Hiya guys,

I've only had this 9856 in my car for a few days now, but I'm comfortable giving it a quick review if anybody's keen.

My setup is as follows:
Alpine 9856 HU
Focal 165v2 splits at front
Stock rears
Alpine SWS-1222D sub in a custom box
Alpine MRP-F240 driving Focals and sub

The iPod cable from the back of the HU is installed to come up just near my hand brake - gives it just enough length to fit comfortably in the tray between the front seats. I'm using a 30G iPod w/ an Agent 18 clear case. It's a good combination - the Agent 18 case protects the iPod from any jumps etc I'm likely to provide. BTW those cases are available from Apple's online store, and I can't recommend them enough ;-)

Overall I'm very impressed with the HU. I love having an actual analogue knob to control it with. Alpine's interfaces have always been well thought out, and their ergonimcs sound, at least from the units I've encountered. This unit looks great in the dash, and is obviously designed with eyes-on-the-road navigation in mind. You can find everything you need by feel.

That is, apart from iPod usage :-)

My one criticism of the iPod system is that iPods themselves can hold so much music, that navigation can become a nightmare. Quickly getting to the track you want can really take some time - think pull over to the side of the road and find music for 3 minutes rather than change at the lights. One recommendation Alpine make is to make playlists on your iPod, so you can navigate smaller subsets of tracks. This helps, but really, this system still needs improvement.

That said, the audio quality of music playing off the iPod is excellent. I can't imagine how bad an iPod headphone jack plugged into an amp would sound by comparison. The music is streamed to the HU, where it's converted by nice Alpine circuitry into the realm of analogue, and played to you, gentle reader. So you're cutting out the iPod's (admittedly domestic) headphone amp, and a dodgy, unbalanced audio cable, not to mention the line level mismatch since the iPod is only designed to drive headphones.

Both 192kbit mp3 and uncompressed wave files sound great through the system. I'm surprised how good the mp3s sound at a decent level - much, much better than I would have expected.

One other thing worth mentioning - having more than a single line of alphanumeric LEDs would have been really, really nice. For one thing, it would have made the searching playlists immensely easier, since you could scan ahead. It would also be nice to have e.g. Artist name, song title, track number, album name and time visible at once. I guess I'm spoilt by my PC :-)

Mp3 and redbook format burnt to CD played back perfectly, as you'd expect.

BTW the unit does 4x 18W, which I'm only using to drive my rears, so I can't comment on much. It also has 3 pairs of RCA outputs. Sound adjustment seems to amount to a 2 band paragraphic EQ, sub level control, front / back mix levels, and panning controls. It can also drive a disc changer, as well as deal with digital radio, like that's ever going to happen in Australia. Oi oi oi.

That said, I have really highlighted my only criticisms here. This is an excellent unit. It also provides one of the few good iPod interfaces currently around for car systems. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to somebody looking for a quality unit with a bunch of options for future expansion.

http://www.alpine-usa.com/en/products/prod...?model=CDA-9856

Link is to US site as it's still not up on the .au one yet.

Any questions, feel free to post ;-)

Cheers!
John