.  My Aiwa never did this, and my stock Acura head unit (a dumb CD head with cassette AM/FM unit for all the major electronics) never did either, although the Acura never did use MP3's like I'm using now, nor did the Kenwood Excelon or Sony Mobile ES units I put in my last ride.  All of them used the same CD-R discs just fine though (Verbatim, I tend to be picky about using quality brands).  I've tried burning my CD's at slow speed just in case; this hasn't helped.  I plan to try using some Sony discs tomorrow, including burning a standard audio CD, but I doubt this will help.  I also doubt going to the new Kenwood KDC-MP825 model will help either, as I'd assume (and was also told by phone tech support at Crutchfield, for what it's worth) that most decks within a given range have similar disc transport/playback mechanisms.  By the way, if leave the disc in from the night before and don't swap discs on my morning commute, the Kenwood appears to remember the TOC in a memory buffer from when it last read, and plays the disc left in just fine.

I know Kenwood was the first to do decent MP3 decks, and I'm stymied by this.  I think I'm probably getting condensation on the laser lens, but I'm at a loss as to why this good quality deck would do it when entry-level stuff doesn't.  Does anyone know of a way to reduce the chance of this happening (other than parking my car in a garage)?  What are the possibilities that if I exchange the unit out for one of the same, or the next up model, that I can get rid of this problem?  I have a 40 minute commute, and I'm not willing to have 25 minutes of it silent because of this.  Any advice would be appreciated.

actually the APC circuit of the Kenwood optical pickups has a very low temperature threshhold variance.... something like -10C to +25C or so.... they seem to design these things with a moderate temp/climate in mind.... this is especially noticeable in colder climes like here in canada where you wait months for it to go up to -10C

thats why you'll notice erratic pickup behaviour when you first power it up and play discs on colder mornings or when it gets to later tracks ( when the pickup is moving closer to the output stage heat sink and all the ambient heat generated there) after playing for awhile....

it differs from model to model unfortunately with Kenwood because they have different suppliers of optical pickups depending on the model

What i think you are experiencing is exactly what you suspect. I am personally a fan of Kenwoods head units, though I see through past threads my superiors aren't !! But I will say, I just picked up a new unit tonight, it is a KDC-X679, it is an Excelon model, but i am reading through the manual and looking through threads right now, and as I read this one, Kenwood does have this listed in the manual as Lens fogging, The manual states:

LENS FOGGING 

Right after you turn on the car heater in cold weather, dew or condensation may form on the lens on the CD player of the unit. Called lens fogging, CDs may be impossible to play. In such a situation, remove the disc and wait for the condensation to evaporate. If the unit still does not operate normally after a while, consult your Kenwood dealer.

Though I don't live in the colder climate as you do, it still seems that 25 min. is a bit long for the lens to dry, so you may want to have it looked at by a Kenwood dealer in your area before sending it back, just to have a first hand opinion of whats happening.Hope this helps, and good luck.

Well, I got up early, even though it's a day off, to try an audio CD burned on different media.  This morning, probably because of temperature being different than yesterday,  both the MP3 disc and the audio disc I burned (which should be about 3/4 full, at 66 minutes) played fine.  I guess I'll just have to wait it out and try a few more days.

P.S.  Anyone have good resources for working on an Aiwa CDC-MP32 deck?  It's far from perfect, but if I can get it working, I could live with it for awhile.