Well done mate and thanks. 
Make sure you are sitting down.
For me including,
- Kenwood DMX 8019DABS
- Wiring loom - CTSMZ002.2 (including single wire Kenwood patch lead).
- Facia - CT24MZ20
- Kenwood DABA1 Antenna
- Kenwood CMOS - 230 Reverse Camera. (Why not as it’s all apart).
£605.87.
EDIT - 1 has just gone up £40. 2 in stock when I ordered now only 5 left! Funny old world we live in.
Between Dynamic Sounds and Car Audio Centre.
To be honest not bad really, you only live once.
I decided with the help from a good few people on here that I am fitting it myself.
Yes, I will probably be doing a lot of swearing and wondering why I bothered in due course.
But by doing that I have saved on the labour costs and therefore got a better one (apparently) than intended. I can take my time and also know what has/hasn’t been done.
To be honest I phoned around and not one of them could give a definitive price or got back to me to confirm. 
Perhaps they are very busy…
Many thanks once again chaps. 
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Just a quick tip about fitting the fascia. You will most likely fit the head unit using the side brackets as opposed to the cage like I did.
There are no screws supplied with the fascia kit and none with the head unit. I tried to use some off the head unit I removed but they were not long enough (they were 8mm). The holes in the head unit to fix the bracket are recessed, you will need M5 12mm machine screws. I tried Halfords, Screwfix etc with no luck and ended up buying these from ebay:
My install ground to a halt until they arrived although they did arrive the next day despite the delivery time being quoted as much longer due to it being free.
Also, you will fit the faceplate that comes with the fascia kit as the one supplied with the head unit will be too big for the fascia.
Hope that helps.
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It most certainly does and very much appreciated. How many screws do I need probably 2 or 4?
I used 4, 2 each side which is fine.
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Well after all the um-ing and ah-ing I finally went for the cheapest solution that’ll give me phone, Spotify and dab, I almost always listen to Dab in the ‘proper’ car anyway. At £40 it’s worth a try even if it doesn’t looks as good as a double din setup.
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Mount your smartphone on the dash as a touch screen display and you will get navigation as well.
How does the Alpine unit attach?
Link??
I’ve got a tomtom nav if I’m desperate, phone is too small for me. The display uses a sticky type of pad to the facia. Wires run behind dash and screen side panel to receiver mounted in top left corner of windscreen.
Sound is OK, as good as FM radio, phone works very well too.
Bought off Amazon for £42 it’s exactly the same unit as the Pure Highway 600 just a lot cheaper. Think it’s gone up to £49 now.
Decided that if double din wouldn’t do all I wanted for 1/6th the cost of the car I might as well try a different approach
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My phone screen is much bigger than my TomTom and using Google Maps, works better too. It boots up much faster and is much more responsive when changing direction, as in negotiating junctions, roundabouts etc.
It’s a serious pain when your TomTom gets laggy when you need it most. Also when you have to wait several minutes for it to boot up and find satellites before you can even enter your destination.
Google Maps also updates for free.
Shouldn’t DAB give better quality than FM??
I’m using the dab via the tuner option for now. As the Mazda radio has no 3.5mm jack input. I’ve sent for a connector that should allow me to connect the alpine to the head unit but it won’t arrive until next week.
Aha. I’m lucky in that my nc2 has an aux input.
Using that, the streamed music from my phone via my cheap non DAB gizmo is better quality than using the cd player
I’ve got a widget that plugs into the radio and allows a usb stick to act as a virtual CD changer, that also has a 3.5mm plug (not socket). So I’ve sent for a socket to socket connector that should arrive next week.
The virtual cd changer would have been ok but it only plays the first 6 ‘CDs’ out of a couple of hundred on the usb stuck! And then in alphabetical order so Anastasia and Bruce Springsteen is all I get.
Better quality no, even with my old ears I can hear it working.
Less noise yes, until it falls over a cliff with low signal and stops altogether.
DAB is best in the noisy environment of a car where the limited dynamic range and low bit-rate doesn’t matter, so it’s fine for a car radio, but nowhere near good enough for Radio3 domestic.
Digital TV audio (terrestrial) is very much better, and although I know what to listen for on that I can’t hear it working, so the more generous budget on the bit-rate of a superior algorithm has made all the difference.
Yes, that is the big problem with the old NC headunit. So I made six “CDs” ie playlists, of a hundred tracks each to live on the chip in the one I bought, and plug my earplayer into the 3.5mm jack socket when I want a bigger choice.
Using a smartphone to store, display and stream your music works a treat. I use Muzio for this and have downloaded all the album covers for my music, so they display when I choose that album.
It also provides satnav, hands free calls and phone charging, all for 15 quid.
I do like the way the Alpine unit can be placed somewhere other than in the power socket though and it is much smarter, so I am tempted.
Ah yes, I remember there were bitter complaints when it was first introduced that the expected leap in quality was nullified by compression.
So the compression situation hasn’t improved…
Do you know if it is the same with all broadcasters??
For me DAB just means I can listen to Planet Rock and Radio 5 Live.
The alpine will stream from Spotify and music on my phone but there’s not much on there
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There wasn’t a leap in quality!
The compression doesn’t help either, although it does mask some of the DAB artefacts in the audio, and cripples the FM to drag it down closer to DAB quality.
I was involved in the early listening tests when DAB was being developed, and parts of the tests involved adding noise as masking, both environmental and within the audio, when comparing random pieces of FM and the same source via DAB but with the DAB delay removed.
We guinea pigs were given a switch to choose between the samples for the best audio quality and we could adjust the volume from the stereo speakers to suit ourselves much as the future listener might.
I chose the FM every time, even with the most extreme noise added, and so did most of the other twenty or so volunteers.
Not everyone could say why, but having worked on noise reduction and also Dolby systems in the past I could tell exactly what was going on, and suggested ways to improve it.
Unfortunately the bit budgets would not allow this. The crippled bit budget is a political decision, and most definitely not an engineering one. (Gov selling off radio spectrum and channel licenses.)
DAB2 has a better algorithm, but uses the same bit budget, and while the intrusive artefacts are reduced I can still hear them, especially on drama with subtle sound effects or on music if it has a decent dynamic range and separation between the instruments being played or the voices singing.
All DAB is fine for banging pop music, or simple studio speech (without ‘effects’). But for the rest of the time, give me the FM or nothing.
Since I purchased mine they have brought out a newer upgraded model (as they do) so do check on the JVC website for model numbers etc.
JVC KW M745DBT https://g.co/kgs/opavX8