Alpine CDA-9813
first off i want to say that i wired it directly to a battery to rule out the car wiring, it's been playing turning on and off intermittently for months now. couldn't find any pattern at all. not bumps, temperature, periods of time before it happens. but when it starts, it often turns on and off repeatedly every few seconds. some component must be dying. i searched for a long time and eventually found one instance of this happening to someone else's Alpine, almost the exact same unit CDA-9811 which surely has the same main components driving it. does everyone just toss out their older head units after a few years? i want to open this thing up and replace a capacitor or something! any of you tech's ever do this? seems like a shame to toss something that halfway works.
first off i want to say that i wired it directly to a battery to rule out the car wiring, it's been playing turning on and off intermittently for months now. couldn't find any pattern at all. not bumps, temperature, periods of time before it happens. but when it starts, it often turns on and off repeatedly every few seconds. some component must be dying. i searched for a long time and eventually found one instance of this happening to someone else's Alpine, almost the exact same unit CDA-9811 which surely has the same main components driving it. does everyone just toss out their older head units after a few years? i want to open this thing up and replace a capacitor or something! any of you tech's ever do this? seems like a shame to toss something that halfway works.
Be sure to clean the contacts for the detachable face to rule this out, and any switch that is operated when the face is attached.
Head units with flip-down faces tend to have problems with the ribbon cables that connect the face to the main board. I don't know if it's an issue with this model but you may want to replace it before trashing the head unit.
Sticky buttons/switches can also cause problems. If one or more of the buttons on the face no longer click as they originally did, they may be making intermittent contact causing the head unit to do strange things.
Sticky buttons/switches can also cause problems. If one or more of the buttons on the face no longer click as they originally did, they may be making intermittent contact causing the head unit to do strange things.
riotpack thanks for the comment., i checked those contacts and they're looking good. perry thanks also, and i know what you mean. i've had issues with a ribbon cable in my old laptop and also my old iphone 3GS... those things are fragile. i am going to give Alpine a ring tomorrow and see what happens. if that doesn't go well i'm going to open up the unit, starting with the faceplate. i wonder if i could rule out the main unit by using a multimeter on the contacts where the faceplate attaches? i mean if i measured intermittent electrical activity there i would know the problem lied within the main unit and not the faceplate? i'm going to call first of course but worth a shot i figure...
i was looking into nakamichi head units because i've admired the simplicity and supposed sound quality (i haven't listened in person), but it looks to me like they have weak audio processing. bass and treble... maybe a mid. i thought this alpine would have been very dated now, but the digital equalizer and crossover are really good features to have in a car. i think there are 7 bands to manipulate on the EQ and on top of that you can change the area of each, such as 20-80 Hz up or down, 100-200 Hz up or down, et cetera all the way up to 16-20 kHz up or down. i like to amp up a few db's in the 16-20kHz area, take things down a couple db's around 4kHz, put a mid-size curve taking out the bass from door speakers around 80hz and lower, for the sub to take over.
It's possible that you could find an intermittent connection but it's often difficult to find with a multimeter. Simply putting pressure on the various points with the meter probe can cause the conditions to change and mask the problem. That said... it won't hurt to try.
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