Alpine CDA-7897 Car CD / MP3 Player
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Similar in In Dash Receivers
- MP3 / WMA Playback: MP3 Playback
- Player Type: CD
- Controlled Devices: CD Changer XM Ready
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Alpine CDA-7897
Pros
Great sound and quality, tons of useful features.
Cons
Theft deterrence system could be better, needs more presets.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
If you purchase this unit, you will more than likely be highly satisfied overall.
This is a wonderful unit; I really love owning it.
It's made fairly well, but mine has managed to get a few scratches on it, no matter how careful I seem to be. This is mostly very light scratching on the plastic display, and is only really visible in bright light. But it held up better than I had expected when a thief tried to steal it, pulling on the slide-out face. Still works perfectly, even after that. Kudos for Alpine for using metal gears in most of the system. The slide-out face sounds great, but I don't really think it provides adequate protection for such a system.
Sound quality is great because voltage fluctuations don't seem to bother it much, if at all. Problems only arise when playing at high volumes and low, low voltages (around 11.2 volts or below.) There is a cooling fan on the back, which I know runs, as it worked when I had the system out of the dash, but is so quiet I wouldn't have know it was there if I had not seen it. Has a good amount of power for an in-dash, but don't try to use too much power or greatly inefficient speakers or distortion and/or low volume levels can result. I eventually saved up and got 2 external Alpine amps, one for the front channels and one for the rear. This makes the ability to disable the internal amp really nice, especially for those who are building a system piece by piece. I also like having three sets of preamp outputs, and they have fairly decent voltage levels.
The display can be difficult to read in bright light, but the adjustable angle always fixes visibility problems. The information on the display lacks at times, I think. I mostly wish it had the ability to display a full-time clock instead of a preset and band display, as much button-pressing is required to get from a title, to a clock, and back to a title. That's fairly minor anyhow. But on XM radio especially I wish it could display the artist and the title without pressing the title button.
Ease-of-use is excellent, considering how many features are on the radio. The manual is huge, and must be read for all the features to be used, but anyone can work the radio and CD player without ever having seen the unit before. Once I got used to the unit, the more advanced features became easier to use also. The remote control feature is done fairly well, and I find it useful, but Alpine ships the unit with a remote that is capable of using a clip-on holster, but the holster is not included, and does not seem to be available by itself.
Features I don't much care for are the Media-Xpander and the phone features. The Media-Xpander adds distortion to almost everything, and I rarely use it. The phone features only work with certain phones, and I'm not about to choose a phone based on my radio. Most every feature other than that is useful to someone in some way. That really only leaves one "trinket" sort of feature, the Media-Xpander, as it looks cool and sounds like a good idea, but doesn't work in practice. The phone control is a good idea, but Alpine should somehow add support for more phones.
The tuner section is great. I purchased the XM tuner for it, which integrates wonderfully through the AI-Net connection. The AM/FM tuner is really, really good. I was curious once, and I counted over 30 stations I could pick up on FM from my driveway. There are only about a dozen stations in the town. With that capability, and the 100+ stations available on XM, one would think that Alpine would have used all 10 numbered buttons for presets. Not so. Only 6. Making for 12 FM, 6 AM, and 12 XM presets. Not terribly bad for AM/FM, but that cripples my XM listening.
The MP3 and CD player work well and sound great. The CD rarely skips; generally only when I go over a large bump way too fast. Only thing I don't like about playing CD's is that when switching CD's, if the face is left down too long, the unit beeps. Makes switching CD's more annoying, and I see no reason for the beeping.
Alpine has packed a ton of features into this unit, and still managed to make nearly all of them good. It's a well-designed system, but could have used a bit more attention to detail. I like this unit, and if nothing else, I will very likely buy an Alpine radio for my next system.
It's made fairly well, but mine has managed to get a few scratches on it, no matter how careful I seem to be. This is mostly very light scratching on the plastic display, and is only really visible in bright light. But it held up better than I had expected when a thief tried to steal it, pulling on the slide-out face. Still works perfectly, even after that. Kudos for Alpine for using metal gears in most of the system. The slide-out face sounds great, but I don't really think it provides adequate protection for such a system.
Sound quality is great because voltage fluctuations don't seem to bother it much, if at all. Problems only arise when playing at high volumes and low, low voltages (around 11.2 volts or below.) There is a cooling fan on the back, which I know runs, as it worked when I had the system out of the dash, but is so quiet I wouldn't have know it was there if I had not seen it. Has a good amount of power for an in-dash, but don't try to use too much power or greatly inefficient speakers or distortion and/or low volume levels can result. I eventually saved up and got 2 external Alpine amps, one for the front channels and one for the rear. This makes the ability to disable the internal amp really nice, especially for those who are building a system piece by piece. I also like having three sets of preamp outputs, and they have fairly decent voltage levels.
The display can be difficult to read in bright light, but the adjustable angle always fixes visibility problems. The information on the display lacks at times, I think. I mostly wish it had the ability to display a full-time clock instead of a preset and band display, as much button-pressing is required to get from a title, to a clock, and back to a title. That's fairly minor anyhow. But on XM radio especially I wish it could display the artist and the title without pressing the title button.
Ease-of-use is excellent, considering how many features are on the radio. The manual is huge, and must be read for all the features to be used, but anyone can work the radio and CD player without ever having seen the unit before. Once I got used to the unit, the more advanced features became easier to use also. The remote control feature is done fairly well, and I find it useful, but Alpine ships the unit with a remote that is capable of using a clip-on holster, but the holster is not included, and does not seem to be available by itself.
Features I don't much care for are the Media-Xpander and the phone features. The Media-Xpander adds distortion to almost everything, and I rarely use it. The phone features only work with certain phones, and I'm not about to choose a phone based on my radio. Most every feature other than that is useful to someone in some way. That really only leaves one "trinket" sort of feature, the Media-Xpander, as it looks cool and sounds like a good idea, but doesn't work in practice. The phone control is a good idea, but Alpine should somehow add support for more phones.
The tuner section is great. I purchased the XM tuner for it, which integrates wonderfully through the AI-Net connection. The AM/FM tuner is really, really good. I was curious once, and I counted over 30 stations I could pick up on FM from my driveway. There are only about a dozen stations in the town. With that capability, and the 100+ stations available on XM, one would think that Alpine would have used all 10 numbered buttons for presets. Not so. Only 6. Making for 12 FM, 6 AM, and 12 XM presets. Not terribly bad for AM/FM, but that cripples my XM listening.
The MP3 and CD player work well and sound great. The CD rarely skips; generally only when I go over a large bump way too fast. Only thing I don't like about playing CD's is that when switching CD's, if the face is left down too long, the unit beeps. Makes switching CD's more annoying, and I see no reason for the beeping.
Alpine has packed a ton of features into this unit, and still managed to make nearly all of them good. It's a well-designed system, but could have used a bit more attention to detail. I like this unit, and if nothing else, I will very likely buy an Alpine radio for my next system.
