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Topic: Alpine Launches World’s First Car Audio Head Units (Read 4855 times) previous topic - next topic
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Alpine Launches World’s First Car Audio Head Units

Reply #1 –
Neat. I'll stick with my docking station wired into the head unit though.

Alpine Launches World’s First Car Audio Head Units

Reply #2 –
Does this mean that we'll be seeing car-audio AAC/MP4 capable players soon? if so, YES!.. YES!.. Then i can finally start using AAC seriously (my current caraudio player only playes mp3 and wma, so i've had to stick with mp3 because of that).
myspace.com/borgei - last.fm/user/borgei

Alpine Launches World’s First Car Audio Head Units

Reply #3 –
Quote
Neat. I'll stick with my docking station wired into the head unit though.

I like the way the unit shows the tag info and controls the iPod so you can stick it in the trunk or glove compartment.

How did you learn how to wire your player into the head unit?  Are there places that will do this for you?  Can this be done with any player?

Alpine Launches World’s First Car Audio Head Units

Reply #4 –
Quote
I like the way the unit shows the tag info and controls the iPod so you can stick it in the trunk or glove compartment.

How did you learn how to wire your player into the head unit?  Are there places that will do this for you?  Can this be done with any player?

Yeah, the tag info display is one thing I don't have in my setup. Not generally a big deal though.

As for how did I learn how to do it.. Umm.. well, I've been hacking stuff together for 21 years. You pick this sort of thing up.

Really, what I did wasn't all that complicated. Here's the breakdown:

First, I ordered an extra dock and a Belkin auto power adapter from the Apple website. I wanted the unit to be able to charge while it sat in there.

Second, while waiting on the dock, I ordered a PIE X3 unit to interface the audio into my cars head unit. Now this unit is kinda car specific. Different cars need different interfaces. If your car's head unit already has AUX audio inputs, then you don't need one of these. Mine didn't, so what this device does is sit between my CD Changer and my car stereo and take over the audio inputs via a switch. There were cheaper solutions, but this was prettier. For many head units, you can get a box that pretends to actually be a CD Changer. For my head unit, I could probably even wire up some kind of device to talk the J1850-VPW protocol and be able to put text directly onto the display that way, if I knew how to talk to the iPod on the other side of it and get the text to display. This sort of thing varies from car to car and the best bet is to just google for info about your car.

Next, I ripped open the console and wired an extra power adapter hidden under there. This I got from a three way car power splitter that I probably got from Best Buy ages ago. I just cut the thing apart, I had no current use for it anyway. The Belkin power adapter plugs into this and the other end hooked to the back of the dock.

Next, the dock got it's line output wired into the X3 interface (I didn't have it yet actually, so I tested the thing with a cassette adapter I had lying about). This gets the audio to the X3 interface and lets me switch to it when I choose to do so.

The dock got mounted via velcro to a space under the head unit. There's a nice big open area in my car that makes a good mounting place for the dock and iPod and such. I was going to drill holes and screw the thing down, but the temporary velcro I used worked so well that I left it that way. It provides more of a cushioning effect than I thought it would, while being strong enough to stick on at even the tightest, fastest turns I make. Not had any problems with it, really.

And that's basically it. Audio is audio, and wiring a car's audio isn't really any harder than wiring home audio. It's just a matter of finding the right interface to the stereo system, since cars are more proprietary in this regard. The X3 I got is kinda expensive since it's a sort of "generic" audio switcher, but if I later shift to another ride, I just can replace the interface cable for it and hook it to a new car without buying a whole new interface. Plus it'll handle three different audio inputs. I'm only using one at the moment, but if I end up sticking video and a DVD in there, then that capability could come in handy.

Here's some pics I took of the setup before I got the X3 thing mounted and was still using the cassette for testing: http://otto.homedns.org:8888/gallery/view_...Name=ImpalaiPod


Oh, and any good car stereo shop will be able to do this sort of thing. No, not Best Buy or Circuit City, go find a reputable local shop that does nothing but car stereos.

Alpine Launches World’s First Car Audio Head Units

Reply #5 –
It's also nice that it charges the battery while connected (that was my first question).

I'll be sticking with my Music Keg to play FLAC (and Vorbis) in my car, but it's good to see other options out there.  It's also good to see Alpine catching up to Kenwood (and now others) for HD-based source component integration.

I've searched around for this info, but haven't found an answer:  Does anyone know what kind of output stage the iPod uses?  I'm curious to know where the "bottleneck" would be for dynamic range and frequency response now that it can be integrated with a car audio system.  (And I know many variances couldn't be audibly differentiated anyway....I'm just curious.)  All I have seen are general "20-20000Hz" frequency response specs, but nothing more detailed.


Edit:
Oh, also, I'm curious about whether navigating the music on the iPod via the Alpine head unit will be enabled by something similar to SSA (Simple Stereo Architecture), with which you can be listening to a song in a mixed playlist, and (without interrupting playback) "jump out of" that playlist and into the album the song is from.  That's one of my favorite features for easily navigating the large amount of music in a HD-sourced car audio system, without taking my eyes off the road.

If it's not supplied initially, then perhaps a firmware update could provide "plug-in" functionality, then SSA (and other features) could be added over time.

Alpine Launches World’s First Car Audio Head Units

Reply #6 –
Quote
It's also nice that it charges the battery while connected (that was my first question).

My real question is does this Alpine device access the iPod as a music player or does it access it as a hard drive?

