New Alpine Headunit

[Deleted User]

jeez....

exalted512

was that a dell?
-Cody

Jack from Indo

There are some very well written comments on WHY a CD or MP3 does not have all the information the musician played. Most of these things I already know, and never argued the point.

BUT

If we are to get preoccupied with that fact, why start and stop with the medium it is recorded on, for christs sake? Begin with the room the music was recorded in, and how close it was to acoustically flat. Then start attacking the microphones. No such thing as a "lossless" microphone, LOL!

Then move on to the cables connecting said microphone to the control room, the board, every pc of equipment being used to record be it digital OR analog.
Every single step along the way, you are going to lose something, no matter what.

The true to their posturing audiophile really has only one choice: Stop even worrying about "lossless" issues, and listen only to live music. And then, fuss over exactly where you are going to sit in the audience.

You will also want to make sure you have a say so in where the musicians are placing their amps, the acoustics of the room, and throw in a few instructions to the sound man doing the mixing, if they have one.

exalted512

Actually, stadiums and the such that most concerts are held in are terrible for SQ. I guess the only real choice is a private concert in an acoustically dead room with egg crate nailed to all the walls
-Cody

MacLeod

Oh well. It sounds good to me. Ill just continue to live in ignorant bliss and tune my system with a burned copy of an MP4 and hope for the best.

Jack from Indo

While them fanatics are at it, they should get a hearing test! Only costs about $75. Every single human ear has it's own signature "peaks and valley's" where certain frequencies are heard better or worse than others. When they get such a test, they will get a nice print out that shows you exactly how they measure up.

They could then get a custom hearing aid made to compensate for such, that would give them a flat frequency response! :cool:

bknauss

You have to be kidding me if you think I'm going to read that entire post. Don't they teach you guys how to get to the point in English class???

cam5860

One thing I play with alot with my ipod in the truck is the EQ. It can make quite a difference on different types of music. I like to use vocal booster quite a bit on some stuff and spoken word also. You have to play with it to see what sounds best to you. Just thought I would see if anyone else use's the ipod EQ in there vehicle.

-justin-

I"m getting this head unit this week (on the UPS truck as I type). I NEVER use CDs anymore, only my iPod (with my crappy Alpine 04 model that is SUPER slow to scroll through songs), and XM Radio.

I'm looking forward to blazing fast song search and the nice LCD screen. I watched a video demo on Alpine's site and it's exactly what I'm looking for.

I'll let ya know later this week if it's good or not.

~J

black magic

I just read about that head unit a few days ago on sound domain. If it had a CD/MP3 player, I'd definitely look into replacing my panasonic hu. Although I've been using my Ipod instead of CD's for a long time now, I'd still feel better if it had a cd player. I also didn't know that Clarion and Pioneer (I think) had Navigation systems where you could use like 10gb of the hdd to store MP3's. I think thats pretty neat.

Jack from Indo

Why doesn't somebody make a HU with a removable 200gb or so HDD, that you could just pull out and plug into your computers USB and load it up with Mp3, WAV, what ever you wanted?

Many of my friends now have that many MP3 files. This seems to be a no-brainer product that nobody has thought of.

-justin-

What's cool about this headunit is you can use ANY removable drive -- the dealer I bought it from said he plugged a USB drive into it and it read the songs.

The problem with a removable 200gb drive is you could only use it for the car. At least with an iPod (or other mp3 player) you can use it anywhere without being hooked up to a computer.

~J

black magic

About a year or so ago, there was something like that at future shop. I dont actually remember exactly how it worked but it had like a 20gb hdd and then it came with some other stuff you'd install on your computer so it could connect wirelessly to your computer (from a certain distance ofcourse) and it'd sync the hdd with your music library. It was extremely expensive, though.

Some navigation systems also can have part of the hdd used for storing mp3's and theres some HUs that playback DVD's with mp3 on them. There's also the head units that read SD cards with mp3 files on them. And if that isn't enough, theres the most popular choice which is obviously the Ipod interface. I guess thats why the others aren't as popular. Almost everybody has an Ipod already so i guess this seems like the easiest route.

black magic

i guess if this HU can be used with any removable drive, you can get a portable hard drive, a power adapter and you're set to do what Jack from Indo was looking for. all you'd have to do is find a place for the hdd, like the glove compartement. Why is it called that anyways? I have never put gloves in there.

I guess Death Cab was right when they sang in the song Title and Registration that "The glove compartement isn't accurately named...."

exalted512

Most headunits now will take in USB drives...it might take an adapter, but its there.

JVC also has a single din (no flip out) navigation system with a hard drive that you can load songs on to.
-Cody

Jack from Indo

From all the review of such I have read, none of them work well and they are designed for small units such as a thumb drive which will give you 2-3GB max. And, although I may be out of date and wrong about this - none of them are powered USB ports, which is what a decent size external hard drive needs to run.

And --- they will need to put in some good Mp3 software to read the ID3 tags, sort, shuffle, search, have playlists, artist lists, genre lists, etc.

My friends and I have now 620GB of MP3. The JVC has enough room in the navigation thing for what, maybe 2GB? The biggest Ipod gives you 80GB. The market is dying for a HU that will do the job. A nice big cartridge that pulls out, loads and slides back in, with heaps and heaps of GB. A little USB port ain't it.

Thom

My 80 gig holds over 2000 songs so far (and it's about 50 gigs full), and they're all at lossless. I can see wanting a 200 gig or so one day but how the hell do you fill 620 GB with MP3s? Every song ever made? I spend enough time finding what's on mine as it is, at the full 75 or whatever gigs it'll be even worse.

And like mentioned above being able to take it on a plane, or play it at my desk is nice...

black magic

Thom wrote: »

And like mentioned above being able to take it on a plane, or play it at my desk is nice...

I agree. Thats why I like my Ipod