thrustinj's Full Review: Alpine CDA-9856 Car CD/ MP3 Player
After a recent total on my last car, I was looking for a fresh start with my new 2000 Honda Acccord. Having both an XM unit and an iPod, I wanted to get rid of the tape adapter that I was sharing between both devices.
Crutchfield told me that the best option would be the Alpine 9856, having an Aux input (used for cd changers) as well as a separate iPod port. Both required special cables costing about $45 total.
Installation was pretty painless. Having been used to cutting wires and figuring out speaker wires in the past, Crutchfield gave me the mounting brackets and Honda wiring harness for free. I just wished I had had more wirenuts on hand to make the job even easier.
Once installed and figuring out where I wanted the iPod cable and XM RCA adapter cable would go, the hardest part was figuring out how to work the stereo itself. Navigating the menus to "turn on" the auxillary port was very clumsy.
To set up the unit, you use a "Menu" button on the right of the volume knob (in the cluster of main buttons) to get to the menu items and "Mode" button under the volume dial as the select button. That's the clumsy part. The buttons aren't logical and they aren't right next to each other. The volume knob is used to change the setting for that item. Then you press the "Mode" button again to exit that setting then use the volume knob to scroll to the next setting you want to change.
Lots of button presses.
Navigation on the iPod through the Alpine is also clumsy, but I don't really see another solution. There is a button to change the way you sort and play music. You can play music by 1) playlist, 2) artist, 3) album or 4) song. Then you can scroll the list with the volume button and press play to play the selection, beit artist or song or playlist. I have over 1800 songs on my iPod and scrolling through artists or songs takes forever. It doesn't matter how fast you spin the volume knob, this scrolling is very slow. It's actually better to spin the knob slowly so that it recognizes each position of the knob and scrolls cleanly.
Of course, the headunit made a huge difference over the factory unit in terms of sound quality and radio clarity.
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