Alpine CDE-7872 Car CD Player

I don't know why Alpine manufactures this radio, which is almost identical to yet more expensive than the 7870, yet is not much cheaper than the 7874, which is significantly better. Perhaps Alpine had some quota to meet on the number of models they sell?

Mechanics
The Alpine 7872 faceplate is detachable yet, unlike many other car CD players, you don't have to hinge the faceplate down in order to insert and remove CD's.

There is no remote control, something I can't see a use for anyway.

Installation
This is a standard sized DIN player so it easily mounted in standard fittings.

Manual
The manual is common to the 7870, 7872 and 7874 radios, an indication of the similarity of these radios. The manual is adequate, but not great.

Display
The display uses green LED's with a single red power LED.

The display leaves much to be desired. In bright sunlight it's almost impossible to read, with or without sunglasses. At night, in contrast, the display is very bright.

You can toggle between three different display modes, "off" displays basic station or track and time info. Mode 1 adds volume and peak music level readouts. Mode 2 adds Bass Engine readouts to mode 1.

Buttons
The white lettering on the green buttons is easy to read during the day, but very difficult to read at night despite their bright illumination. Fortunately, the buttons are fairly intuitively arranged so you'll quickly learn to find the one you want simply on the basis of its location.

Clock
There is a clock which remains lit with the ignition on even when the radio is turned off.

Amplifier
The 7872 offers all the standard features you would expect to find in a car FM/AM/CD player. There are the usual volume, bass, treble, balance and fade controls and these are all fairly easy to operate. It is nevertheless very difficult to turn the player off.

Alpine advertises the 7872 as having 50W per (4) channel power, but that's peak power. The RMS (the root mean square) power output is 20W per channel. This is more than adequate unless you're the kind of guy who likes to pull up at stop lights and make all the cars in the immediate vicinity bounce up and down in sympathy with your bass.

At low volume levels your ear selectively loses the low and high frequencies so there's a "loudness" switch to boost the bass and treble. This also helps compensate for poor quality loudspeakers, like the ones the car manufacturers install.

The Bass Engine, which replaces regular bass and treble controls, allows you to emphasize or attenuate the bass starting at frequencies around 60, 80, 100 or 200 Hz and change the slew rate (dB vs. frequency) of the emphasis onset in four steps from shallow to steep. The "bass" engine also covers the treble, allowing you to emphasize or attenuate the treble in steps centered around frequencies of 10, 12.5, 15 or 17.5 kHz.

A mute switch decreases the volume by 10 dB or so.

In the back of the player there are two pairs of RCA (left and right) preamplifier outputs for amplifiers together with control facilities.

AM/FM radio
There are 12 FM (arranged in two groups of 6) and 6 AM presets for FM1, FM2 and AM. Switching between manual and automatic tuning (with the additional option of choosing between strong or strong and weak, i.e., DX, signals) isn't easy so you will want to use the presets together with automatic tuning for strong stations. The six frequency preset buttons are conveniently arranged along the bottom of the player, but tersely displayed as F1, F2, etc.

There is no facility to listen to satellite radio.

CD Player
The CD player has pause, fast forward and reverse, skip forward and backward, random play and preview (plays the first ten seconds of each track) modes. Along with commercial CD's, it will also play CD-R and CD-RW audio disks, but not MP3 discs.

The CD player remembers to pick up where it left off after you stop the car, but it must be turned on in order to insert or remove a CD.

The CD player has good immunity to skipping.

Sound quality
The sound quality is good.

Warranty
1 year parts and labor.

Summary of the most annoying quirks
1) The display is the weakest aspect of this player.
2) It's difficult to turn the player off.
3) CD's can neither be inserted nor removed when the player is turned off.
4) There's no stereo/mono switch for FM reception.
5) MP3 capability should be included at this price point.

Value for money
I don't know why anyone would buy this radio. The only differences between it and the Alpine 7870 are an additional stereo pair of RCA outputs (so you can hook it up to two, instead of just one, external amplifier) and 22W vs. 20W RMS power. This corresponds to a 0.4dB increase in volume, which no one could possibly detect.

Either save a few dollars and buy the Alpine 7870 or spend a few dollars more and buy the significantly better Alpine 7874.

I bought two Alpine 7874 radios, one for each of my cars.