It could work either way, really. It's just that in music mode, the iPod would be doing the actual decoding and playback, and you'd care about the iPod's audio specs, but if it's in hard drive mode, then the Alpine unit is doing the decoding work and it's just using the iPod as a storage device that it can talk to. All the music on the iPod is accessible on the hard drive mode, really.

The reason I ask is that the original link seems to make it sound like one and then in the very next sentence make it sound like the other. And the picture (while I don't expect it to be accurate as it's probably a photoshop job) shows the iPod in the "Ok to disconnect" mode meaning that the iPod can't be used as either a music player nor as a hard drive.. Which actually makes it obviously a photoshop job, in retrospect. They picked the one mode where you can't get anything off the iPod, as music nor as data.

My money says they're using it as a hard drive only, and all the iPod frequency response characteristics and such are irrelevant, as it's the Alpine hardware doing the actual decoding. That's really the most obvious and easiest way to do it. And it could be engineered without having any detailed specs on the iPod's special dock connector, or any help from Apple to do it.

Plus, if they treat the iPod as a generic firewire drive, then they could adapt other generic firewire drives to the system as well, with minimal effort or engineering required.

Alpine Launches World’s First Car Audio Head Units

Reply #7 –
Quote
Quote
It's also nice that it charges the battery while connected (that was my first question).

My real question is does this Alpine device access the iPod as a music player or does it access it as a hard drive?

It could work either way, really. It's just that in music mode, the iPod would be doing the actual decoding and playback, and you'd care about the iPod's audio specs, but if it's in hard drive mode, then the Alpine unit is doing the decoding work and it's just using the iPod as a storage device that it can talk to. All the music on the iPod is accessible on the hard drive mode, really.

The reason I ask is that the original link seems to make it sound like one and then in the very next sentence make it sound like the other. And the picture (while I don't expect it to be accurate as it's probably a photoshop job) shows the iPod in the "Ok to disconnect" mode meaning that the iPod can't be used as either a music player nor as a hard drive.. Which actually makes it obviously a photoshop job, in retrospect. They picked the one mode where you can't get anything off the iPod, as music nor as data.

My money says they're using it as a hard drive only, and all the iPod frequency response characteristics and such are irrelevant, as it's the Alpine hardware doing the actual decoding. That's really the most obvious and easiest way to do it. And it could be engineered without having any detailed specs on the iPod's special dock connector, or any help from Apple to do it.

Plus, if they treat the iPod as a generic firewire drive, then they could adapt other generic firewire drives to the system as well, with minimal effort or engineering required.

With the Music Keg, it does the decoding itself, converts the data stream to analog, then ports it at line-level to the head unit.  The Keg also has firmware that defines how it communicates with the head unit, for reading tag info, handling controls, SSA navigation, etc.  The head unit sees the Keg as a "CD changer", only with (far) more than 6 or 10 discs.

With a lack of more detailed info, the Alpine/iPod probably does something similar.  The iPod most likely decodes the audio, converts to analog, then that is sent to the head unit as an input source.  In that situation, the iPod would still be the "music player", but treated as a source component (like a CD changer) by the head unit.

Unless the Alpine head has a CPU, some kind of operating system, and onboard memory, it couldn't decode audio itself.  It's possible it could have these things, but not likely.

The "OK to Disconnect" message is the iPod being "unmounted" by the head unit.  The cartridge in my Keg works the same way.  In my car, turning off the head unmounts the HD in the DMS cartridge (unmounts the logical partitions, actually) before shutting down (takes 5-10 seconds).  When attached to my PC (via a USB cradle), it's unmounted a similar way prior to removal.

Alpine Launches World’s First Car Audio Head Units

Reply #8 –
Quote
...The head unit sees the Keg as a "CD changer", only with (far) more than 6 or 10 discs.

With a lack of more detailed info, the Alpine/iPod probably does something similar.  The iPod most likely decodes the audio, converts to analog, then that is sent to the head unit as an input source.  In that situation, the iPod would still be the "music player", but treated as a source component (like a CD changer) by the head unit.

Unless the Alpine head has a CPU, some kind of operating system, and onboard memory, it couldn't decode audio itself.  It's possible it could have these things, but not likely.

The "OK to Disconnect" message is the iPod being "unmounted" by the head unit.  The cartridge in my Keg works the same way.  In my car, turning off the head unmounts the HD in the DMS cartridge (unmounts the logical partitions, actually) before shutting down (takes 5-10 seconds).  When attached to my PC (via a USB cradle), it's unmounted a similar way prior to removal.

I know how the music keg works. I also know what the "OK to Disconnect" means, but that's precisely why I don't think the iPod is doing the actual music decoding in this case.

If they mount the iPod as a drive and then unmount it when you "eject" the iPod, you'd get that okay to disconnect screen. But if they were really using the iPod as an actual music device, you'd never get that screen. Ever. That screen only happens when you mount the thing as a hard drive and are not using any of the audio capabilities of the iPod itself.

And the head unit doesn't need to have the CPU and such. There's that "Ai-NET" box there that's clearly in this sort of a setup. The guts of the system could be in there. Furthermore, it's not all that unusual for a head unit to have CPU/memory/OS these days... Every MP3-CD player ever made has that functionality. You can buy portable MP3-CD capable players at Best Buy for $50. I had a MP3-CD capable head unit in my car over 3 years ago. Thing cost $300 at the time, now you can get a better one than mine was for $150.

No, I still gotta say that it's using the iPod as a portable hard drive only. The audio/decoding characteristics of the iPod play no part in this setup.