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The face is shiny. I have an original Blaupunkt Reno from a previous car, but the sound quality is not that great. I just installed the Pioneer last weekend and it sounds great. It has an SD card which I have loaded with AAC 256k files. I have a buzzy right front speaker and Morel's are on the way from Crutchfield. The previous owner had four MB Quarts in the back and the speakers had been recently rewired. No amp for now.
After much internal debate, I decided to go with a vintage Alpine CD. It will look like the 928 that I would have taken delivery of in 1985 (after a trip to Samm Sound in Caldwell, NJ!). I just can't get used to the new radios.
I dunno...they say the 7909J was the greatest SQ CD player ever made. You know a unit is well made when the bottom and back are made of copper...
Impressive amount of copper!! What year were those made? I am thinking it looks like it is late 80s or very early 90s? I had an Alpine cassette deck with the same white/green buttons in my 528e years ago. It's not my style, but the deck was good.
Today....Straight out of the box, with no sound adjustments yet, this Alpine CDE-HD148BT stunned me as soon as it started playing the Steely Dan Greatest Hits CD. I bought it partially because it has a 9-band EQ....which I haven't touched yet. I had just reinstalled the restored and DeoxIt-ed CE panel, and just wanted to make the harness connections and power it up and make sure it was working. I was not expecting such a great improvement in sound quality (compared to the Sony it replaced) straight out of the box. Very happy.
It seems a perfect match for the now-oldschool MB Quart PSD 316 component 3-way speaker system with external crossovers (not my choice, but they were in the car when I bought it). Tweeter and mid in the doors, and the woofers in the rear stock holes next to the rear seats. The Kenwood KAC-X501F amp sounds great...and this is likely due to a better signal from the Alpine.
I dunno...they say the 7909J was the greatest SQ CD player ever made. You know a unit is well made when the bottom and back are made of copper...
Best ever made changed about once a year for the first 10 years, now days I doubt anything sounds much better than anything else. If it does seem to have fantastic SQ compared to other units, chances are extremely high its EQ and not SQ.
OTOH I think I still have my Alpine first gens, thinking they were 7902 or 7802, no idea why no 01.
Now days all we use is the AUX, bluetooth kind of sucks, at least the version our stuff supports compared to the hardwired analog connection..
Best ever made changed about once a year for the first 10 years, now days I doubt anything sounds much better than anything else. If it does seem to have fantastic SQ compared to other units, chances are extremely high its EQ and not SQ.
OTOH I think I still have my Alpine first gens, thinking they were 7902 or 7802, no idea why no 01.
Now days all we use is the AUX, bluetooth kind of sucks, at least the version our stuff supports compared to the hardwired analog connection..
Lots of truth there. This "new" 7909 has a Bluetooth/aux in/iPhone control box connected through the cd changer, and also allies for hands free phone calls. Kind of old meets new.
That said, I tested the unit with a "boom box" aux input and even through that, the level of detail and smoothness was impressive. It took full advantage of the Mobile Fidelity gold disc I fed as a source, which car CD players usually don't gain any improvement from. It is a thoroughly modded 7909J, to be fair...caps are all upgraded considerably from stock.
For me, it's more about setting up my 928S as the dream car I would have had in 1985. (Although I think this unit is a 1988-ish unit?). SQ is fun, but it's also less money than the replacement cassette players. I'm sure the modern Alpines and Pioneers more than hold their own from a sound standpoint.
From a SQ perspective (really an EQ thing as pojnted out above) I really like the auto-setup available in good HU now. The Pioneer DEH-80PRS did an amazingly good job without any tweaking at all. I have had some issues with my overall setup that are mostly fixed (but still need some work...I don't think I've matched my amp inputs to HU outputs properly yet) and then I need to run it again. That, and the connectivity options available now, are why I could never use a vintage radio out of the box. If the custom add-on connectivity actually works well, then maybe.
What I REALLY want is a double-DIN touch-screen high-SQ head unit that fits, depth-wise (ditch the amp IMO but they probably won't) and has Android Auto. That will of course require one of the reworked center consoles but would be worth it, IMO. For now, the Pioneer will suffice, as it sounds good, although it doesn't match (the customizable colors make it a decent fit at night) and has a UI that is annoying as *&^$.
Today....Straight out of the box, with no sound adjustments yet, this Alpine CDE-HD148BT stunned me as soon as it started playing the Steely Dan Greatest Hits CD. I bought it partially because it has a 9-band EQ....which I haven't touched yet. I had just reinstalled the restored and DeoxIt-ed CE panel, and just wanted to make the harness connections and power it up and make sure it was working. I was not expecting such a great improvement in sound quality (compared to the Sony it replaced) straight out of the box. Very happy.
It seems a perfect match for the now-oldschool MB Quart PSD 316 component 3-way speaker system with external crossovers (not my choice, but they were in the car when I bought it). Tweeter and mid in the doors, and the woofers in the rear stock holes next to the rear seats. The Kenwood KAC-X501F amp sounds great...and this is likely due to a better signal from the Alpine.
Yep, I have the same one - I may have recommended it in a previous posting in this thread or possibly a different one.
The Bluetooth functionality adds real value - the iHeart Radio Auto app gets me all kinds of news and music from around the world.
Randy - I just got lucky I guess...I missed your recommendation of this Alpine HU. I got a little nervous today when I found no explanation of how to use the 9-band EQ in the owners manual. The physical sound output controls on the HU are limited to Subwoofer, Bass, and Treble. I soon realized the EQ is accessed through the Alpine TuneIt app, with the phone connected to the HU via the USB cable. The app works well for the task of customizing the sound. Creating a free account allows one to save multiple tuning profiles for certain types of music, or in my case I want to try several while driving the car (but can't tune it while driving). The initial sound improvement plus an even greater improvement after fiddling with the TuneIt app have been transformative. I'm really impressed by how much better this HU has made the entire system. It always seemed like this gear SHOULD sound great - but it didn't. The HU was the weak link.
My tuning isn't finished. I'm building a 10-inch bass enclosure for one of the JL subwoofers that came with the car (formerly, the rear seats were removed...for 20 years...so custom cabinets holding two of these JLs could fit). I will bridge the rear channel of the KAC-X501F for plenty of power to run the single 10 in. JL in a relatively compact sealed enclosure.
Tru dat...the Blaupunkts were pretty horrible sounding, even in the 80's! Porsche and BMW put Alpine on the map back then with their crappy factory offerings.
If you have not upgrading your factory amp, the little Fosgate PBR300X4 sounds pretty amazing, and connects right up to the factory wires in the factory space. It actually makes the factory front speakers sound OK.
10-31-2016, 09:31 PM
