Alpine CDA-9820XM Car CD Player

Hello everyone. I'm thrilled to be able to write this review. I'm also a bit scared to write this review because car audio is one of those highly competitive areas when people spend hundreds and hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars to create a heart stopping steel boom box. I too was once in that era where I pumped over $3500 into a car audio system. 3 amps, wires everywhere, 10" woofers in a custom built box, yada, yada, yada.

But anyway, I much older now and have graduated to wanting a good sounding "system", but not one that takes over my car.

So here it goes: I've purchased 5 head units in my lifetime. Each time, I purchased Alpine. Why? 2 reasons mainly, first they have a very good reputation of building a quality product. Second, because I like the look and feel of Alpine head units. When I purchased my 2002 Honda Accord, I lived with the stock radio for almost 2 years. It sounded pretty good, not like my prior systems, but I just wasn't ready to begin the process of changing everything out. Recently however, I decided I wanted XM radio and the choices for XM radio were to either buy a stand alone XM receiver then use a cassette or FM modulator, purchase an XM "ready" radio then add an XM tuner to it, or purchase the Alpine CDA-9820XM...the only head unit of it's kind with a build-in XM tuner.

For me the choice was easy. I already have an MP3 player and I use a cassette adapter to hear it through my system. I didn't want an additional device (the stand alone XM radio) cluttering up my console plus the sound quality of a cassette adapter isn't really high fidelity. If I was going to go with XM, I wanted high fidelity. (Before I continue, you can use an FM modulator instead of the cassette adapter. Been there, done that. Bottom line was it didn't work well, the modulator had to be in the right place or I'd hear static, the batteries needed to be changed regularly and the sound quality was much worse than the cassette adapter).

Next choice was an XM ready head unit, with an add-on tuner. This was cool, Alpine (and others) make many head units these days "ready" for XM but I really wanted something simpler. During my research I discovered the Alpine CDA-9820XM. This seemed to have it all. CD, AM/FM, a built in XM tuner, and the capability to connect my MP3 player up directly.

So I purchased and installed the 9820 and here's what I found:

This radio is packed with features. I don't need to go over each feature here...you can find that at the Alpine website. What I will tell you about is the features that I think are significant and may be important to you.

First and foremost, this radio's got a built in XM tuner. Install the radio, connect an XM antenna to it, and you're good to go. (BTW, I installed the Terk XMicro antenna. Quite easy to install although the installation instructions are quite vague).

Next, the unit has 18 XM presets. Initially I thought to myself "What am I going to do with 18 presets" but the truth is you've got 130+ channels and you'll fill up those presets very quickly.

For tone controls it has the basic bass and treble but it also offer two additional features. First it allows you to select what frequency the bass and treble are centered around. This is pretty cool because with this feature you can fine tune where the bass or treble + or - takes effect. Secondly, it includes what Alpine calls a MediaXpander. They tout it as a 500Mhz digital sound processor that "corrects" the encoding deficiencies found in XM and MP3 playback. For each source it provides up to 3 different settings (MX1, MX2 or MX3) that are said improve the sound, especially from XM and MP3 playback. In my opinion, using the MX feature simply makes the sound very artificial.

Finally, using this unit and an accessory cable, you can connect an external device such as an MP3 player directly to the unit and get "line level" quality. No FM modulator is required.

So what do I think? After owning this radio for 2 weeks I can tell you that I'm happy and unhappy with it.

I'm happy because CDs and FM sound great. It's got a built in 4 channel amp with 18 watts per channel (which isn't a significant amount of power, but very good for an in-dash radio...you can always connect a higher power amp to this unit if you'd like).

I'm unhappy because XM sounds fair, sometimes good, at best. This isn't the radio's fault however. Since observing such poor sound quality from XM, I did some research and learned that XM isn't quite the "near CD quality" it advertises. High end on XM is poor...I find myself always trying to increase the treble beyond it's limits. The low end is there but overall XM lacks dynamics. Play the same song of CD, FM then XM, you'll find that the sond on XM sounds very pale...lifeless and without energy.

On the plus side of XM however, there are 130+ channels, the sound is very "clean" (not good, by clean I mean completely free of the usual FM static, pops and clicks) and you can almost always tune into any channel and hear commercial free music.

Another area of concern is the MX DSP system. Once again, in my opinion all this feature does is greatly exaggerate the sound by boosting the bass, or turning up the midrange. I don't use it for any source.

I do like having a volume knob as opposed to a pushbutton volume up/down, what I don't like however is the knob is small, not in diameter but in how far it sits off the unit. It's difficult to grab with adult fingers and turn it easily. I find myself resting my hand on the shifter, then slowly turning the knob. If you turn to fast however, since this is a "logic" knob, nothing happens, you you have to take care and learn what's the fastest speed you can turn the dial and still get a result.

The radio has a single button to select the source. The problem is if you're on XM and want to get to FM, you must press this button 3 times, pausing very briefly between presses. For XM presets, you only get 6 per "bank". To change banks you must press a different button which scrolls you from XM1, to XM2 to XM3. This is a bit of a hassle.

Finally, the radio can display XM details such as the station ID, artist and title. The problem is the display is so limited (it only shows about 12 characters or so) that the data must scroll. To compound that problem, the radio will only show one of the three items at a time. To change what's displayed you must press a button to change the item displayed. It would have been much smarter for Alpine to include an option/mode that would continuously scroll the station ID, artist and title without have to manually select just one to display.

So it may sound like I'm really down on this unit. The truth is I'm not. It's a fine radio. For CD it sounds very very good. FM is also excellent. XM, well it's not the radio's fault. Programming content is excellent...sounds quality isn't.

10/12/04 Update - For those of you now interested in moving to or also receiving Sirius satellite radio in your cars, this unit is a perfect fit. There is no radio on the market today that can receive both XM and Sirius natively. If you own the 9820 or are considering it, you should know that it is the only head unit manufactured today with a built in XM tuner. Many head units are now XM or Sirius "ready" meaning you can purchase a separate tuner and connect them to the head unit so the head unit can control it. If you want both XM and Sirius however, your options go way down, unless of course you have this head unit and the reason why is you can continue to use the built-in XM tuner, then add a Sirius tuner which can be controlled via the CD-changer port on the 9820. What this means is you can continue to enjoy XM radio, but also listen to Sirius if you need to using the AUX input. The AUX input is significantly better than using an FM modulator.