Finally: the HU of my dreams

[Ernie Ball]

Just found out about the Alpine iDA-X001.  I have long been looking for something like this.  I don't listen to CDs anymore, either at home or in the car.  Everything is MP3: a few networked hard drives at home connected to the wireless router.  The iPod for the car.  I don't want to play DVDs in the car or pay for a CD player unit I don't need.  What I do want is full iPod integration including cover art display.  And this unit does just that and apparently does it well.  I'm glad I waited.

[aaronjb]

That does look nice... very very nice.

Damn!

[philster_d]

Cool.

I have the blaupunt, los angles, that plays sd memory cards so I have a few of them at a gig each for selecting music to put in the car.

[markiii]

now if only they would do something like Kenwoods MASK faceplate

[Anonymous]

Wow - that could be just the ticket.
I mean if you have an IPOD or whatever you don't really need to use your CD's once you've burned them all to the MP3 player.

Surprised at the price as well - excellent!

Need to save some beans now though.

[MR-S]

Only thing is, if it's got no loading drive there's no real need (from a manufacturing pov) to make the front panel seperate and I don't fancy Captain Ropey looking in the window of my car and my sweet Alpine headunit smiling back at him.

As Markiii said, it could use a Kenwood d-mask type feature.

[DannyN]

Just a thought but isnt the 'New' Ipod supposed to be around the corner at some point this year ?

[MR-S]

Just a thought but isnt the 'New' Ipod supposed to be around the corner at some point this year ?

Indeed! Or the I-Phone for that matter.
When a headunit is built that can integrate with the I-Phone it will be an achievement - It'd be a much cheaper alternative to the Idrive system or Frodo Software..... hmmmm, interesting.

[Anonymous]

Indeed! Or the I-Phone for that matter.
When a headunit is built that can integrate with the I-Phone it will be an achievement - It'd be a much cheaper alternative to the Idrive system or Frodo Software..... hmmmm, interesting.

The Sony MEX-BT5000 HU works has a handsfree bluetooth kit & can integrate with audio streaming bluetooth phones e.g The 4GB W950i   s:wink: :wink: s:wink:

oh...its around £220, which isn't too pricey IMO

[Ernie Ball]

Well, I just ordered the Alpine from fleabay.  Will be attempting to install it myself (fingers crossed).  I'll give a report once it's in.

[Leeber]

I don't fancy Captain Ropey looking in the window of my car and my sweet Alpine headunit smiling back at him.

Especially as it won't be long before Captain Ropey realises that if he sees one of these beauties smiling back at him, there's almost certainly an iPod sitting in the glove-box as well. This doea look like an awesome peace of kit, but I would be worried about the security implications as well.

I hope it's everything you want it to be though Ernie B, I look forward to reading your report.

[Ernie Ball]

I don't fancy Captain Ropey looking in the window of my car and my sweet Alpine headunit smiling back at him.

Especially as it won't be long before Captain Ropey realises that if he sees one of these beauties smiling back at him, there's almost certainly an iPod sitting in the glove-box as well. This doea look like an awesome peace of kit, but I would be worried about the security implications as well.

Well, it's no worse than the current setup in that regard.  I've got an iPod power lead connected to the lighter socket and a cassette adapter permanently in the cassette slot.  Anyone who looked in the window would reasonably conclude that there's an iPod in the car.

Not that there ever is...

[olliex1]

I'm sure I keep reading on some websites that the fascia is detachable - is this the case or not? But also read it's not 100% compatible with the 2nd generation Nano (no artwork apparently...)

http://www.trustedreviews.com/multimedia/news/2007/03/13/Alpine-Makes-Uber-iPod-Head-Unit/p1

Really really (REALLY) want this HU too, so interested to know what your thoughts are on it Ernie

[Ernie Ball]

I'm sure I keep reading on some websites that the fascia is detachable - is this the case or not?

The fascia is detachable, but it leaves the screen in place.

[crankshaft]

Just got mine, have it powered up on the the bench, but unfortunately it does not recognize my Gen 3 Ipod using the USB interface, but.............. I have plugged a USB thumb in and it searched and found the music on it and immediately started playing it. Going to see whether it will also recognize a 60GB 2.5" external drive later.

There are 2 ipod interfaces, one uses the direct (old) ipod cable, and another which only works on the gen 5 ipods that uses the USB connection.

