If I hated my 9885, why am I considering another Alpine?

[Ahaz 10+ year member]

****, I'm never going to make up my mind. The bass/treble on the Alpine sounds kinda crappy. I'm not looking for the ultimate in tweak-ability, but if I don't like the sound that kind of limits my options in fixing it.

As far as trying it out goes, that would be hard without an ipod yet. Maybe I can borrow one...

Will someone who owns all three let me borrow them for a few weeks? LOL.

 

[93EXT 10+ year member]

CDA- 9887, Imprint FTMFW

 

[whitemax 10+ year member]

EDIT: Okay guys, I'm an idiot. I had a CDA-9835, not the 9885. It was their first unit with Bio Lite.

The CDA-7998 was the first unit with the Biolite display. This was the model before the CDA-9835.

Sounds like you should get a HU with some sort of built in processing.

Hahah, nice. I had the 9835 in my S2000 connected to 2 Boston Acoustics 6.5" speakers, and I hated the sound. We swapped in my friends Pioneer (the all blue display MP series), and it sounded great. I bought the Eclipse, and it sounded great.
I sold the Alpine to a friend, who put it in his S2000. He's using a pair of JL 6.5" speakers, and it sounds just as bad to me. He seems to like it, but it is physically painful to me when it gets turned up.

I just wish I could demo it in my own car :-(. Maybe I'll go play with one today at Best Buy, and see if that **** M.I.X still sucks.

Did you have the MediaXpander function on. I find this to make the music sound un-natural and fatiguing.

 

[Ahaz 10+ year member]

The CDA-7998 was the first unit with the Biolite display. This was the model before the CDA-9835.

Did you have the MediaXpander function on. I find this to make the music sound un-natural and fatiguing.

Well, shows what I know. I had the MediaXpander set to off all the time - even at 1 it was like a 'loud' button on crack.

Has the circuitry changed from the 9835 to the ida-x001? Or is it still going to have a similar sound?

EDIT: Oh, looking at your avatar, I had a CD7000 that I loved, but had problems with the reliability, if that gives you any idea about my preferences/where I'm coming from.

 

[whitemax 10+ year member]

The units use different DAC's and not sure if Alpine did something else to the circuitry since the 9835. Why not give it a shot and see if you like it, if not just return it.

Also, if you had the CD7000 it may be difficult going to a unit that has no real processing abilities. You may want to look at the CDA-9887.

What problems did you have with your CD7000?

 

[Ahaz 10+ year member]

The units use different DAC's and not sure if Alpine did something else to the circuitry since the 9835. Why not give it a shot and see if you like it, if not just return it.
Also, if you had the CD7000 it may be difficult going to a unit that has no real processing abilities. You may want to look at the CDA-9887.

What problems did you have with your CD7000?

I just got back from Best Buy. They of course did not have it hooked up to an ipod, or anything, so I couldn't really demo it. The sh*tty M.I.X is still there, but I don't know if it works the same as it did on the 9835.

If there were a way to just let the ipod do the shuffling, it would be perfect. In hindsight, I should have bought it and tried it out, but the M.I.X option (which I couldn't figure out how to actually turn on, maybe because there was no source connected?) and the sales person's apathy just made me want to get out of there.

If I'm trying to shuffle through 80 gigs of music, and it turns shuffle off if I hit next track....ugh. That would be a deal breaker. I don't want to listen to the entire song just to get to the next random track.\

Ah, the CD7000. It was a great unit. I ran it active with a pair of Rainbow Profi line, with a JL 300/2 powering the mids and a Diamond D3 powering the tweeters. After all that, I really didn't do much tweaking with the Eclipse. It just sounded good 'out of the box'. Sure time allignment and setting the crossover points were a must, but I didn't do too much with the parametric EQ.

Now, I'm trying to find something that is not quite as high end. I want to focus more on ease of use, ergonomics, ability to quickly jump around and sort a large collection of music, etc. So it has to sound good, but not super $$$ good.

The problem I ran into was the face plate stopped turning on after a while. The radio would still work, and it was installed in a Toyota so the steering wheel control still worked, but it was annoying.

Before that I had a 3434 that stopped reading CDs after a few weeks. Tweeter replaced that one, and the replacement was flawless for the two years I owned it.

I don't want to pony up the retail on the CD7100, and I don't want to go online unauthorized retailer either.

 

[req 5,000+ posts]

i dunno, my buddy has the ida-x001 and he absolutly loves it, i asked him a few days ago how much he liked it compared to his cda-9851? and he told me that the only downfall in his mind is that it does not play cd's on the offchance that a friend comes over and has some music on a disc.

BUT he also has a alpine H701 combo. defeat mode on the xda is turned on so there is no processing at all, and everything is controlled by the h701.

personally, i think you had no idea how to tune the 9835, or there was some coloration added in somewhere. i have an alpine 9830 (albiet, with a h701 combo) and it sounds fantastic //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/tongue.gif.6130eb82179565f6db8d26d6001dcd24.gif

 

[Ahaz 10+ year member]

personally, i think you had no idea how to tune the 9835, or there was some coloration added in somewhere. i have an alpine 9830 (albiet, with a h701 combo) and it sounds fantastic //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/tongue.gif.6130eb82179565f6db8d26d6001dcd24.gif

You may very well be right, but with NO tuning whatsoever, the Pioneer and the Eclipse sounded good. If the Alpine sounds great with tuning (I'm sure it does, TONS of people swear by Alpine), but sounds like crap out of the box...that just BS. I'm going from a stock deck putting out maybe 10 watts per speaker, how in the world can a high end deck sound worse?

So, it was either a bad combination of speaker selection, placement, install, etc., or I just don't like Alpine. Let's face it, these are subjective things we're talking about here.

Either way, I'm going to give them another chance with the IDA-X001. A friend has a brand new ipod I can borrow for a few days to test it out. I'll let you guys know how it turns out!

 

[iamamp3pimp 5,000+ posts]

i just installed one in my girls car and it sounds pretty nice.

 

[gl0ck 10+ year member]

I would pick the sony, the sony AV series are very, very nice. Not many people on this board believe in them, but fact is these units have very good user interfaces, and surprising audio pre-out voltages.

 

[shpatb 10+ year member]

just fork over a bit more for the eclipse you'll love it, even if you get the last years model, i know i love my cd5000 like you said all you had to do is time aligment and cross overs and it sounds awesome! so just consider it, do you want something crappy or do you want to spend a little more for something really nice

 

[ngsm13 5,000+ posts]

Are you saying you hated your 9835?

nG

 

[mikey7182 10+ year member]

he told me that the only downfall in his mind is that it does not play cd's on the offchance that a friend comes over and has some music on a disc.

Funny how you could have said the the exact same thing about 20 years ago and been right on! //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

 

[yunvme666 10+ year member]

w/o reading, im just goin to say dont do it. i kept buyin pioneer premiers and they just kept skipping, now i got a fusion on the way..... just for the 40 second anti skip.....

all im saying is if ya had any problems dont buy more.....unless its user error.....

 

[grizzly02 10+ year member]

I have had the X001 and hated it, the large button was a mess. I then went to the 9856,9857,9887, IVA-D300, noe IVA-D105. I loved em all, the 9887 was pretty sweet but I wnt video for my kids in the back, so I went with the D105.