shielsy's Full Review: Alpine CDA-9811 Car CD/ MP3 Player
i live in England and managed to pick up one of these head-units at an extremily good price in london. upon first inspection of the unit on the train ride back home i was stunned at by the looks and quality of the fascia, in fact i just couldnt keep going back for another look in the box.
once i got home i prepared my 95' civic for its new music source. once i got my old, crappy honda tape player out of the way, i got the main body of the alpine unit out. i thought, ooooo look at that fan in the back of the unit, must be because of the unusually high spec amplifier the unit has. good news i thought, ill jus get hold of the ISO harness in my honda an ill be well away. no. i wasn't well away. i was abit shocked to find out that the wiring wasn't to be that simple so out came the tool kit.
it turned out that aswell as connecting the usual ISO plug to the back of the head-unit, i also had to give it a permanent feed to the battery on a separate yellow wire. so there i was with the bonnet open feeding a wire through an amazingly tight grommet in the blistering heat...great. after i had fed this wire through the bulkhead into the drivers footwell and up into the dash i thought it was to be plain sailing from here on in, but no, yet another separate wire to earth the unit was needed. i always thought that there was an earth wire on the ISO, but what the hell, i managed to find a nice bare metal earthing spot on a strengthening beam that went across the dash.
so i switch the ingnition on and power up the unit in anticipation. success, the unit came on and i whacked in a cd behind the motorised facsia. considering i still had the OE speakers in, i was thoroughly pleased with the performence of the unit. i played with various features such as time correction and the treble/bass freqency. i also stumbbled across a crossover function which i think will come in very handy later in my growing systems life.
now im happy that units operation is sound, i continue onto my final step of securing the unit into the dash. in went the cage and i held the unit upto the dash and gave it a push in. it wasnt having it, but neather does any unit on the first few attempts, which i know from past experience. i continued to struggle with my very stubburn attena wire and various fuse boxes that came out the back of the unit. i tryed my best for a whole hour trying to get the unit to sit in place, but because of this mini fuse box that was on the new permanent feed, i found it impossible to find the space in the back of my dash to fit all these wires.
in the end i lost my temper with the operation and decided to give it a rest, as i would probably end up breaking something if i continued. i have planned to buy some audiobahn components with next months pay. i feel have the sufficent skill and tools to fit both the mid and tweeter nicely. i will be taking the car, with the head-unit not in properly, to my nearest ICE fitter to fit the components and also finish the job on the head-unit. i feel it was neccassery for me to hand the job over to a professional because even if i did manage to jam all the wires in, i would be worried about the fan not having enough room, causing the unit to overheat. hay, it must be there for a reason.
i am very happy with the actual unit, however, and am definately glad i bought it. i would recommend it as an "above mid-range" head-unit for "entry level" money.
5 STARS TO ALPINE ON THIS FEATURE-LADEN UNIT BUT THEY COULD HAVE MADE THE INSTALLATION A LITTLE SIMPLER. LEAVE IT TO THE PROFESSIONALS KIDS, I DID.
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