rje_nc29

Hello all - this is my first post so I thought I'd talk about my new stereo which I fitted this morning: a Dension DH100ix with a DMP3C hard disk.

Firstly, here's my car (1993 coupe, Tiptronic)...



She's pretty tidy but she came with one of the oldest Panasonic stereos I've ever seen with a screen so faded it was impossible to read. After a bit of research, I thought it would be cool to try to fit a Dension DH100ix radio / MP3 player which has its own internal hard drive. They're hard to get hold of this side of the pond but might be more common in the States?

Anyhow, I ripped out the Panasonic (well, took an hour as I had to make some prongs to release it) and sadly found an absolute mess of wires / bullet connectors no hint of any ISO connectors...



So, I bought some 'power' and 'speaker' ISO connectors off ebay, and a few in line crimp on heat shrink connectors later, I ended up with this...



The wiring was not too difficult to figure out & some previous posts on this forum were very helpful for identifying the antenna wire and the dreaded alarm wire.

So the idea with the DH100ix head unit is that you either connect it to an external hard drive which you mount like a CD changer (this is the DMP3A) OR you can get a little 'caddy' which accepts standard 2.5inch notebook hard drives which slots into the head unit itself kind of like a cassette. This is the grey box in the (out of fucus) photo below:



The caddy has a USB port so you can just hook it up to your PC and copy across MP3 files (in any folder structure). I use iTunes so all my files were in MP4A format so I used dBpowerAmp software to convert to MP3 format and preserve the folder structure. And it sounds great:



If anyone's been thinking of fitting one of these and has any questions just give me a shout - the Dension website isn't great and the manual is a little content free so it can be hard to figure out how these things work.

Cheers

(PS - sorry for photo quality)

adamsbr

Welcome, great first post.....thanks (car looks sweet).

Colin 90 C2

That is really a nice head unit. I have never seen one like it over here in the States.
Do you mind me asking how much you paid for such a unit?

Thanks,
Colin

rje_nc29

Sure, it was £180 for the head unit (Dh100ix) & caddy (DMP3C) and I picked up a 40GB hard drive for about £35 I think - all off ebay.

Cheers, Rob

C4-JohnO

Nice rig Rob, cars nice too.

I looked at that unit but managed to get a phone link to my head unit for the iPod (currently the link doesnt work, in fact it never did but I used a FM transmiter!)

Anyway whats the sound like, and do you use iTunes on PC or Mac? I got a feeling the link wasn't availble for Mac at the time so I got the pod!

40 gig would carry about 16 days of constant music at CD quality on the ipod, is it the same on that unit?

C4-JohnO

Where did you get the unit from Rob, nice job on the wiring too.

C4-JohnO

Any chance you could post apic of the hard disc so I can see the connections? I already have spare drives at work so would just need the head unit if they fit

John Boggiano

That's an interesting piece of kit. The head unit is quite a good match for the interior, too.

McJohn

Rob,

I've researched that unit too, and would really like one, but failed to find anyone selling them in the UK. (You are in the UK aren't you?) Where did you get it from, cos I want one too!

John H (a man with an iPod and a PC full of toons!)

C4-JohnO

There is one, well ad says 10 available, on ebay now for buy now £179

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...sPageName=WDVW

What did you find out John N, whats the quality like?

I've got an amp as well, do you think the wire up job would be easy, thepics look like Rob knows his stuff.

Its got radio as well. Humm I've spent a lot this month but could be tempted for this bit of kit

The ad says 3 months manufacturers warranty, its abit short!

McJohn

I found that eBay reference too, but it seems to be the only place it is available, as in it is not commercially available anywhere. Maplin site shows it, but it is discontinued. Can only assume the ebay seller is selling old stock.

Pity, as this is a great idea, so how come you can only buy grey import versions?

JH

Marc Shaw

Looks like a sweet unit but I guess playing CD's is not possible. Does it comes with the round aux input cable to plug in a CD player or iPod?

Thanks.....Marc

C4-JohnO

Sorry Marc why would you need a CD input?

With a 40gig HD you will be carring 400+full albums at CD quality and you can use 100gig! Thats a thousand +

On my 40gig iPod Ive got 5,217 songs, its only 2/3rds full. Thats 15 days of continued playing. If you sat in the car that long you would have a very sore backside!!!

I'm guessing when full it will be 20days and the 100gig estimated 50days continued play.

rje_nc29

Hi guys

Yep, I got the head unit and caddy from the chap on eBay (UK) who’s got a Buy It Now of £179. He delivered next day via Initial City Link, fully boxed and sealed & I have no complaints at all about his service.

I think you can find them in the UK – they certainly have some UK dealers – and this would definitely be a less risky route if you’re worried about it going wrong. However, I suspect you would have to pay to have it fitted ‘professionally’ to validate the warranty (whether 3 month or 12) - which is a bit ironic, having seen some of the ‘professional’ wiring on my own car - and I guess there’d be a mark-up on the kit too.

I use iTunes on a PC. As I mentioned, the Dension will only read MP3 format and all of my files were Apple’s proprietary format (M4A) so I used dbPowerAMP to convert them (painless but took a while). It preserves all of the ID3 tags but I’m not sure if there’s some loss in quality. However, the head unit reads config files from the hard drive so potentially there’s a Codec out there somewhere which will avoid this hassle.

Personally, I’ve always struggled to hear significant difference in quality between CD and MP3 (I realise I might be in a minority here!), particularly in car, and the sound from the Dension is excellent. By the way, the radio is very good too. There’s nothing special about the equalizer though – you can adjust bass and treble gain in 1db increments but that’s it so you might find this limiting if you like to tweak.

Hooking up an amp – I guess it depends on your install but there are definitely 4 standards RCA lineouts if that helps.

There’s a standard 8 pin DIN though and I believe hooking up a CD changer is possible if you really wanted.

As far as capacity limits, I’m not sure if the DMP3C is limited but you can definitely fit 80gig. I went for 40 – I doubt I will ever get near filling it up. It takes any standard 2.5inch drive (I used a Hitachi IC25N040ATCS05-0).

You could use the DMP3A unit instead, which is an external unit about the size of a CD changer which you connect via the 8 pin DIN. This takes 3.5inch drives and capacity is not limited (the manual suggests 300gig is entirely feasible). In fact, I believe you could use both (DMP3A and DMP3C) at the same time if you want!

One other feature which wasn’t that clear to me before I bought it – you can store any old files on the hard drive too and just use the drive to transport files from A to B. This is useful for me as I can now take jpeg photo collections down to my Dad’s (just pop out the drive and hook it up via USB).

Cheers

Rob

Marc Shaw

C4-JohnO - I have a 40 G iPod with about 5400 songs on all ripped at 192 kbps (just over half-full). I want to hook up a CD player as sometimes I buy a CD and would want to listen to it without having to rip it first.

Marc