Alpine CDA-9830 Car CD / MP3 Player
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Dark display, Tuner problems
Pros
Good CD quality
Cons
Too many, read the review, bad Alpine warranty policy
Recommended it?
No
The Bottom Line:
Bad (dark) display, FM tuner problems, no warranty from Alpine. Not recommended.
Player is new for 2004. I have it for 1.5 months.
1. First thing I've noticed when I tried it in the car was how dark the display is. It is so bad that it is almost impossible to see anything at the day light. There is no brightness or contrast adjustment. Second problem with the display is that the brightness depends on the angle at which you look at the player. Even at night in my last model Honda Civic Alpine display was kind of dark, and erroneously display tilt feature makes things even worse - it tilts it up when I needed it down. So, I came up with a partial solution: I tilted whole player down inside the dashboard, so it looks OK at night. This all makes me wonder: what kind of car it was designed for?
2. Player has a small fan, and it turns on automatically when device is hot. You can clearly hear it when the car is not moving and sound level is down, otherwise you won't hear it at all.
3. CD sound quality is quite good.
4. Second problem is FM tuner. In my area (San Francisco, CA) 90% of FM stations in CDA-9830 sound noisy. Experimenting with manual tuning mode made me think that FM tuner in CDA-9830 cannot separate stations well and you can hear noise of stations whose frequencies are close to the one you are listening to. There is a feature where you can choose tuner signal quality, but it does not help much. In "stable" setting sound quality is bad and distortions (though less noticeable) do not go away. FM tuner in my old Blaupunkt San Jose 41 was quite fine in the same area.
5. Media Xpander feature suppose to enhance sound quality from imperfect sources (like radio and mp3) and comes in 3 levels. For whatever reason the higher the adjustment, the more high frequencies you loose. Low frequencies do sound better though.
6. Be aware of Alpine service policy: representative said there is no Alpine warranty if product is purchased on the Internet (excluding one site which I do not remember).
Conclusion: buy next level model (CDA-9831) for better display if you still want Alpine.
1. First thing I've noticed when I tried it in the car was how dark the display is. It is so bad that it is almost impossible to see anything at the day light. There is no brightness or contrast adjustment. Second problem with the display is that the brightness depends on the angle at which you look at the player. Even at night in my last model Honda Civic Alpine display was kind of dark, and erroneously display tilt feature makes things even worse - it tilts it up when I needed it down. So, I came up with a partial solution: I tilted whole player down inside the dashboard, so it looks OK at night. This all makes me wonder: what kind of car it was designed for?
2. Player has a small fan, and it turns on automatically when device is hot. You can clearly hear it when the car is not moving and sound level is down, otherwise you won't hear it at all.
3. CD sound quality is quite good.
4. Second problem is FM tuner. In my area (San Francisco, CA) 90% of FM stations in CDA-9830 sound noisy. Experimenting with manual tuning mode made me think that FM tuner in CDA-9830 cannot separate stations well and you can hear noise of stations whose frequencies are close to the one you are listening to. There is a feature where you can choose tuner signal quality, but it does not help much. In "stable" setting sound quality is bad and distortions (though less noticeable) do not go away. FM tuner in my old Blaupunkt San Jose 41 was quite fine in the same area.
5. Media Xpander feature suppose to enhance sound quality from imperfect sources (like radio and mp3) and comes in 3 levels. For whatever reason the higher the adjustment, the more high frequencies you loose. Low frequencies do sound better though.
6. Be aware of Alpine service policy: representative said there is no Alpine warranty if product is purchased on the Internet (excluding one site which I do not remember).
Conclusion: buy next level model (CDA-9831) for better display if you still want Alpine.
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