Alpine's iDA-X001 priced and dated

Even though an almost monopolistic number of new cars come with iPod integration straight off the manufacturing line, consumers haven't relented in their search for the perfect iPod-car integration system. Based on early shots of Alpine's iDA-X001, it appears to come close to hitting this sweet spot of iPod integration. That's due in no small part to the statement that the Alpine was "designed and developed with input from Apple." Fortunately for all those iPod owners with cars out there -- we're guessing there's quite a few -- the company has started the countdown by committing to making the iDA-X001 available in February for $450.

[Austin @ Jan 8th 2007 5:33PM]

God, these things suck. I have an Alpine iPod radio in my car with the EXACT same controls as this one; don't be fooled by the pretty screen. It's still impossible to navigate through menus.

[BAMF @ Jan 8th 2007 9:55PM]

Austin, I am curious which head unit you're using. The original iPod interface options from Alpine (KCA-420i and a 2004 or earlier head unit) did suck, as did every other manufacturer's options. They were slow and clunky, but this is because the head unit saw the iPod essentially as a CD changer and just passed the iPod's analog output to the head unit.

The 2006 units were markedly better as far as speed goes, because Alpine developed a better solution with a cable that plugged directly into the head unit. No longer did the unit treat the iPod as a CD changer, but it still used the iPod's analog audio out. Although still not perfect, this solution was better than anything else on the market.

With this new unit, Alpine specifically points out that it utilizes a 24 bit DAC. This, and the fact that it displays album artwork (which is not supported directly by the dock cable as ID tags are) leads me to believe that this new unit actually reads your music off of the iPod as data files and decodes them at the head unit. This should result in much better sound quality as well as an identical interface experience to using the iPod directly. It should be just as fast as plugging your iPod into a computer and browsing files via iTunes.

On an unrelated note, I am happy to hear that it will support Apple Lossless. MP3 is a given, and the other previously announced units support AAC, so that should be a given as well. I hope that it will be able to play back DRM'ed AAC files from the iTunes store, but I think that after Alpine went to the trouble to make a product so centered around the iPod and with Apple's help no less, it shouldn't be a problem.

[JD @ Jan 8th 2007 8:39PM]

Looks interesting...but WTF is up with:

*USB connection is compatible with fifth-generation iPods.

Are nano and photo iPod users screwed?

[Riza @ Jan 8th 2007 9:01PM]

what about video?

$450 is kinda a lot for a deck that just lets me flip through the music on my iPod./

If it can also let me navigate video list and play videos from my iPod on the Alpine screens in my car then I am all for it.

[Austin @ Jan 8th 2007 11:19PM]

@ BAMF: I had the Alpine radio installed in 2006, and yes, it has an iPod cable. It's possible to do more than CD changer options but it's extremely difficult...

[Jim @ Jan 9th 2007 10:11AM]

I have the 9850i and the user interface is appalling! The head unit is nice, the amp good but the user interface the worse I've ever seen. I don't know how it passed any QA or testing. There are 3, yes 3 different buttons used to confirm an action.

I really wish I'd tested it out more in the store.

Also for some reason, when you're selecting a song, artist or album, the title will flash on/off every 0.5 of a second. WHY? It's only showing what you're interested in for 50% of the time!!

Good unit, bad bad bad interface..

[gear @ Jan 9th 2007 5:30AM]

I like the HD tuner and ipod integration.

[bhavesh @ May 6th 2008 12:57PM]

I've had a fair number of Alpine units, starting with the 420i/Alpine 9855 with GlideTouch --> Horrible!

Then I tried the 9857 the following year which had a crappier screen and specs, but it had the "Hi-Speed" iPod cable, and the interface was A LOT better, and actually quite usable.

However, I finally settled on the DoubleDin WD200 touchscreen DVD, which actually has very usable ipod interface. While there is room for improvements,this is the first in-car interface (including the ipod itself) I've used that feels safe...you don't feel like you're going to get into a wreck.

[TheCash @ Jan 11th 2007 5:04AM]

@Jim
What the heck is a 9850i? Some kind of phone from Nokia? If you're talking about the CDA-9850, I'm guessing you didn't take the time to read your user manual. It couldn't be easier to use if the thing were designed for monkeys.

