Alpine CDA-9835 Car CD / MP3 Player

I received this radio for Christmas with the Ipod accessory. I wanted to hear my Ipod the way it was meant to be heard in my truck. I can say that I really like the way it sounds. I used to use the Itrip, which sucks after using it for a few weeks. I love the extra power this radio has over Fords stock radio. I only wish I had changed the speakers at the same time I got the alpine installed. It does sound many times better, but with better speakers, who knows how much nicer it would sound. As others have written the display is nice but does need color added to it. The tilt feature is really nice making it easier to see, especially if you're tall like me. The bass feature works well even with cheap speakers and the speaker separation is very nice. I don't want to re-hash what others have said about this radio, it lives up to expectations. There are however some quirks that I have come across while using it with the Ipod. I have not read any reviews using this radio with the Ipod so I will write about that. First off I want to say that I wanted to contact Alpine with these issues but you will find that you can't find a email address to contact customer service with ideas or issues concerning there products. I did however write them a letter and faxed it to them because that was all I was able to find. I asked them to respond back to me at my email address but of course, they did not. The first thing I noticed was that once you put the radio in complete mix mode (that's random for the rest of us) it will either randomize the songs in a folder or the complete Ipod, however I set it. This is great, just what I wanted, but every time you shut off your car, you have to set up random again, which is not a big deal until you do it again, and again and again. Then it gets old. I would have liked to set it into complete random and have it stay there until I take it out.
Next thing that I noticed is the way the screen is laid out displaying the info from the Ipod. You only have three lines of info on the Alpine screen. The bottom is just where you see the folder number, the music format (mp3 or whatever) and the number of the song in the folder. It is also very small type. It also can't be changed for the most part until you scroll through and bring up the clock and date, then that info disappears. As far as I'm concerned that is useless information to me. The top and middle lines of text are much bigger, easier to see and will scroll if you so desire. Some song titles are so long it pays to scroll, that and it does look nice. You can push the title button on the radio to scroll up with different bits of info. For example you can display the band on one line and album title on the second line. Push the title button and the middle line moves up, the top line disappears and there is a new middle line. It is the song name. So now you have the album name and the song name showing. Push it again and you get the song name on top and nothing in the middle. If you keep pushing the title button you eventually get the screen with nothing but your background on it and another push and you get the date and time. This is all well and good. The problem is all I want to see is the band on the top line, the song name on the second line and the clock showing on the bottom line. You can't configure the way the screen displays. So you find yourself wearing out the title button and/or having a accident while your trying to see what time it is or what the name of that song was and who sang it. I have close to 2000 songs on my Ipod so I don't always know who sings what. I hope Alpine can change that in the future with the I personalize feature of the radio, which is very nice indeed. All in all I will still give this radio high marks with hope that in the future my issues with this radio will be resolved.