Well, seeing as it's my first head unit since I bought my Integra in 00, it's a damn good upgrade. I've always heard people say, the first thing that should be done in the car is to upgrade the stereo, the stock head unit is decent, but could be greatly improved upon, and it's true.

I purchased the unit in Downtown LA, in a place called 'The Alley', bunch of cheap *** stereo shops. Picked up the unit for 300, dash kit 10 bux, and wiring harness 5 bux.

Went back home, and install was a breeze except for the dash kit, I didn't look at the instructions until we wasted about 2 hours trying to force that thing in, then it told us we had to break off some tabs.. stupid me. Anyways, install was a breeze, color coded everything, just strip and crimp.

When it first powered up, it sounded awesome. One thing that really made me happy was that it knew to lower the antenna when a cd was playing and to put it back up when on the AM/FM tuner. I had a manual switch I made for the stock unit to do this before. The tilt function is really cool, although probably unnecessary, just some extra little features and what not.

The reason I bought the unit, the MP3 function. All the units i've looked at before were rather shitty, the aiwa units and kenwood's just didn't do it for me. Alpine has made a great unit, you can choose which you want to scroll, the actual file name or the ID3 tag and what not, knows how many folders of mp3's there are and can do skipping and all that fancy stuff.

I'm not sure how else to describe the unit, it's awesome, easy to install and fun to play with. If you guys have questions, ask away!

 

what kind of speakers are you running with the new headunit?

 

Stock speakers.

 

congrats, i felt very happy and satisfied after i replaced my stock headunit with an alpine unit a month ago. stock integra system sucks dick...only thing left for me to do is get a sub and amp and than i'll be cherry.

 

 

Do you by chance have a factory 6-cd changer in your car?

 

Nope.. I see not point now that I have mp3 capability. If I got a changer it would probably be an alpine that supports mp3.

 

Yea, i was just asking because i'm going to buy the same headunit you have, and wanted you know if a stock 6-cd alpine changer was plug and play.

 

It's a good unit, good luck.

 

HI yellow blur, i have a quick question for you. i know that your head unit comes xm ready, but in order to receive xm, do you have to buy the additional xm tuner box from alpine? I know you have to subscribe to the service before you can receive the stations? any input would be appreciated! thanks
ek Spec R

 

yeah i just help my cuzin install his on his 00' civic and it sounded and looked great...

overall impressive unit

 

Bad *** deck, getting it's definitely worth the money over the CDA7893 for the MP3 capability, blackout feature and the externally mounted DC/DC convertor... not to mention the amber illumination. The time delay is a cool feature too.If you haven't already done so, connect the 12V constant (yellow) wire directly to the battery and you should consider changing your front speakers because the OEM ones are crap. The power in the the 60x4 Alpine decks is pretty beefy for a headunit rated at 22Wrms or so. I'd drop in a nice set of coaxials and a couple pieces of Dynamat in the doors to improve your sound even more.

CDA7894

 

Would you mind sharing the reason behind this? More power? I'm pretty clueless.

Definitely. You will notice a vast difference in sound just by replacing the front speakers.

 

The deck is capable of drawing a lot more current than what the factory harness is capable of supplying. the factory wiring is very thin. If you want to have the internal amp work to it's fullest potential, you don't want current limitations to be the weak link. If you look on the harness of the CDA receivers, it has a pretty large fuse. Actually, you should connect the ground to the chassis too, after thinking about it.

Besides, Alpine recommends it and it has a label on the harness. Most people don't do it, most install shops don't either.

 

Man...I have the 7893...you make me want to get the 7894 now...


[Modified by Denny317, 11:45 PM 8/31/2002]

 

I got another question for you.

Does the mp3 playback have any fast forward/reverse search capability?

 

did you have to use an amp with the headunit, my friend was telling me since it uses 3 RCA's you have to use an amp?

edit***could somebody give me a run down of how to install it?


[Modified by DeeSeeToo, 10:09 AM 9/1/2002]

 

You don't need to use an amp because it's a CD receiver, which has it built in. A CD tuner is a straight preamp with NO and you will need to use an amp if you want to get sound.

For Alpine CDA78XX are receivers with small amps inside, but you can add bigger ones. The CDA79XX are tuners so you NEED to use an external amp through the RCA jacks or you will have no sound.

 

I'm pretty sure you'll need to buy the XM receiver too if you want XM. You also have to buy an antenna. (that doesn't come with the XM receiver)

 

Yeah I heard something about using the power direct from the cars battery. I'll probably get that done later. Thanks for the heads up though. No more cash for the rest of the stereo stuff

 

Yes I can do search on the mp3's and FF/Reverse.

 

hey bro where exactly in downtown LA did u buy it( the cross streets) and did they sell other electronics such as digital cameras? i know there is supposed to be a electronics district in downtown i just never figured out where it was.

thanks

 

Yeah, where is this "alley"? I want to buy some audio stuff too.

I got a question for you. Please explain how the display works in detail. Does it scroll all the information at once?

example: folder name --> file name
ID3 tag: artist --> track title --> xxx kbits

Does it scroll the information like that or similar to it? Please tell me.

 

I'm having this head unit installed as soon as I get my car out of the bodyshop. Damn thieves made off with my Clarion DRX8575z . Unfortunately, unless a shop has them in stock right now, there is a national backorder.

 

Sorry, not sure of the cross streets, my friend took me there. I can find out and tell you though. THe digi cams and electronics are in the heart of downtown. The alley is kinda on the outskirts of downtown.


I can have it scroll many different options. I can show the folder name by itself, then I can show the actual file name like test.mp3, or I can have it scroll the ID3 Tag stored within the mp3, so it looks like Test - Song123 and whatever else is in there. I can also have it just show the mins:secs of the song, or I can have it show the time of day and the track number. I think i'm forgetting 1 more but that's about it.