Alpine KCA-420i iPod Interface

For those who don't have BMWs (and we're guessing that's a decent percentage), Alpine is releasing the $100 KCA-420i iPod Interface for car stereos. Like the new BMW stereos, the Alpine system allows you to connect your iPod to your car stereo at line level and control it from the stereo head unit. This is great news, as the Alpine systems can be installed in virtually any vehicle, and the head units start at $200. There are some interface and usability issues (playlists are called files and song are called folders), but the sound quality is reported as being excellent. It's also reportedly a little sluggish – you can't speed through songs like you can on the iPod's touch wheel. These are forgivable problems, though, since the unit does do what it promises. The installation kit comes with all necessary cabling, so you too can have a special place for your iPod in your glove compartment next to your registration and proof of insurance. Playlist, that new mag devoted entirely to worship coverage of the iPod, has a review.

[dwight spencer @ Dec 19th 2005 2:11AM]

(ooops. I was reading about the pioneer connector and had this whole thing typed up, AND POSTED,5 in there). Read on for comments.
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I've been using an alpine deck (cda9831) and ipod interface kit (kca420) now for about a month. Overall, I like it.

Previously, I had found wiring schematics to the DIN input on the back of an older Pioneer deck, wired up a line input and used that with the belkin car kit. I didn't realize it right of the bat, but I was loosing alot of signal through the input on the deck, so i decided to upgrade & get an alpine deck.

A few grievances I have with alpine's (current) solution:
- navigation is a little slow - the ipod speeds up as you scroll, the alpine deck seems to have a 1 item per second limit
- getting into the menus is a little tricky - 1/2/3 & search brings up "file" then "folder" search, which seem backwards in function
- limited to 255 items per list - I currently have around 350 artists in my collection, and probably more albums. This means that I cannot get into all the artists (zztop for example). Also, I cannot create a "all" playlist that has all music, so i've created a few playlists (driving, traveling, sleeping, etc) as i'm sure everyone with an ipod has.
- information display - When it's showing the song name, it just shows that. You need to hit "title" to get artist & album (along with length, remaining, and a couple other display details). It would be nice if it showed songname/artist/album in succession, but i'm ok with that.
- ipod intelligent playlists - alpines deck doesnt' support these at all, it simply reports "no support" on the interface. I can live without that support, but it might be something they consider in the future

When alpine says "seemless management of 10000 songs" (i do have a 40gb ipod), it's not -quite- that good, imo, based on these points.

But, as I said, I am happy with it. The positive points I would mention
- MUCH better sound - the old passthrough than the old line input I was using compared to this was nearly a crime!
- easier navigation - even though it has it's drawbacks, crontrolling the alpine deck while driving is easier than navigating the ipod interface - bigger font, allows for quick looks while driving.
- dimmable display - being in canada, it's dark here in the winter around 5/6pm, and one thing I did find was that the ipod has quite a bright interface. If you disable it, you can't read it all in the dark. THe alpine deck dims on signal input from the car, so is much easier on the night vision.
- unseen ipod. I can put the ipod nearly anywhere in the car, keeping it unseen, thanks to very long cables on the kca320 kit. I can pop out of the car for a few minutes without having someone see the ipod laying on the seat and smash/grabbing the thing.

Would I recommend this to anyone else? If you're tired of futzing with your ipod while driving, and are looking to upgrade your deck anyway, absolutely. If you're teetering and wondering if something better might come, i'd wait. If you have a deck with a true line input, use that for now, and see what is available in 6-12 months. If Alpine (or someone else) comes out with a deck that more closely resembles apples own navigation & control, i'd wait for that. If they do, i will probably upgrade my own deck.

[dan @ Dec 19th 2005 2:11AM]

I just bought and had installed the 420i and an Alpine stereo so I could play my Ipod in the car--what a scam! It won't play and when I read the book to see what "error 2" meant, it said that the unit does not work with Ipods with a scroll wheel! They've got to be kidding. I thought all ipods had a scroll wheel. I can't return the unit because I actually bought it in Dec 04 and just got around to having it installed. If this can't be fixed I will bad mouth Alpine for the rest of my days.

[Phil @ Dec 19th 2005 2:11AM]

Dan,

I have just had the 420i installed in my car and have an Ipod Gen 3 with a click wheel - it works fine other than the annoying intelligent playlist issue. Have you tried updating your ipod firmware by downloading it from the Apple web site? This should work. I hope so as it makes a huge difference to the sound quality over the Belkin Tape Adapter and the FM Transmitters.
Good Luck

[djb @ Dec 19th 2005 2:11AM]

ipod intelligent playlists - how do I get playlists to show? How do you get any playlists to show with this stereo? What's the difference between an intelligent playlist and any other playlist?

