I finally got around to installing everything.
A while ago I bought an Alpine CHA-S634, an alpine
KCA-130B adapter cable, and a PIE VW/PC-ALP protocol
converter.
I had some problems at first with it simply not working.
When I pulled out both the headunit and the CD player, I
found the CD changer wire hiding in the area behind and
under some plastic thingies. I plugged it into the back
of the CD player and boom, everything worked.
The worst part of the installation was that the cables
are very long and the bracket that came in the car was a
little too small to fit the alpine changer. I had to bang
on it to make it sort of fit; it still doesn't really but
I'm lazy and don't care, though I would have paid another
$30 for a bracket that fit perfectly.
Some observations:
It works fine with CDs. I have my MP3s in my computer
organized in directories like:
artist/album/song1.mp3
artist/album/song2.mp3
I use linux and used mkisofs . | cdrecord -options and
the resulting CD worked perfectly without me needing to
read or learn anything new (bonus!).
It is a pain to search around on these resulting CDs;
the head unit only skips forward or backwards one track
at a time and if you hold it down it will seek within a
single track. The only way to get around a disk with
several hundred tracks is to use the random skip function
and hope you land somewhere near what you're looking for.
Although there is space on the headunit's display for more
information, it only displays the last 2 digits of the track
so tracks 30, 130 and 230 are all "track 30"
The sound quality is good and I prefer simple installation
over snazzy graphics and a decent interface. With
everything, the total price was $345 from logjamelectronics.com
and it works as advertised. It could be better but it
is also cheap(ish) and I'm happy with it. It's not a
phatbox but it can put about 7 hours per CD and new CDs
are pretty cheap.
A while ago I bought an Alpine CHA-S634, an alpine
KCA-130B adapter cable, and a PIE VW/PC-ALP protocol
converter.
I had some problems at first with it simply not working.
When I pulled out both the headunit and the CD player, I
found the CD changer wire hiding in the area behind and
under some plastic thingies. I plugged it into the back
of the CD player and boom, everything worked.
The worst part of the installation was that the cables
are very long and the bracket that came in the car was a
little too small to fit the alpine changer. I had to bang
on it to make it sort of fit; it still doesn't really but
I'm lazy and don't care, though I would have paid another
$30 for a bracket that fit perfectly.
Some observations:
It works fine with CDs. I have my MP3s in my computer
organized in directories like:
artist/album/song1.mp3
artist/album/song2.mp3
I use linux and used mkisofs . | cdrecord -options and
the resulting CD worked perfectly without me needing to
read or learn anything new (bonus!).
It is a pain to search around on these resulting CDs;
the head unit only skips forward or backwards one track
at a time and if you hold it down it will seek within a
single track. The only way to get around a disk with
several hundred tracks is to use the random skip function
and hope you land somewhere near what you're looking for.
Although there is space on the headunit's display for more
information, it only displays the last 2 digits of the track
so tracks 30, 130 and 230 are all "track 30"
The sound quality is good and I prefer simple installation
over snazzy graphics and a decent interface. With
everything, the total price was $345 from logjamelectronics.com
and it works as advertised. It could be better but it
is also cheap(ish) and I'm happy with it. It's not a
phatbox but it can put about 7 hours per CD and new CDs
are pretty cheap.