Aiwa CDC-X504MP Car CD / MP3 Player

I've been using this head unit for about a week now. I will start by mentioning that I had been seeking out a low-end MP3 in-dash unit for a while, and I finally got the money to buy one, and this is the one I chose. This unit, buck-for-buck has a lot of features packed into it. The CD player can play CD-R, CD-RW, and displays CDs burnt with CD Text on a bright blue LCD. It also is capable of playing MP3s and displays id3 tags with ease. The unit included several different displays. You can set it to the time, album-artist-track as scrolling or static, or you can show the track title with time elapsed. The unit also features only 1 preamp out, and it has a power antenna remote turn-on, as well as a separate amplifier remote turn-on lead. It features a nice 3-band EQ, which is absolutely nice to see in such a low priced unit. The EQ has several preconfigured settings that you can switch between to keep it simple, but you are able to modify each preconfigured setting. There is a Custom selection where you can save your own EQ modification without having to mess up the preconfigured ones. If you do mess up the originals, there is a way to reset them back to the original factory settings. Finally, there is an option to disable EQ altogether. This would be useful if you have a third-party EQ or sound processor installed. There is also a built in low-pass crossover with this machine. I have yet to experiment with it, since I do not have a subwoofer hooked up to it yet. If your outputs are connected to a subwoofer, you can control the output level from the unit as well. The CDC-X504MP also includes a front audio input. I haven't use it yet, and I don't see a reason to, but I think the option and availability of it at this price range is a great inclusion by AIWA.

Now let me name a few things I was a little let down by with this device:
MP3s - I've never used a hardware MP3 player before. So perhaps this isn't news, but this machine includes its own 2 second gap between every song. As far as my current research has gotten me, I do not see any way of avoiding this without burning multiple contiguous tracks as a single track. If you listen to live concerts, dj mixes, or albums with seamless songs, you will be frustrated with this annoyance. There's two problems involved with this. One, MP3s, when ripped, have difficulty maintaining the seamless transition from one song to the next. Two, the machine itself adds an extra 2 second gap. This is a bummer. Another problem with this player is that as it states in the instruction manual, with files encoded at a high bit rate like 320kbs, playback will stop and start at irregular intervals. It's as if the D/A converter cannot keep up. This is lame, and honestly I would have taken a better processor over an audio input any day. One upside of the MP3 processor is that its shuffle feature works well. It seeks to the appropriate track quickly. You can choose to shuffle the current album, denoted by a folder, or the entire disk. There is no limit on the number of tracks that can be shuffled, but there is a limit of the number of tracks and folders you can have on a CD. A CD can only have 150 folders and/or 300 tracks.

Another issue I had with the entire package is that the instruction manual is much like a shady politician. It has a lot to say about specific things, but no details and no exact answers. One example is that there is nothing in the specifications that mention the voltage rating of the preamp outputs, nor does it mention whether the preamp outputs are for the front speakers, back speakers, or all speakers. This would have been useful to know. It also would have been nice to have an extra pair of preamp outputs.