Alpine iDA-X305

Alpine iDA-X305 review

Up sides:
Great audio quality. Best I have ever had. Very easy to read display. Best power output for door speakers without a amp I have ever had. the 50 x 4 is very under rated. The sound quality is top notch, and gets even better with amped output. Great as a center piece to a very expensive sytem. Great funktionality with all other media devices.
There are a lot of very technical features that most people probabaly wont wat but if you want the ability to control or tune all of the thing taht afect you sound than this is the deck for you.


Down sides.
No cd palyer built in. Pricey. Not a such a good eq built in
Overall all a great deck if you use indavidual pieces for all aplications in your system. IE crosovers, amps, ipod, or usb, and cd changers. graphic equalizers and such.

I would recamend this deck highly if you plan on spending a lot of money on you system because this deck is no more than the interface you use to controll all the other pieces of you system.

best head unit for ipod

I sure do love this thing. i never was much for ones that don't have a nice display like this one, and ill probably never buy one again. speakers sound a lot better than they did with the stock H/U. glare is bad occasionally, but its nothing horrible. screen seems pretty durable, at first i was nervous it would get scratched up or lose its shine but its been months and it still looks brand new. only thing i miss sometimes is a cd player, but the sacrifice seems worth it to me. id definitely buy this again.

good product

Even thou this is the third time I've done this. the alpine lived up to its name,easy to use and sounds good.

Okay...

The older Alpine iPod deck might've been a little more complicated at first to use, but the sound was way better and didn't need any extra equipment to set it up

Nice ipod integration deck

The Alpine iDA-X305 is the best ipod integration deck that I have seen at any of the electronic stores. The display is beautiful and the features of the deck are very nice. The circuitry inside this unit makes the music that comes out of your ipod sound as good as if you had the bands CD spinning in the dash, and that was the most important thing to me. The only problem with the unit is that it often comes up with an error message on the screen and I have to "reset" my ipod to get the problem fixed. Not a huge deal, but an annoyance that makes a 5 star deck only worthy of 4.

Awesome; but could be better

I purchased this and used for about a month. The ipod features and all the add-ons were nice BUT this unit only has 2 volt preouts. If you're into sound quality, this unit will need the Imprint to get the sound perfect. I took my 5 year old CDA 9825 out for this unit and it sounds alot better than this one with the 4 volt preouts. You'd think for $300 Alpine could give us 4 volt preouts since they took out the cd player but I still love Alpine's head units.

Great headunit for iPod user.

This is a very nice headunit for those of you who ditched CD's a long time ago. The iPod interface is easily the best there is out there. Screen is clear and bright at night and during the day glare is present, but usually not distracting or interfering with reading the screen.

I gave features a 3 only because out of the box, you don't get much. Basic treble and bass controls, "loudness", etc. Once you add the PXA-H100 that 3 becomes a 5, easily. At that point it's the most sound versatile headunit I've ever owned.

Got mine hooked to both a PXA-H100 and KCA-400BT, works flawlessly. Couldn't be happier.

Great iPod Interface

Pros:

This unit is one of the best HUs to fully enjoy an iPod in your car. The full-color screen is bright and easy to read. Search function is as easy as that used by the iPod. Album art looks good, the text is easy to read, and it will scroll if too long to display. I do wish the album images were slightly sharper when enlarged, but that is a minor complaint.

Great sound and setting options; however, you really need to spend the extra money to get the Imprint processor to realize the full potential of this unit. The HU uses a Burr-Brown D-A converter for the iPod input, which is as good as I've ever head in a car unit.

Easily plays music on USB memory devices or drives. Not as slick as iPod interface, but pretty good.

Clock display is great -- very easy to read.


Cons:

FM/AM screen is uninteresting compared to the iPod screen -- they should come up with something more creative.

The volume knob pushes in for additional functionality in selecting options or songs; however, it tends to get pushed in when trying to adjust the volume. I wish the knob had a rubber grip so it was easier to turn.

HPF only; no LPF for the sub output -- not a big deal if your sub amp includes a LPF.

Needs a separate accessory cable if you want an RCA audio input.