CD/MP3 Head Units and XJs

[ADVNTURR]

I'm not completely sure that this is the right forum for this post but I am not as interested in hearing what the street guys are running. I have a 6 year old Sony head unit in my 91 right now w/ a 3 second anti-shock memory and I absolutely love it. I can play cds while I am on the trail or running down the interstate in PA trying to get from NY to VA and it never skips. Problem is that it appears to be on it's last leg and I am trying to figure out what to replace it with quickly since I have a couple 12 hour drives coming up that I don't really want to be short a CD player for. I would like to know what some of you folks are running in your rigs and what works well or what skips when you hit a pebble on a smooth road. The newer the better since obviously I know what I would want if it was 6 years ago and I would really like to hear from those w/ MP3 compatability. I am not too concerned about price, I have no quams against dropping $300-400 on a quality unit. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

 

[BlueGerbil]

/////Alpine !

 

[jjvande]

alpine is the bom.

never... i mean never skips. model# 9833 in your price range on ebay

 

[JeepinAudiophile]

I would also say tro go with Alpine... their mp3 controls seem to be better than all the others.
I like that you cna leave your mp3s in the folders under the artist names and can go through the cd by the folders names on the Alpines... nice setup.

 

[Gridikal]

For me it's a toss up between Alpine and Panasonic. While Alpine has a few more sound shaping capabilities, the Panasonic's visual appeal is unmatched IMO- and the one I'm runnin has all the MP3 capabilities that the Alpines in the same price range have as far as I know, although I have not looked into the alpine units in detail. But I gotta admit Alpine's Bass engine pro and media expander cannot be touched

I'm running the Panasonic MXE CQ-C9800U and couldn't be happier

I would put it in the same catagory as the Alpine cda-9835

I had a VERY difficult time choosen between the two when I re-did my setup

 

[Boris T]

I love the looks of the Alpines but for the money the lower level Panasonics are a great deal. I installed this one for a friend in his (my old) Dakota:

I personally like simplicity and function and naddalotta flash with color that matches the rest of the dash so the Panasonics are out.

Travis

 

[fluidmotion]

pioneer 840MP love it, its got the same amount of funtions compaired to alpines but you also get an EQ and its more user friendly for people that arent very technically advanced

 

[ChiXJeff]

I've got an Alpine 9813 mp3 head unit. It spent a year in my XJ, and now resides in my Dodge Ram. Absolutely no problems with it, it just plain works well.

Would I buy another Alpine? Heck, yes. No question about it.

 

[jjvande]

on the alpine...upper models, you can change the color of the 4 large buttons to ANY color as long as its one of the 256 available. nice feature to match factory colors. also, all the other buttons can either be green or amber in color. combine that with the black-out setting( temp. turns off display until a button is pressed or vol is adjusted) and you get a pretty sleek looking unit IMO. the Panis are good though too.

 

[KinesthesiaDrums]

i'm a Kenwood fan.....their lower end stuff is ok...gets the job done, but their higer end models are quite exceptional...

i personally like the whole touch screen and mulitple out/in-puts....plus hooking a computer up to it to run everything else...
not to mention i get good deals....can't complain about $800 for this baby, as opposed to 2k

*shrugs and grins*