What's the difference ?, well the new USB interface is a 100% digital signal, wheras the old cable piped the music to the head unit in analogue format, i.e. from the earphone plug which is also avaiable at the dock connector.

The display looks great, can't wait to get it into the car and test it out.

Crankshaft.

ABOUT IPODS COMPATABLE WITH THIS UNIT
- The unit can be used with the fourth gen and above ipod, ipod photo, ipod mini or the first gen ipod nano only. however, future gen ipod compatibility cannot be guaranteed.
- Touch wheel or scroll wheel type ipods without the dock connector cannot be connected to the unit
- The unit can be used with the following ipods:

USB CONNECTION (DIGITAL AUDIO)
- 5TH GEN IPOD
- 1ST GEN IPOD NANO

OLDER DIRECT CONNECTION (ANALOGUE AUDIO)
- 4TH GEN IPOD
- 5TH GEN IPOD
- IPOD PHOTO
- IPOD MINI
- 1ST GEN IPOD NANO

*With ipod software versions of itunes earlier than 7.0.0.1 correct function and performance are not guaranteed.*

[Ernie Ball]

I've got a 4G iPod, so I figure I'll have to buy a 5G when I go to the US later this month.

I wonder if the HU will power a USB hard drive...  Somehow I doubt it.  But I guess I could buy this little number for about the price of a turbo kit.  s:shock: :shock: s:shock:

[crankshaft]

I just plugged in a 40GB Hard Drive, it was not recognized, but... it was not recognized ny vista either so I need to find out why - I have not used that drive for 6 months and it may very well be corrupted or matbe formatted for Linux.

It looks like that with a USB thumb, it does not recognize album art i.e. a folder.jpg file in the music folder !!

[Ernie Ball]

I just plugged in a 40GB Hard Drive, it was not recognized, but... it was not recognized ny vista either so I need to find out why - I have not used that drive for 6 months and it may very well be corrupted or matbe formatted for Linux.

It looks like that with a USB thumb, it does not recognize album art i.e. a folder.jpg file in the music folder !!

What if the album art is embedded in the file as a tag?

[crankshaft]

Ernie;
Just embedded the album art in the ID tag, but still did not show the album art, BUT that may be a configuration of the display, maybe it is configured to only showing the wallpaper by default, need to read the manual and see if it needs to be configured to display album art...

[Leeber]

Any news on this yet Ernie? I'm dying to hear what you think of it.

[Ernie Ball]

Well, I got the unit, which despite being listed as a "European Radio" on fleabay actually turned out not to have RDS (though it does have the European FM tuning increments).  So there was a week of haggling with the guy about how much, exactly, he was going to refund me for his false advertising.  Once that was settled, I took off for the US, which is where I am now.

So I haven't had time to install.

I did buy a new fifth-generation iPod since I got over here because I understand it works a lot better with this unit than the 4G I have now.  I also bought the special cable you need to hook up 4G iPods so that friends can hook their iPods up.  Since that 4G cable connects to a different input on the back of the HU, I wonder if it's possible to have two iPods hooked up at once...  s:? :? s:?   It'd be cool to have 140GB of tunage at my fingertips.

Anyway, will give a report after I install (after I'm back on 29 June).

[markiii]

looking forward to your review

[heathstimpson]

That H/U just won a group review in Auto Express  s:wink: :wink: s:wink:

[crankshaft]

Had mine about a month now, overall the ipod integration is good, but there are a few things that let it down...

1) If you leave the car overnight, it will select the ipod as the source even if you had the radio on when you left it. If you park it for a few hours this does not happen.

2) The screen is very bright, but the way they have designed it with a larger font means that you only see the first word and a half of the title, so scrolling through albums can be a challenge.

3) If you turn on scrolling, then the selected song title scrolls after about 5 seconds, which again is useless when you want to search through songs. Would have been better to use an additional line, or make the scroll instantaneous and fast when using the search feature.

4) The scroll knob feels very cheap, if they had used an aluminium one (or a aluminum covered plastic one) then it woould 'feel' better !

Very critical I know, but overall it's great for ipod control !

[Ernie Ball]

Just installed mine today (finally).  Overall, I'm quite pleased but I may have jumped the gun when I said that this was the head unit of my dreams.  I can easily see myself getting a new one in a couple of years once there's some competition in the sector.  

