New car stereo

spike

spike

New Member
Girlfriend got me a new car CD player for my birthday since the one I had quit working. It's an Alpine CDA-9856. iPod, HD radio, and satellite ready. I'm going to use the iPod connection but I still have to figure out if I want HD radio or satellite.

Anybody here use either?

cda-9856.jpg


http://www.alpine-usa.com/en/products/product.php?model=CDA-9856
 
IS HD radio availabled in the LA area? It's sure not available up here. Satellite will come in all over the US though.

Mine's a Kenwood, and the way the hook-up system works, I could daisy-chain the Sirius tuner, the HD Radio tuner and a 10-disc CD changer if I wanted to.

I'm on Sirius and I like the playlist... but your head unit appears to be capable of both, depending on which tuner you get.
 
I don't know a thing about HD radio except I hear some silly commercials for it every once in a while telling me "there's hidden stations between the regular stations" or something like that. I might do a little research now.

If I get Satellite it'd probably be Sirius. The tuner costs an extra $100 and I suppose you could tell me what the service costs or I'll look it up later.

I'm thinking I should decide about satellite/HD before I get this thing installed.
 
Does that head unit have Bluetooth? My new phone has bluetooth built in, but no headphone jack. You have to buy an adapter, but the adapter plus in where the DC charger plugs in, so you can either listen to headphones OR charge the thing. BS man! (but i cant complain, its my work phone)
 
there doesnt seem to be a lot of difference between Sirius and XM as far as music choices go. the big differences is with the subscription channels. Opie & Anthony vs Howard. NFL vs MLB. etc.
my Honda came with an XM receiver from the factory. i listened to the 3 or 4 available preview channels for about a week before i paid up front for 5 years.
 
Sirius has the NFL and Howard. No extra charge for either.

It's $12.95 a month for the first tuner on your account, $6.95 a month per each additional tuner after the first... you can have up to four on one account. If you subscribe for a year, you get a month or two worth of a discount... I think they also offer the $500 for a lifetime subscription deal.

Here is the channel lineup... the Martha Stewart channel is 112. :D

I did all the install work on mine myself. The Sirius antenna is on the trunk, and the cable runs from the trunk lid into the trunk, and to the Sirius tuner box, which is tucked in next to the two 12-inch subwoofers. From there, I ran the cable under the back seat, under the rug where back seat riders put their feet, then under the center console and up behind the dashboard and into the back of the head unit. If I want HD radio later, I could plug the HD tuner into the back of the Sirius tuner, so I wouldn't have to do all that work again.
 
What kind of Sirius tuner do you have?

I just looked at this one:
http://buy.sirius.com/products/sportster-replay/

With that I could get by with one tuner for home and car stereo saving the extra $6.95 but then I have to mount another thing on my dash and I'm probably not utilizing the satellite functions of the Alpine unit as much as I could.
 
My plug-and-play unit in the house is an Xact Stream Jockey XRT-1 (I think that's the model... I know Xact Stream Jockey is right) but I have a separate tuner for the car. It's a black box made by Kenwood (my head unit's manufacturer also) that hooks into the head unit the same way a CD changer would. I control the Sirius using the head unit's controls (the tuner box actually doesn't have any buttons on it). The Xact in the house is like the Sportster Reply you linked to, although mine doesn't have the record function. I could put it in the car and either hook it into the AUX port or use the built-in FM transmitter, which is more convenient but doesn't sound as good. In fact, what I used to do at my old apartment was keep the Sirius tuner set up in the living room, and when I'd go to bed, pick up the FM signal from it with the boombox in the bedroom. I can't do that at my current house because the boombox is too far away now, and also, there'sw a guy with a giant antenna here that fucks with FM reception and makes the entire FM spectrum nothing but a 24/7 church, either organ music or preaching. I don't know if it's a big antenna that pulls in the signal or if it's a pirate radio station. Oddly enough, the cheapest of cheap radios aren't affected by it, but the good, expensive ones have that problem. I've thought about calling the FCC on that guy's ass.
 
rrfield said:
Does that head unit have Bluetooth? My new phone has bluetooth built in, but no headphone jack. You have to buy an adapter, but the adapter plus in where the DC charger plugs in, so you can either listen to headphones OR charge the thing. BS man! (but i cant complain, its my work phone)
Click to expand...

I finally looked... I really, really like that the buttons you use for dialing are spaced apart instead of crammed right next to each other. That's one of the things that made me shy away from any of the Palm phones or the Motorola Q and go with a traditional flip phone instead. That, and I probably wouldn't use any of the extra features I'd have paid for.
 
Inkara1 said:
My plug-and-play unit in the house is an Xact Stream Jockey XRT-1 (I think that's the model... I know Xact Stream Jockey is right) but I have a separate tuner for the car. It's a black box made by Kenwood (my head unit's manufacturer also) that hooks into the head unit the same way a CD changer would.
Click to expand...

Ok, I think found a comparable tuner on the Alpine website.

http://www.alpine-usa.com/en/products/product_acc.php?model=SIR-ALP1&tab=D

I think that's a much more elegant way of doing it then mounting a Sportster on the dash.

Then I have to buy another tuner for the house and pay an extra $6.95/month. A little bit of a dilemma.
 
What kind of amp(s) and speakers do you have Inkara? I've now been browsing Crutchfield for the last half an hour and I'm thinking of getting some new speakers and an amp now.

I used to be pretty into car stereo and I'm getting the bug again I think. Back when I was into it Precision Power and Orion amps, MB Quart speakers, and Soundstream woofers were the way to go.

I have some old carbon fiber Altec Lansing speakers in the back of my car that still rock but I could use an amp and some new front speakers.
 
I've got Pioneer 6x9s mounted on the package shelf, Sony two-way 6 3/4" speakers int he doors and Rockford Fosgate 3 1/2" speakers in the dash with bass blocker capacitors. The amp in the head unit drives all those. Then, in the back, I have a pair of 12-inch Sony Xplod pentagon-shaped subs with a matching Sony Xplod amp... I think it's 1100W peak. That amp only drives the subs.
 
Inkara1 said:
I finally looked... I really, really like that the buttons you use for dialing are spaced apart instead of crammed right next to each other. That's one of the things that made me shy away from any of the Palm phones or the Motorola Q and go with a traditional flip phone instead. That, and I probably wouldn't use any of the extra features I'd have paid for.
Click to expand...

I like the phone well enough. Some people who have had PDAs or PDA/phones previously don't like the Blackjack or the Q, but I went from a simple flip phone to this. It does everything I need...make and receive phone calls, check sports scores, get work e-mail, function as a broadband modem for my laptop, receive a strong signal everywhere I go for work. Plus I dont write the check every month so I really can't complain.
 
Back when I was in high school I had a kickass stereo in my S-15. Infinity headunit w/ 6 disc changer, 400 watt amp driving 4 8" subs, couple of tweeters, 6x9's (i think?) in the doors, 4x3's in the dash.
 
rrfield said:
Back when I was in high school I had a kickass stereo in my S-15. Infinity headunit w/ 6 disc changer, 400 watt amp driving 4 8" subs, couple of tweeters, 6x9's (i think?) in the doors, 4x3's in the dash.
Click to expand...


In highschool I had a Craig Powerplay with an eight track. :shrug:
 
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