@bhavesh
A fair number of Alpine units? A whole whopping two units is a fair number? I've owned six in the last ten years and I have loved every one, starting with my old CDE-7610 with it's completely removable design and track searching cassette deck. My latest is the 9855 which works awesome and I love dearly, but you apparently think is 'horrible.' One thing about all Alpine decks, which most salesmen at big box stores won't tell you, is they are not for idiots or people who don't have a basic understanding of car audio installation. You can't just buy an adapter harness and throw them into your rig and expect a huge difference. The level of complexity of these decks is suprising to even me, and I've been building computers since the third grade. After pairing the 9855 to a set of Infinity Kappa Components in the front doors of my F-150 and a 10" inch sub in a self made stealthbox under the rear seat all powered by an Alpine PDX-4.100 4 channel amp (two for the front components, with the other two bridged to power the sub) and the sound quality easily beats my best friend's $3k 'professional big box store' installation, and I only paid about a grand for everything plus shipping and wire harness for the amp.

I am an audiophile... all my music is encoded in lossless, I listen to everything from Opera to Motown to Moby, and for my money it doesn't get any better then the 9855. That said, the glide touch control is not for everyone and the 420i ipod interface is a joke like most first gen integration kits. Last year's interface was a vast improvement in speed and price, but the decks became utter crap and there is no denying that. I was going to upgrade, but after discoverying how cheaply the new models had been put together I instead installed an RCA aux input adapter and hook my ipod up to that now. It's not as simple as being able to control it through the deck, but with the wireless remote that connects to my steering wheel I can still flip through songs in a playlist and pause it when the phone rings. Unfortunately, it looks like this years lineup is about as exciting as last years. I was looking forward to replacing the deck with a dvd unit (lossless files take up a lot of room, and DVD-R's have about 4-5 times as much space as CD-R's) but it looks like I will be waiting till 2008.

[Steve @ Jan 11th 2007 2:27PM]

I spent about a half hour in the Alpine booth at MacWorld yesterday, most of which was in their demo car playing with the installed iDA-X001. Here's some stuff I learned that you won't get without playing with the unit and talking to someone who knows all about it (like an engineer on booth duty from Alpine in SoCal):

The 5G support is the best deal. It uses the USB interface for faster device control, and only 5G iPods will show album art on the color display. The audio is sent digitally, but presumably AFTER decoding (and DRM). So the iPod decodes the music, but still sends it digitally to the Alpine for conversion back to analog.

My iPod is 4G, but that requires the separate $30 full-speed cable. Device control is still better than any previous (DIN-sized) Alpine unit I've played with, including two other "new" models they had on display (which were, to me, still relatively unusable). Audio from a 4G is sent in analog to the Alpine, not digital (since the 4G allegedly doesn't support digital audio out). No album art.

The cool thing is that if your family has multiple iPods, it would seem that you can actually have two (a 5G and a 4G) connected at the same time. They appear as separate sources: iPod 1 and iPod 2.

Unfortunately, for $450, Alpine does not include a HD radio tuner; that's a $250 option. Yes, that's right, Alpine's optional external HD tuner costs more than a whole JVC KD-HDR1 AM/FM/CD stereo with built-in HD Radio -AND- the JVC iPod adapter ($175 + $50 @ Crutchfield). I'm eager to see if it's even slightly usable, as I'd almost rather throw away the JVC unit in a year or two than pay top dollar for the still-not-perfect Alpine.

The Alpine Bluetooth hands-free module is also optional; that's another $200. Obviously the cool part is that all of these modules should work together seamlessly, but I'll believe it when I see it. For some bizarre reason the MacWorld demo car had neither HD nor Bluetooth installed so I couldn't try either one out. If you get both, that's $900 in hardware, before installation.

As for usability, the color screen is awesome. A few gripes are immediately obvious:
- The big round knob does not free-wheel. It's a slight twist in either direction to increment or decrement whatever you're doing. What's up with that? I absolutely HATE up/down models, rather than a knob that free-wheels. The last Alpine deck I bought was selected specifically because they included a round volume knob instead of up/down buttons. Anyway, if you're trying to select an artist, album, song, or playlists, it's "twist, twist, twist" or "twist and hold while it keeps going" which brings me to the next gripe:
- The display doesn't just show you the name of the item as you're scrolling through the list. It displays it slowly, one letter at a time. There's no option to change this, and the Alpine engineer said that there is also no provision for updating the software in this deck so even if Alpine realizes how stupid this is, they can't fix it in already-shipped units. They should either fix it and make stuff just appear all at once, or make it an option for the one person out there who may like it. It's hard to explain how lame this is; you just have to see it.
- When you finally do get to an item you want to select, your brain says to push the big knob that you've been turning. However, that isn't "enter". "Enter" is the little button that says "ENT" to the upper-left of the big round knob. I assume people will eventually train themselves to know this, but it's really hard to fight instinct. Don't Alpine people have phones or PDAs or home theater remotes with five-way (four directions, and PUSH to select) navigation joysticks?