First, the good:

1) Sound: I'm currently running this unit with just the stock speakers and already I can tell you it sounds a million times better than the stock HU.  It's got this MX mode, which is basically some sort of DSP sound enhancer that does seem to counteract some effects of compression.  It has several settings.  I found that the top one was a bit overkill, but a little of this MX stuff sounds good.

2) Display: nice and bright and approximately the size of the 5G iPod display.

3) Speed: The interaction with the iPod is really quite quick.  There's no real delay when, for example, switching tracks.  I'm using it with a 5G iPod.  Older iPods are apparently slower.

4) Nice-looking retro flippy-style digital clock in one of the display modes.  Reminds me of my youth.   s:shock: :shock: s:shock:  

Basically, it does what it says on the tin: controls an iPod in the glove box and sounds good.

The middling:

5) Illumination: I absolutely hate blue LEDs in electronics and they seem to have taken over the car stereo world.  They look cheap.  Fortunately, you can change the background illumination from blue to red, which is closer to the orange illumination on the instruments (and a lot better than the green of my stock head unit!).  It would've been nice to have more choices for illumination.

6) The screen wallpaper: The unit comes with 3 pre-installed, two blue and one red.  On the Alpine site, you can download about 20 or so other ones.  All of them tend to be busier than I'd like and none of them are plain white.  Installing downloaded wallpaper is fairly straightforward: you connect a USB key to the USB connector and can upload your wallpaper. But, apparently, you can only install one additional wallpaper other than the stock 3.  You can only upload one and each new upload replaces the previous.  Also, the wallpaper is in some sort of proprietary .apn format, which is the only graphics format I've ever seen stump GraphicConverter (a great utility for the mac).  There's no reason for such wallpaper not to be in .jpg format.


The bad:

You would think that Alpine, having designed this unit around Apple's iPod, might have taken its cue from Apple's design prowess (especially since they apparently consulted with Apple).  You'd be wrong.  There are several things that would be easier to use if they'd just made them like the iPod, but for some reason they didn't.  A case in point:

7) The Font: As crankshaft mentioned, the font they used on this thing is way too big.  Worse, it only scrolls the song title.  I figure it'll show maybe 12-15 characters of artist and album, which means it cuts most of them off.    Also, the font colour cannot be changed: it's always white.  With any light-coloured background, you might as well be hunting polar bears in a snowstorm.  They should just use a similar font and size to that on the iPod itself

 s8) s8)  The do-everything spring-loaded central wheel and centre button: I don't object to having it spring loaded as it's easy enough to use and can be used with one finger, which wouldn't be the case if it spun all the way around.  But considering that the button in the middle is BY FAR the biggest interface element, it is idiotic that it doesn't perform more than one function the way the iPod centre button does.  All it does is bring up the search menu (more on that in a minute).  It does not serve to select anything, though: once you're in that search menu, the big centre button does nothing at all.  Instead, you've gotta hit the "enter" button, which is much smaller and to the left.  Why?!?

9) Search: Because of the big font and the way the screen real estate is apportioned, you can't see more than a few characters of each artist's (or album's or song's) name.


  The search function does have a mode where each blip of the centre wheel changes to the next letter of the alphabet, but the implementation is absolutely inane because even though it alphabetises names beginning with "The..." correctly, when it's in this "letter-by-letter" page mode it treats those entries as beginning with T.  So imagine you these are all the artists in your iPod beginning with C:

Charles, Ray
Cheap Trick
The Clash
Collins, Albert
Cornershop
The Cure

If you're using "letter page" mode, you would expect it to give you the start of the Cs and then the start of the Ds, etc.  Instead, in this example it will give you the start of the Cs at Charles, Ray and then page to "The Clash" and then to "Collins, Albert" and then to "The Cure."  This basically makes the function totally useless.  You could, of course, change all artists like "The Cure" to "Cure, The."  But iTunes and the iPod can handle such artists, why can't the Alpine HU?

10) Album art view: the unit does display album art, either in a thumbnail (next to all the giant text) or in a bigger picture with just the song title below it.  But even in this latter view, the picture doesn't fill the screen.  There ought to be a possibility of using the album cover as wallpaper for the text.

There are other things, I'm sure.  Basically, I'm happy enough with the unit but disappointed that they are so lame on the interface design aspects.  Apple has spoiled us in that regard and it's a pity Alpine felt compelled to reinvent the (scroll) wheel.