hey guys i need help, im looking at a alpine iva-d300 indash , for 400 bucks (CND), its in good condition and i really want it but im gonna be putting my subs and amp in, and i was looking at the specs and it says it only has 2 volt pre-outs... do i make the buy? let me know
"For the list price of $1600.00. It is not worth the money in my opinion. I bought it brand new for 900.00 on Ebay. Considered the price I paid, I think it is a good unit overall. Sound quality is superb as usual with Alpine heads. DVD picture is also very good to excellent. Many useful features to set up the sound to fit your car and taste,e.g Digital Time correction,Para-EQ, Sub phase control, Sub x-over frequency control, and Sub level. However, the highly-advertised MediaXpander purposedly enhances the sound of MP3 or CD or DVD, is ...bad. It makes the sound so unnatural and distorted. Alpine used to incorporate the BBE processor to enhance the sound of compressed audio (MP3) and CD and it was MUCH better than 'MediaXpander'. They dropped BBE and use their own 'MediaXpander' to save some licensing money I guess. But it was a wrong move...IMO. Very soon Alpine will regret this. As an Alpine user for the last 20 years, I cannot believe Alpine introduced the 'MediaXpander' into their current line of top-end product. By the way, I think the IVA-D300 is a good choice if the price is around $1000.00"
"This is a good product, but not a great one. Many little flaws and things I did not find amazing about the system. The lack of remote was one thing, the iPod system you could attach to this only displays the first 250 names of Artists and Title, i had to cut my library down significantly to fit everythign in, everything you buy Alpine is significantly more expensive then anything else on the market, excluding speakers amps and subs. The biggest dissapointment were the little things I really wanted to integrate into this system, and the HUGE prices I had to pay to integrate. I have spent probably 6000 on my car and it still is not exactly how I want it."
"I have never paid so much for a car stereo .... I had one of these Alpines installed in my Viper. The ½ inch dashboard clearance and screen angle makes a perfect fit in my car. The image quality and sound are amazing. I can't wait to hear it when I replace all the stock speakers. I have had no technical issues so far. It has read very piece of media I have put in it with out issue. No skips or freezing, even at 150 mph : )
Cons: Now for the bad news. 1) Where's the remote? Even though ½ the fun is playing with the touch screen, there are times I'd like to have the screed retracted. Only thing you can do is adjust Volume and turn the unit off when the screen is retracted. For that kind of money Alpine should have included the $100 remote. 2) Pulse Touch screen. Don't be fooled, this is a complete wasted feature. Yea it vibrates when you touch the screen, big deal. It also makes a loud click noise every time it vibrates. Kinda annoying so I sometimes turned this feature off. 3) Rewind / Forward is slow to respond. So many times I'll want to hear the song before the one playing so I'll push the previous button and it will Pulse and beap but nothing happens. Press the button again and still nothing. Get frustrated and press it repeatedly, now I've skipped over the song I wanted to hear and have to wait for it to stop rewinding. 4) Screen saver? Sure would be nice to have some animated screen saver rather than looking at a still image that will probably end up burning into the screen. Also there are slim pickings as far as Fonts, backgrounds. 5) Touch screens in general. They get dirty with fingerprints FAST. I have to clean my screen daily. 6) Where's the navigation? Once again, for the price you would think it would come with GPS navigation system. Nope.. .that's another $900. I think Pioneer makes a model much like this Apline that comes with DVD navigation. 7) DVDRs I do enjoy buring MP3s to DVDR however I do not like the file structures the unit has. If you organize your MP3s into folders like ((Band(Album(*.mp3 you will only see the Album folder. It would be nice to see at least 2 layers of folder hierarchy. Plus as mentioned with Ipods the indexing / reading of folders and files is VERY slow. All in all this is a very impressive unit and I have had no major issues with it. When it folds out and/or up your passengers will be in awe. However come the end of the day, was it really worth the price? Shop around and compare feature for feature... Forget about the Pulse Touch screen. I would trade if for DVD Navigation any day...."
"Pros: Like all alpine products, the design is clean and the unit is well built. It looks good sitting in the dash, and the screen is very clear. The sound is fantastic!
Cons: For $1600+, you'd think that they would have ironed out a few things. First, the DVD's that it "chooses" to play will frustrate you to no end. Basically, almost all burned DVD's will give you trouble. And if you expect to hook this up using their iPod interface like i have, prepare to get to the boiling point. This will only display 256 of your songs (owhere I have close to 9,000 in my iPod). So most of the artists and almost all of the songs will not display on this unit. Furthermore, for s huge screen, it will only show 3 songs or 3 bands at a time, and it will load these from a MP3 CD or the iPod at a painfully slow pace. Basically, for $1600+, you should be able to do much better, but unfortunately, if you want iPod connectivity, you can't. I should have stayed with my stock Becker radio with the iTrip. Oh, one more thing. Don't go looking for any sort of "tech support" on their site. It does not exist."
i was talking to a guy that owns a local stereo shop, very nice guy, i asked him straight what the difference is between 2 volts and say 4 or 5 volts and if i would notice it...all he said was night and day.. is he wrong? if he is whats the point of having more volts?
imo ur not going to go wrong with alpine ive got a iva d-310 2 volt pre out dd player is great video games look great on it etc. just amp ur highs if ur worried about the 2 volt feature
Alpine HUs in general are the best out there. The only ones you don't want to get are those multimedia ones that don't have a CD player built in. The interface and functionality on those is terrible.
I really like my Premier 770Mp deck...minus the RCA whine that you will get from any Pioneer deck.
I've played with a few Alpines and I have never really liked them that much....
For my next deck though I'm either going Eclipse or, depening on the vehicle a Double Din.
My friend bought a Kenwood Exceleon Double Din and it's pretty nice and I like how it has the 5v Pre-outs and I have yet to find another DD deck that has pre outs that are above 1 or 2 volts it's a wanted feature for sure.
Eclipse and Clarion units are very good quality also..... IMO the interface/design of alpines single din units is better, but thats a matter of preference
M.S. are you talking about the old 6 green button alpines or the new ones? i remember a while back alot of people were saying the new ones weren't as good as the old green ones?? is that true or no
Old pioneer or new. The ones from the 90s and early 2000s were good. Then build quality went to crap and they started having random failures mostly the RCA outputs......
M.S. i understand what your talking about because i had one of the pioneers that went to crap it drove me crazy but ever since i made the switch to alpine i love them better qualty in the sound, i think but hey thats personal choice everyone has there own brand they prefer if not there wouldnt be a million an one different choices. the difference with voltage is the clarity in music but you wont notice a difference untill you get into higher voltages going from 5 to 2 really wouldnt make a difference just changes bragging rights
" the difference with voltage is the clarity in music "
Umm, no. The ONLY thing a higher preamp voltage does is reduce background noise. It does not change SQ.
" you wont notice a difference untill you get into higher voltages "
No it would be into the LOWER voltages where there would be a difference. Anything 2 volts and above you're not going to be able to tell the difference.