I really want iPod support, HD Radio, and Bluetooth, all in one integrated solution. I'm an Alpine fan; all my after-market stereos, amps, speakers and alarms have been Alpine over the years. I'm just not sure it's worth paying $900 to get ALMOST there. For that much it should be perfect, or at least upgradable. Maybe next year, though I've been saying that every year now as Alpine introduces each new model.

That said, they'll sell a ton of these. Not because it's perfect, but because it's probably still better than anything else available. The problem is that the bar is still so low. :-(

[Steve @ Jan 11th 2007 2:45PM]

Sorry, I should clarify my previous comment:

>>>
The display doesn't just show you the name of the item as you're scrolling through the list. It displays it slowly, one letter at a time.

[Steve @ Jan 11th 2007 2:47PM]

(Oops, punctuation truncated my previous clarification.)

Sorry, I should clarify my previous comment:

"The display doesn't just show you the name of the item as you're scrolling through the list. It displays it slowly, one letter at a time."

This doesn't actually happen in "list" mode (when you're scrolling through artists, genres, or playlists). List mode is actually pretty cool, in that you see several items displayed at once, and even a relative position indicator (like a scroll-bar except that it's view-only) that shows you were you are in the list. Loading the items for these lists was relatively fast, even on my ~9000 song 4G iPod with 800+ CDs. If only that big knob free-wheeled instead of doing the bump up/down thing.

Anyway, the slow-display thing only happens in song mode, when the display looks like it does in the picture at the top of this article. That is, once you select an album and want to skip to the next song (say you're looking for a specific title but you don't recall what track number it is). The letters of the song title are "typed out" one letter at a time. It can take several seconds to get to the point where you can see enough of the song title to know if it's the one you're looking for or not, and I sure hope you aren't driving while you're waiting for the song title to appear. (It probably takes about 10 seconds for the three lines shown above to display.)

One other point: The display has three modes, toggled with the "View" button to the right of the big round knob. One is the view you see, with small album art. The second is a larger album-art view, and the third is an interesting (if somewhat retro?) date/time display. Too bad this part isn't customizeable or extensible. Oh, and though I didn't even ask, I have to assume the display does NOT play video from the iPod.

[dave @ Jan 15th 2007 5:33PM]

up/down knob vs rotating knob

I hear your gripe, but I think up/down is the correct solution. consider an 80 GB ipod with 15,000 songs... you don't want to spin a knob 1250 times, or try to somehow vary the speed your spinning it to move through the list, potentially all while driving.

Up/down with hold to 'scroll' makes the most sense for being easy to use. It might make moving up and down between 5-50 items more annoying, but it makes moving up and down a list of 1000s possible.

---

As for 'push to select'... I agree that would be nice, but not a deal breaker for anybody but a real nitpicker. ;)

---

As for slow display in the one mode you refer to -- again I agree, but given it takes a few seconds for the title to show, the reality is everybody is going to know if they are on the right track by -listening- to it, not waiting for individual letters to appear. So its probably not the car-accident-waiting-to-happen you envision.

---

Video playback - yeah, not gonna be there, but its hardly a feature anyone needs, especially on a small screen like that. Give it another generation or two, and by then you'll be able to feed the video out to an external lcd screen too, at which point having video would be worth while.

---

As for bluetooth and HD to be optional.... I'm mixed. I don't subscribe or even care about hd/satellite/xm/sirius radio, so not paying for it is actually a plus. Ditto bluetoooth. (I'd try Bluetooth but I drive an '87 911 and expect cabin noise might be too great for handsfree.) Regardless I do agree $200+ per module is overpriced, and is a bit ridiculous for someone who does want the components. At the end of the day I think its the price of the modules, not the fact that its modular that is the issue -- ie. if the modules were $50-100 I think this issue would mostly go away.

That said, and what nobody is talking about is how it SOUNDS. It doesn't have a CD player, so we'll need to compare with apple lossless or something. How does it stand up next to a 7878 in terms of audio quality? Is this deck just about the 'ipod integration' or does it stand up as a solid HU in terms of sound quality?

[Isamu @ Mar 28th 2007 8:20PM]

Good question about sound quality I would like to know this as well