Alpine CDA-9855 Car CD / MP3 Player

I have previously owned Alpine Stereos, and I have always loved them. This unit is no different. There are a lot of options in this stereo, so it may not be for people who can't set the VCR clock.

I have read reviews on other sites stating this stereo has too many options/features. A lot of people have expressed dislike for the fact that this stereo does not have bass and treble controls. Well it does one better than that. It has a 5-band equalizer (either parametric or graphic). It also has a built in crossover, which means if your front speakers are only rated to go down to 90Hz you can set the stereo to that. It can prevent distortion and blown speakers. Another cool feature is time correction. This allows you to set the stereo to delay the sound coming out of your speakers by milliseconds so it gets to your ears at the same time. While this may not seem that big of a deal since vehicles aren't all that big, it does make a big difference listening to it. It seems like the music is perfectly centered.

As far as sound quality I rate this high. With the added addition of the equalizer/crossover/time correction, this is every tweakers dream. Most of the time I had the equalizer set to flat, because it still sounded great. The tuner seems to be excellent quality and I have no problem picking up stations. With seeking you have 3 options. One is a distance seeking (more for when you are out in the boonies trying to pick up a station). This will pick up pretty much any radio signal no matter how weak. The second is local. This is mainly used when you are in a city that has a lot of radio stations. This will filter out most weak radio stations. The third is just your normal tuning. It goes one station at a time. The mp3 and cd playback is awesome. Even when I took my car on dirt roads (washboarded really bad), I only had it skip once, but I hit my head on the roof when I hit the bump. The one complaint I have is you cannot see the filename of an mp3 and the time at the same time. You can only view the title (stored in the id3 tag) and the time, so it is a pain if someone didn't properly tag the mp3's. I do not own an Ipod so I can't comment on the interface.

The display is really nice and is easy to see in the daylight, unless you have the sun reflecting off the clear plastic over it. Also the deck can dim automatically when the vehicle lights are on, so you don't get blinded by the deck at night. There are three different dimmer levels. The button colors on the stereo can be changed to 512 different colors, so you are almost guaranteed to match your dash lights. I also really enjoy the tilt face. In my old car the deck was sitting really low, so it was nice to tilt it up. There are three different tilt levels.

The main quirk with this deck is the Glide Touch. It is a brilliant idea, but while operating the vehicle it can be really difficult to skip songs. To search for a song while using mp3's you have to use the Glide Touch. With my previous deck you could use the volume knob, which was much easier (I miss that). Also occasionally the tilt on the deck will not stay locked in when pushing on the Glide so the deck will move back a bit.

Overall I can recommend this deck to people that are willing to read manuals, and enjoy tweaking for. You don't need to tweak for great sound, but it can take that great sound a bump it up a notch.