thumbs up for Alpine CDA-9883

[Jay W.]

I've got the Alpine CDA 9883 with the iPod Full Speed connection in my Toyota Tacoma. This Head Unit works excellently with the iPod. Unlike the previous iPod connection Alpine used, the Full Speed does not require another box to plug into the stereo, just a cable that plugs into a port on the back. The search function allows songs to be searched by playlist, artist, song name, and genre, and has very little lag. The search function also has an 'incremental sesarch' function, that allows you to jump to a certian section of your arstist, playlists, genres, by pressing one of the number buttons on the head unit. (#1- A named bands, #6- S-named bands, etc). Sound quality is very good, there is no loss in between the iPod and the vehicle speakers. I would highly recommend this stereo to anyone that would like to use their iPod in their vehicle without loss of any sound quality, or loss of the use of satellite radio or other peripherals.

[The Fire Snake]

What kind of IPOD do you have and how many songs do you have on it roughly? This will help me to get a reference. I want to hook up a 30 Gb 5.5 IPOD Video to a new alpine or pioneer headunit.

[ChrstnaLA]

I just had this head unit installed yesterday and so far am loving the sound of it. But, it won't let me see the menus on my Nano. The stereo instructions say it will work with Nano 1.2 and according to iTunes, mine is 1.1.3. I've got the 2nd Gen 4GB Nano and according to iTunes it's up to date.

1.2 was released in June 06 and I think it was only for 1st Gen. Not sure what to do. :confused: It plays fine, sounds good, but I can't search playlists, artists, albums, etc. Just go through song by song, that's it.

Is it an iPod issue or an issue with the unit I picked?

[bobb-mini]

Why not shoot an email to Alpine. They may have a firmware update for u.

[ChrstnaLA]

Gotta love that you can't email Apple or Alpine directly about this. I'll have to carve out some time to get Alpine on the phone and/or physically go back to the Apple store.

Took the car back to Best Buy yesterday and we have narrowed it down to being the Nano. The installer guy's iPod video worked flawlessly, as did my old Mini that my husband now uses. It's the ver. 1.1.3 that's screwing it up. :mad:

[Jay W.]

Very sorry for the delayed reply...things have been interesting for me here lately.

I have a 5g 30gig iPod with roughly 3200 songs on it. Its installed in a 1998 Toyota Tacoma if that matters.

[alanki30]

This seems like an old, dead thread, but maybe someone else will stumble across it.

I have an Alpine CDA-9883 w/ the KCE-422i ipod cable. Audio was working fine, but I was unable to change playlists, or search music on the iPod (an iPod Photo, 1.2.1 OS).

After experimenting for a while, (disconnecting & reconnecting the cable, resetting the head unit, & resetting the iPod) I finally stumbled across a solution (of sorts.)

I did two things, and I'm not sure which of them actually worked, but it's working properly now, so I don't want to mess it up. 1) I completely restored the iPod and reloaded all the music using iTunes, 2) I did not allow it to sync album art. I happened to notice in another forum that another one of the Alpine head units had problems with album art, so I took it off. Whether it was this, or the complete restore that worked, I'm not sure. However, neither my nano nor my iphone work properly and they both have album art. So maybe that's the problem.

But here's the odd part. After I got it working, I changed the Sound Check value to "on" and changed the Equalizer on the iPod and it stopped working again. When I turned the equalizer off, it started working again.

Apparently the head unit is very finicky about the settings on the ipod.

Hope some of that helps someone else. Now it works great, and I'm very happy with the head unit/ipod connection.

[loarmistead]

This seems like an old, dead thread, but maybe someone else will stumble across it.

I have an Alpine CDA-9883 w/ the KCE-422i ipod cable. Audio was working fine, but I was unable to change playlists, or search music on the iPod (an iPod Photo, 1.2.1 OS).

After experimenting for a while, (disconnecting & reconnecting the cable, resetting the head unit, & resetting the iPod) I finally stumbled across a solution (of sorts.)

I did two things, and I'm not sure which of them actually worked, but it's working properly now, so I don't want to mess it up. 1) I completely restored the iPod and reloaded all the music using iTunes, 2) I did not allow it to sync album art. I happened to notice in another forum that another one of the Alpine head units had problems with album art, so I took it off. Whether it was this, or the complete restore that worked, I'm not sure. However, neither my nano nor my iphone work properly and they both have album art. So maybe that's the problem.

But here's the odd part. After I got it working, I changed the Sound Check value to "on" and changed the Equalizer on the iPod and it stopped working again. When I turned the equalizer off, it started working again.

Apparently the head unit is very finicky about the settings on the ipod.

Hope some of that helps someone else. Now it works great, and I'm very happy with the head unit/ipod connection.

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but I wanted to add to your issue. I ran into the same problem with my iPod a couple of days ago. I was listening to my on-the-go playlist through my CDA-9883 on Wednesday. On Thursday, I cranked the car up, and it was playing some random song that wasn't on the playlist. I tried to do the Search feature and it wouldn't work at all. It worked for Sirius and my MP3 disc, but not for the iPod. I read your post, went outside, and did a quick "Reset the Settings" on my iPod. After that, I plugged it back in and the search feature works like a charm. Apparently some little gremlin got into the iPod overnight and changed some settings that made it magically not work the next day.

But in case anyone else spontaneously runs into this problem... the simple fix is to just go to the iPod menu, and do a quick Reset of the Settings. From there, you just reselect your menu language, and when you plug it back into your Alpine head unit, the search feature works again.