I recently had a new deck installed in my “new†car. I knew I wanted to get one that I could hook my Ipod up to but wasn’t sure if I wanted to be able to control the Ipod from the deck or not. After doing a bit of research I took the car in and decided on this Alpine CDA-9856. From the deck I can view everything on the ipod right on the deck, (playlist’s, artists, albums,etc). I was really worried about how fast I was going to be to scroll through all the music since previous model’s where really slow. The salesperson assured me that it was just as fast as scrolling through the music on the ipod. WRONG! It is quite a bit faster then older model Alpine deck’s, but it still takes for ever to get through my 24GB of music. I have learned at this point to just choose what artist I want to listen to before I even plug it into the deck.
The one feature I really like about the deck is that the ipod is hidden in the glove box. So I don’t have to worry about hiding it when I go into the store. You still have to purchase the “full speed connection cable†if you plan on using your ipod with it.
Some of the features:
* Flip Down Face
* Full Speed Control
* CD Changer Control Function
* Rotary Encoder Volume Control (Pop-up Rotary Knob)
* Black Face w/Blue illumination Buttons
* 3 PreOut (2V PreOut)
* Bluetooth® Ready
* MM Driver Ready (Hard Disc Drive Ready)
* Media Playback
* Bass Engine®
– Subwoofer Level Control
– Bass Center Frequency Control
– Bass Band Width Adjustment
– Bass Level Adjustment
– Treble Center Frequency Control
– Treble Level Adjustment
* Separate Bass & Treble Control
* Fader & Balance Controls
* Loudness
* S.T.M. (Source Tone Memory)
* Clock
* Detachable Trim Plate
* Anti-Theft Detachable Front Panel
* Dimmer-on Input
* Power Antenna Lead
* Remote-on Lead
* Wireless Remote Control Ready
* Demo Function
* Audio Mute
Ipod Features
* Full Speed(TM) Connection for iPod®
* Dedicated iPod Source Selection
* Repeat One
* Search Mode Selection (Playlist, Artist, Album, Song Title)
* Shuffle (Albums, All)
Things I don’t like:
* Slow speed’s for searching by artist.
* No remote control
* Can be kinda confusing trying to figure out all the Ipod functions