Alpine CDA-9827 Car CD / MP3 Player

I decided to buy Alpine despite my intense dislike for their products' excitingly chunky "Dig Me - Steal Me" appearance (though they're certainly not alone in that fault.) Their HUs simply have the best S/N specs and reputation for skip-free CD play for the price.

The rep for those positives is definitely deserved - the deck sounds great, and though I've only had it a few days, the bumpy construction-project pavement close to where I live has been no problem for the unit's tracking.

The big downside of this unit is the user interface, and I mean: All of it.

1. The Display: The Alpine 9827 display is completely invisible in daylight, period. Put another way, you simply cannot see anything on the readout unless it's sometime well after sundown. This strange quirk, combined with the "Complexity-Worship" controls described in #2 below, means that I'll have no choice but to do an immediate search for a deck with similar specs and replace the Alpine 9827 as soon as I have the stomach and buckage for it - this in turn means I'll have to find some poor schmuck to sell the Alpine to.

When it IS dark enough outside to read the display, the 9827 has a blackout feature that allows you to turn off the display if you think it's too bright, which is laughable - what the display needs is something to make it roughly four times brighter. Trouble is, to the immediate left of TheControlKnob are four large, square control buttons and *they* - you guessed it - are backed with some of the brightest lighting I've seen this side of Dodger Stadium, and it is flatly impossible to turn that lighting off short of removing the faceplate altogether.
Is this necessary? Those four buttons have fixed functions and are readily memorized. Yet they are blindingly bright while the display of vital controls is so dim it's unreadable. It's the kind of engineering that makes you throw up your hands and wonder "What in hell were these people thinking?"

Note to Alpine: Being able to see the display in daytime hours is, errm, rather important.
Which brings us to...

2. TheControlKnob: My wariness about buying a unit with a single, solitary control knob is something to which I dearly wish I'd paid more attention. TheControlKnob is your only access to almost every function you typically need to change while you're driving, which means that instead of simply reaching out, grabbing the Fader knob and...fading, you have to navigate through a menu to assign the desired control to the knob, then change it - Sub volume, Bass, Treble, Balance, Fader - and something called "Defeat" (more on this last later.)

Editorial break: Can someone give me a good reason why separate pots for volume, balance, fader, EQ, etc. are considered taboo these days? Is it fashion? I can think of few cases in which the principle of "form must follow function" has been more flagrantly ignored and in more desperate need of revisiting, than in car audio. A rotary knob with travel limited between min and max endpoints is something that can be adjusted by feel, without the need to take one's eyes off the road. The "endless wheel" digital control is visually snazzy, but not only is there no tactile reference point for min and max, there's that infuriating need to navigate to the function you're looking for before you can change it. Both of which mean that, apart from the alternative of rote memorization, you have to look at the display in order to use it. (In the case of the Alpine 9827, you have to look at the display, see only a reflection of the 18-wheeler you've veered toward outside your right quarterpanel window, soil your underwear, and give up in frustration as your speakers fry.)

Solid, high quality pots can be gotten in sufficiently small size and reasonable cost these days - I want them, and will be the first in line when a manufacturer steps over this current single-knob fad and embraces rationality in its faceplate design.

Volume, balance, fade and EQ are essential controls that users need to access frequently. In the context of driving, simplicity in these frequently-used controls is a must. The 9827's controls would be perhaps usable (if annoyingly and needlessly labyrinthine,) if the unit were sitting at home on a shelf. But navigating its cumbersome controls is a pain in the posterior and flat-out dangerous if you happen to be driving, which given the fact that it's a car stereo tends to be the normal case.

Granted, there's a learning curve on any new HU that passes in a month or so. Ordinarily that would be true, but given the fact that the 9827 display is a dark, unreadable mirror reflecting the sunlight coming through your car's windows, plus the additional fact that every function controlled by TheControlKnob is laid out in a counterintuitive and needlessly complex way - what you're talking about is sitting in your garage for days memorizing the electronic equivalent of a Shakespearean sonnet. Again, should this be necessary with 21st century technology?


- Needless Complexity Level 2a: The default condition of the display and controls in CD mode is to show the number and elapsed time of the track (or one of five others, like time or title info) - when in tuner mode it's station ID, etc; if you reach up and turn the knob in this mode, it controls the volume.

