The unit works better than what some of the reviews indicate
Written: Dec 16 '01 (Updated Dec 17 '01)
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Pros: Plays MP3 discs, affordable
Cons: detachable face not easy to put on, random play does not span folders
The Bottom Line: Buy it if it's under $200. The unit is fairly rugged and does pretty well what it claims to do.
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| pykim's Full Review: Aiwa CDC-MP3 Car CD Player |
I saw this unit go on sale at Fry's some time ago at $200 and I'm finally writing a review about if after some use. I have been eager to buy this unit so that I can carry a few discs in my car and still have access to many many songs. I wasn't looking much for quality of the sound since I don't have a set of amps and good speakers in my car.
Prior to buying the unit, I came to this site to look for user reviews. I noticed a number of reviewers stating that the unit skips and also the sound quality sucks, etc. The reviews made me a little nervous, but I decided to go for it anyway.
Skipping: My personal experience is that the skipping happens, but only when I hit some fairly major bumps. Sure it would have been nice if Aiwa included a buffer in this unit, but it's good enough for me. My car is stiffly sprung (VW GTI), but the unit rarely skips. My guess that some of the other reviewers experienced skipping problems because the unit wasn't properly mounted to the slot. It's common for the installers to miss the rear mounting, and if the front mount is loosely done, you'll get a unit that pivots at the front making it very susceptible for skipping.
Sound quality: It's sufficient for most users in a car environment. I used to be very picky about the THD, etc., but once you get on the road, difference between systems disappear because of the road noise. I wonder how many of the reviewers are listening to the system with the engine off? Since you spend most of your time listening to the audio system while in transit, shouldn't the listening tests/reviews be done while the car is moving?
Pause between the songs/general wait time for reading mp3 discs: Someone complained that the wait for the player to read discs being several minutes, etc. I have several discs with about 150 songs on them and the waiting time is about 30 seconds or less, and if you leave the disc in the unit the wait is pretty much nothing. I guess it's possible that those reviewers have a disc with 500 small songs on them or a very deep directory structure, making the read speed very long. Another possibility is that the "constant-on" wire is somehow tied to the ignition switch, making the unit forget everything when the ignition key is taken out. My view of this is that for a typical user, recording typically at 128bps stream will experience fairly small wait time. As for the pause between the songs, it's such a small point that I'm surprised to see somebody actually complain about this. 99% of the songs are arranged this way on a typical CD. There are very few occasions where the songs are continuous (live disc). I think this is fine, and I'm not even sure if any other players are capable of continuous play between separate mp3 files..
Random play lacks spanning across folders (or "discs"): I think this is a legitimate complaint. It would have been an extremely small firmware enhancement to add this in the repeat feature. Being able to random play across the entire mp3 disc would have been a compelling reason for a car mp3 player. But the engineers at Aiwa missed this "essential" feature.
Awkward controls: One thing that bothers me is that in order for me to go between "FM1" and MP3 disc, I am required to press "function" button 7 times. This is very annoying. I think the Aiwa engineers wanted to go for a simpler interface with smaller number of buttons but they pruned the wrong set of buttons on this one. All in all, the buttons are not done in the most efficient manner.
Removable faceplate alignment: I've owned several detachable face units in my life. It's been a couple of months, and I still occasionally miss the alignment. Since I've never really had any problems with other units, I have to conclude that the faceplate alignment was poorly designed on this unit.
MP3 in car: This is a comment on the reason for having an mp3 capability in the car. In the future, the mp3 capability will become the standard in all car head units IMHO. mp3 format is perfect for the car because the car environment is noisy anyway and absolute fidelity is not important. You also don't want to carry so many discs in the car. In fact, I believe the mp3 players will kill the changer concept in the car in the end. Instead of carrying 4 book-on-audio discs, I can now rip the audio into mp3 files which let me carry several books on a single disc. I also rip my favorite programs from internet news archives, and put them on the disc so I can listen to them at my leisure. These are some of the compelling reasons for having a mp3 capability in the car.
Summary: I like the unit. I think it's worth about $150 for me. $50 premium for being the second guy on the block to own an mp3 player in his car is not such a big price to pay.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 200.00
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Epinions.com ID:
pykim
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Member: Peter Kim
Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
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