Dale Gribble

paul,
can you set custom POI's and proximity warnings for them?

RyanPerrella

Try the Alpine IDA-x100. Its brand new and not in Best Buy stores yet but in my opinion much nicer then the first gen unit the X001. Full color screen and full USB support. You can also get a "power pack" for these sometime this month that bumps the output to 45 RMS watts and reduces the need for an amplifier. Check out this link, although you can find them on Ebay for about $300 shipped.

http://www.crutchfield.com/App/Produ...0&i=500IDAX100

Dale Gribble

whats the diff between USB support and normal ipod connectivity?

that alpine looks less ricey...i'll look em up on ebizzle.

RyanPerrella

the USB allows for album artwork to show up on the unit as opposed to the K-422i cable which does pretty much everything but the video functions of the ipod or iphone.

kilrgt

Yup! over 6 million POI. This thing is great. A great feature on this unit is you can actually change the back ground picture as well.You can upload via a USB port.The better weather is just around the corner and the weekly meets should start up at the weather spot ,you can check it out while you there. This also allows the album artwork to show.

RyanPerrella

This probably wouldnt look so great in a 996. My car have very large 80's ***** so the large central **** of this unit seems to somewhat go with the rest of the look. You can also change the back lighting to red (amber would be nice) which looks better then the blue pictured.

I love that for $120 MSRP you can add this as of yet unreleased power pack to up the wattage which them makes the need for a 4 channel amp debatable. There is also the Imprint processor which works with this head unit that is also to this date unavailable (this month probably) which is a type of audio processor that makes corrections in the audio soundstage for individual interiors and speaker placement. I havent heard it in action but from what ive read with the previous generation it makes a pretty big improvement. Check it out on Alpine.com

If i were you and had the ability to mount a double DIN head unit (which i cannot) I would go for one of the Alpine touch screens. There is a NEW IVA-505 (I think its IVA, previous gen was 205) with a full 7" screen which will also accept the above mentioned power pack and imprint technology and full usb ipod integration. Thats the way i would go for your car.

Keep in mind all this stuff was showcased at CES and is supposed to be available in March. I have the IDA-x100 already in my car so it is available if you look hard for it, but the other stuff may not be out for another month. And Alpine is apparently notorious for falling behind on expected release dates. (So ive heard)

Tonger

The head units with USB capability can read the music directly off of a memory stick and can import background art to the head unit as well. This way you can just leave a memory stick with your mp3 files in the car permanently since they're inexpensive storage. The music and artwork pop up on the head unit so that the Ipod/memory stick can reside permanently out of sight in the glovebox or cubby.

The thing that you have to watch out for is that the access times can vary depending on how much music is on there. How you select the music is as important as the ipod vs usb/memory stick decision. FWIW I tried a version of the Alpine IDA-x100 and I thought that it took a long time to get to the artist/album/song that I wanted. It's my opinion the Alpine takes too much attention away from driving which is why I prefer the direct access double din touchscreen.

I would suggest that you demo the stuff pretty extensively with your ipod and usb memory stick and see what suits you before deciding on a unit.

Good luck,

Tonger

Dale Gribble

what kind of access times are we talking about? with an ipod you have to have these pre-made lists anyhow so once it loads the list it should be good no?
i have the 4th gen ipod i think so nothing fancy and i don't really want to move up from it.

hell, i was looking for a minidisk player at one point because i used 2 love MD's. they were tiny and durable, unlike CD's.

BruceP

That's how it works in our Mini. You can control the iPod from the steering wheel, but only in terms of choosing from among five playlists and skipping around within them.

For me, it was a question of wanting to control 100% of the iPod functions and the whole library from the head unit. I wanted to be able to search and choose music in the car just the way I do with the iPod, without having the iPod lying around in the cabin at the end of some umbilical cord.

The Alpine gives you that, and by 'access time' they mean the time it takes for the iPod to respond to signals from the head unit... with the Alpine, it's almost instant, as if you were controlling the iPod itself. With some other connectivity solutions like this, there's a lag.

The only negative thing I can say about the Alpine I have is that, if you have a huge library, it take some serious dial twiddling to scroll through even the artist list. Round and round and round...

Dale Gribble

according to iTunes..i have 8 days worth of music...i think that qualifies as a lot

Tonger

I agree - the access time is generally longer for MP3's off the thumbdrive than for the Ipod. I tried the Kenwood 7019 which had instantaneous Ipod access which was not restricted to a playlist so you could select each individual song. I have not tried it with a memory stick but I'd ideally rather park a $30 memory stick in the glovebox rather than an Ipod that costs 10x as much.

My experience with the Alpine controller was the same, lots of dial turning and display watching - which is why I like the touchscreen more b/c it just takes less time and attention.

Tonger

Dale Gribble

you can't just set it to play everytrhing on the drive? and then keep hitting next, next next, as you want to change songs?

also, if you make playlists, once you reach the end of the playlist, does it start the next list automatically?

Tonger

Like on the Ipod you can play by artist, album, or playlist as well as the entire contents of the hard drive. I just like to be able to cue up a particular artist/album when I want to. I don't know about it auto-starting the next playlist when the previous one runs out. I personally don't use playlists much because for me the songs tend to get stale.

My suggestion would be to take your Ipod and thumbdrive full of MP3's to the shop and demo some stuff. You'll get to actually lay hands on it and it'll be fun.

Tonger

Dale Gribble

that's what she said.

BruceP

To the first question, yes.

To the second question, no. The playlist repeats. There might be some kind of preference you can change to not make it do that, but this seems to be the default.

I agree with Tonger's comment on touch screen speed. I just didn't want to do that kind of surgery. The Alpine is really extraordinarily cheap for what it can do. And Kromer now has the software and equipment to to the MultEQ thing, which I'm having done shortly (involves microphoning the interior to create custom EQ settings for your particular car). All for a few hun. At a certain point, it got easier to ignore the difference in the look of the faceplate.