If you push the knob once from default, it exits volume mode and goes to Subwoofer volume mode - which is obviously useless unless you have a subwoofer; push it a second time and it exits Sub volume mode and enters Bass mode; push it a third time and it exits Bass mode and enters Treble mode; push it a fourth time and it exits Treble mode and enters a toggle mode for something called "Deft on/off". All the owner's manual mentions about this last is its name, "Defeat," and not a word more, I kid you not. What it's for is a mystery but I suspect the term "Defeat" is, appropriately, a command the engineers provided for the unit's own use - against you the user. It's that one extra step separating you from getting back to Volume mode just after you've misadjusted the Bass - thanks to the utter unreadable darkness of the display - and are frantically trying to prevent your speakers from turning into smoking lumps of polycarboniferous sludge - all while trying to avoid becoming Siamese twins with that 18-wheeler on the freeway beside you.
The decision to place the Subwoofer volume first in this mode list is another headache in itself. That order can't be changed, and since Bass, Treble and Fader are universally the most frequently changed parameters, having to step past Subwoofer volume every time you want to make such a change quickly becomes tedious and annoying even if you did install a subwoofer. Balance too is a control seldom if ever used - another obstacle.

Needless Complexity Level 2b: Let's say you want to alter the EQ of your sound -I know it's a stretch and maybe I'm unusual on this point, but work with me. If so, prepare to step deeper into the engineering nightmare that is Alpine design.
For some inexplicable reason - I suspect passing fashion once again - Alpine decided to design its HUs with parametric rather than graphic equalizers. In the 9827's case you're allowed to select from four center frequencies (for Bass) and a range of four bandwidth settings for whichever center freq you select. Umm, bad move. If you want to provide users with parametric EQ control, add it as an extended mode off of a default graphic equalizer - so you can select the desired frequencies controllable by the graphic EQ. Bandwidth control is nice but mostly fluff I don't need. What I need is simplicity and a user-friendly interface - on which counts Alpine fails miserably.

You're driving along, you're in default Track time/Volume mode (or one of the others selected.) Your bass is screwed up and you want to adjust it. You push TheControlKnob to get into Subwoofer volume mode which you don't want or need, then once again to get to Bass mode. Once there, you go to the little button marked CENTER f and push it to get into Bass Center Frequency Control Mode. From there, you use the blinding little left-right arrow buttons to select the desired center frequency, which if you squint hard you can just make out on the dim display panel, just beyond Dodger Stadium. If you want to set the Bass bandwidth, you push the blinding Band/Tel. button up above that, to get into Bandwidth Selection Mode. Again, you then use the left-right arrows to pick the desired bandwidth level. Once you've done all of this parameter-tinkering - assuming you're still alive and not plastered all over a guardrail somewhere - you can then go back to TheControlKnob and set the Bass volume.

For Treble, the process is the same except you don't get to set bandwidth. Oh darn.

So two points here: First, I want a linear (analog) sweep for EQ adjustment whether simple bass/treble or multi-band graphic equalization, not "pick one frequency and adjust volume based on that frequency." Let the global volume handle volume - leave EQ to the EQ controls.
Yes, phrases like "Center Frequency" and "Bandwidth" may sound exceedingly impressive to adolescent kids looking to impress others as an overriding imperative. But I just want the flexibility to adjust my sound to my taste quickly and easily, and the simplicity to do it without risk of violent freeway death. Ohyeah - and I'd like to be able to do it sometime other than at night.

In sum, the car audio industry - as exemplified by Alpine - seems to be drowning in a binge of complexity-worship, the result being products that are inferior to far simpler designs. In addition, Alpine's engineers all seem to have something on the order of a mental block when it comes to the subject of panel lighting - in this case with disastrous results.

Because I haven't yet started burning my tunes into MP3 or WMA files I can't comment on the 9827's file system for those file formats, or its tracking accuracy or sound quality for them. From what I've read, the 9827 performs well on both points, but given what I've just described regarding its control format, I presume navigating the contents of MP3/WMA will be as cumbersome as navigating the controls for sound parameters. Setting up discs with as few tiers in the file hierarchy as possible is probably a good idea.

Now, does anybody have any suggestions for a good replacement for the 9827 - a unit with outstanding S/N, rock-solid tracking and MP3/WMA capability - that has more than one knob and saner, simpler EQ options? I'm all ears.

And pardon me for running l o n g . . .