Alpine CDA-9885 Car CD/ MP3 Player

I have always been a fan of Alpine head units. I have had a few and each one has had great sound, period. This unit was no exception. I had a clarion in my car and needed something with Subwoofer control. So I started looking for Alpines and ended up purchasing the CDA 9885. The features which attracted me most were the Ipod control capability and the high pass filter and separate Sub control. It also claimed it had 50 X 4 power output (18 X 4 RMS). My current Clarion had 52 x 4.
The Ipod control is amazing! If you have ever had a radio tuned Ipod connection then you are very aware of the painful static you can get and the horrible background noise possible. The Alpine gets none of that! Perfect sound, crisp, clean, and amazingly clear. It also charges your Ipod while connected. Honestly, you don’t even have to ever touch your Ipod again.
The sub control works great. The only downfall is that is has no low pass filter to keep full signal from going to your sub. That can easily be fixed with a small aftermarket crossover / filter though. The high pass filter seems to work well. I don’t have speaker pop or distortion due to bass signal going to it. The adjustability of the bass range and treble is very nice too.
Lastly, the sound is simply amazing. Compared to my Clarion (which was a top of the line model) its like night and day. EVERYTHING sounds better and more pronounced and clear. I am a big fan of having a great sound system and I’ve had professional set ups before. With this unit, you don’t have to have separate amps for your front and rear mids and tweeters. You can simply power them off the radio and seriously hear that same clear, clean professional sound. With the added sub it really rounds off the system. This keeps thing relatively inexpensive too! The unit pushed much better power to my components as well far outdoing the Clarion.
That’s my review! Now go get an Alpine!