Rockford Fosgate RFX-9000 Car CD / MP3 Player
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Similar in In Dash Receivers
- MP3 / WMA Playback: MP3 Playback
- Player Type: CD
- Controlled Devices: CD Changer
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Best MP3 player in it's category
Pros
Sound quality, Joliet support, Direct track access by # or name
Cons
no ID3 support
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
Do yourself a favour and treat yourself to a nicely packaged slice of high-tech heaven.
Much like nathan_wilson, I studied all of the head units with MP3 support. After looking at Pioneer, Kenwood, Sony, Panasonic, etc... this unit was the best bang for the buck. Main points I considered were looks, sound quality, useful features for MP3 support, all tempered by cost.
The display is attractive, doesn't have display overload showing animations of swimming dolphins, just a nice multicolored level display which runs off the faceplate at an angle. Nice and simple, Clear and bright, a bit hard to see in direct sunlight but not a real concern.
Sound quality is fantastic. It's sounds crisp using a kenwood amp and stock 10 year old pioneer 4" speakers in my Lexus! Rockford Fanatic X speakers to follow... :) Radio reception is a bit poorer than my alpine, but still good. In any case, each MP3 cd can hold hours of songs so who cares?!
I initially purchased the RFX9300 unit, but was shocked to find this higher end unit had poorer MP3 support. It doesn't support Joliet or Audible FF/RW, so I exchanged the units. The audible ff/rw is VERY nice to have. Direct track access is great if you can remember a number, which will happen with your favourite songs. Quick point here, if you hit the direct access button twice, it goes into a text input mode. Scroll letters with the dial and enter a substring to search. It will return a result set which you can navigate through which I found will occupy your passenger's time like you wouldn't believe. I wouldn't suggest too much navigation while trying to drive though.
Track delay... EXTEMELY important. I'm a product of modern society, so I need results NOW. Pioneer decks take a FULL 2 seconds to skip between tracks, count out one-mississippi, two-missisippi. Annoying if you're trying to navigate the CD. The RFX9000 scans the whole disk upon inserting, the book says 15-30 seconds, I found it was about 10 seconds for a CD with 150 songs on it (mostly 128kb, 700mb disk). After that, almost no delay.
It should be noted that the delay on some MP3 players are from reading the ID3 tag, which this deck does not support. I use a filename mp3 cleaner which will rename my MP3's according to ID3. When it comes down to it, I don't care about album, year, genre, etc. in the car. I want artist name and track name. If you get this deck, I suggest making a folder for each artist and then name each song inside of the folder "trackname - artist". The unit scrolls the text, you want to see that songname first as you'll probably know what folder you're in.
Other points:
- not a motorized faceplate. I like this, less moving parts, less danger of failure.
- has two buttons, +/- 10 tracks at once. Nice for getting to the bottom of the track list quick.
The display is attractive, doesn't have display overload showing animations of swimming dolphins, just a nice multicolored level display which runs off the faceplate at an angle. Nice and simple, Clear and bright, a bit hard to see in direct sunlight but not a real concern.
Sound quality is fantastic. It's sounds crisp using a kenwood amp and stock 10 year old pioneer 4" speakers in my Lexus! Rockford Fanatic X speakers to follow... :) Radio reception is a bit poorer than my alpine, but still good. In any case, each MP3 cd can hold hours of songs so who cares?!
I initially purchased the RFX9300 unit, but was shocked to find this higher end unit had poorer MP3 support. It doesn't support Joliet or Audible FF/RW, so I exchanged the units. The audible ff/rw is VERY nice to have. Direct track access is great if you can remember a number, which will happen with your favourite songs. Quick point here, if you hit the direct access button twice, it goes into a text input mode. Scroll letters with the dial and enter a substring to search. It will return a result set which you can navigate through which I found will occupy your passenger's time like you wouldn't believe. I wouldn't suggest too much navigation while trying to drive though.
Track delay... EXTEMELY important. I'm a product of modern society, so I need results NOW. Pioneer decks take a FULL 2 seconds to skip between tracks, count out one-mississippi, two-missisippi. Annoying if you're trying to navigate the CD. The RFX9000 scans the whole disk upon inserting, the book says 15-30 seconds, I found it was about 10 seconds for a CD with 150 songs on it (mostly 128kb, 700mb disk). After that, almost no delay.
It should be noted that the delay on some MP3 players are from reading the ID3 tag, which this deck does not support. I use a filename mp3 cleaner which will rename my MP3's according to ID3. When it comes down to it, I don't care about album, year, genre, etc. in the car. I want artist name and track name. If you get this deck, I suggest making a folder for each artist and then name each song inside of the folder "trackname - artist". The unit scrolls the text, you want to see that songname first as you'll probably know what folder you're in.
Other points:
- not a motorized faceplate. I like this, less moving parts, less danger of failure.
- has two buttons, +/- 10 tracks at once. Nice for getting to the bottom of the track list quick.