Almost all my stuff is playlisted and I can't access any of it. Very annoying. Please Advise.

[Cobra King @ Dec 19th 2005 2:11AM]

I have a question. I've had my new stero that ipod compable and it was cool. But about a week ago, the screen keeps going completely blank. Whenever I touch something or try to operate it the screen will come on and display everything but a couple of seconds later it just goes blank again. I want it to stay displaying everything like the song title, artist, song, background, anything. You're probably all going to think I'm stupid but I've tried everything... someone please help!!!

[Cobra King @ Dec 19th 2005 2:11AM]

I have a question. I've had my new stero that ipod compable and it was cool. But about a week ago, the screen keeps going completely blank. Whenever I touch something or try to operate it the screen will come on and display everything but a couple of seconds later it just goes blank again. I want it to stay displaying everything like the song title, artist, song, background, anything. You're probably all going to think I'm stupid but I've tried everything... someone please help!!!

[Jon @ Dec 19th 2005 2:11AM]

This unit does not appear to work with the ipod Nano - I got one last week, and everything works fine with the interface, except NO SOUND is output! It works fine with my ipod mini, but not with the nano. Alpine said "you'll just have to wait until Apple updates the firmware to work." I would have thought that a newer unit would work right away... Anyone else have the same problem?

[geka @ Dec 19th 2005 2:11AM]

Set up the playlist and connected the Nano just like the book said. I see the tracks coming up but no sound. If you find out how to get it working, PLEASE send me a note.

[geka @ Dec 19th 2005 2:11AM]

Set up the playlist and connected the Nano just like the book said. I see the tracks coming up but no sound. If you find out how to get it working, PLEASE send me a note.

[Forty Two @ Dec 19th 2005 2:11AM]

I got my nano working with the KCA-420i by folling the instructions on this site

http://nanospot.theplaceforitall.com/wiki/Tips_And_Tricks

"Then I tried to hook it up to my Alpine system in my truck. I use the KCA-420i interface module with a 30Gig 3rd generation iPod with the dock connector. When I plugged in the iPod Nano everything looked good, but no sound! All the track info was on the Alpine, and the iPod Nano screen showed the Alpine Logo. So back to the Apple support pages and found info that the dock connector has no audio out until you do a full restore with the iPod updater software. Did the restore (and reload all the music) and it worked with the Alpine then. Hope this info helps people if these bugs are more widespread than just my unit. Kevin C "

09/20/05 "I also encountered the same type of problem using an ALtec Lansing iM3 speaker system. Instead of restoring the software I just attached the headphones, made sure I could hear the sound and then connected it to the dock connector and voila! it worked. It does seem that the audio out needs something to "jump start" it..... -Carole A. LostLands.Net

[Alexey @ Dec 19th 2005 2:11AM]

Anybody to test does Alpine KCA-420i work with iPod video? Is it possible to pick up the video signal while playing through Alpine? Does Alpine HU understand videofiles info or they are invisible for Alpine?

[TL @ Dec 19th 2005 2:11AM]

I recently installed a KCA-420I in my Tundra Truck with the Alpine Head Unit. Everything work great. I need help on how to transfer the chinese character song names/artist to the head unit. The IPOD do display all chinese character however the headunit shown no support in the title song tag id. Anyone have any suggestion, please email me. Greatly appreciate it. Alpine head unit model: CDA9833

[Manny @ Dec 25th 2005 4:07AM]

I have the alpine 9826 deck and 5G ipod. Just wondering if anyone found out a better method to search for artists? It would be greatly convinient if they let you search for artists A-Z first, then after choosing the letter, search for individual artists in that letter catagory. But, it doesn't work that way. The closest I have gotten to that is making playlists A-Z, but the trouble with that is when you have 40 artists under letter "S" you have to play through all the bands just to "system of a down" (for example).

I also wouldn't mind much if the alpine deck (after choosing an artist) would let you start a search at the current letter of the artist you have currently.

For example; listening to rage against the machine, you feel like listening to radiohead, so one would go back to search artists. Instead of starting the search from rage against the machine, it goes back to the letter A artists... this is really annoying.



If anyone has found a better solution to this rediculous problem, please feel free to email me.



Manny

[e-mail]



Thank you.

[David Follis @ Dec 26th 2005 8:34PM]

Just bought a Alpine CDA-9851 and KCA-420i and had it professionally installed. Everything worked great except for no audio from iPod Nano 4GB. The display and control worked but no audio. Found this thread and downloaded the latest iPod Updater (11-27 as of this post) and did a full restore. IT WORKED! There must be some sort of software switch that controls audio output through the dock connector that is disabled when it comes from the factory. The updater claims that the iPod did NOT need to be updated, but it didn't work until we did the factory restore and reloaded all of the songs. Now it works great. Apple and or Alpine might want to note this on their sites.