Just found out that one of the Alpine dealers close by said that, yes, you can fit a new Alpine CHA-S634 CD/MP3 6-Disc Changer to the original Premium Sound factory fitted head unit with the addition of two adaptor plugs. How's that for amazing?

Last edited by Vic on Mon Nov 15, 2004 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

you have pm

How good is Alpine compared to Pioneer, Sony & JVC? Are they a reliable unit or do they have crappy build quality? Who has Alpine in their car?

personally i dont like alpine, not for any reason other than personal preference, but they do make very good quality gear

Yes, very personal...

Alpine are good, but not the best for the money. They have excellent equalisers and head units. In fact, if you had a full Alpine system you'd be doing very well. However, there are better brands out there for the money.

How much are you willing to pay for the FMS CD Stacker?

The Alpine MP3 capable replacement you mean?

Either, if you found an FMS one would you buy it?

I'm unaware of an FMS MP3 version and the new Alpine unit seems to be the only MP3 CD Changer available at all.
The price of the new Alpine is supposed to be $499 but it seems that Alpine currently have a Promotion on. If you print out the coupon on their website and wander into the store with it, it will reduce the cost of that particular CD Changer by $200. The two adaptor cables come to about $100. So the total cost for the Changer and cables would be just short of $400 all up.
I've gotta say that for that amount of money it's a pretty decent price to be able to play MP3's on the existing factory fitted Premo Sound unit.

Ah, yeah forgot you were getting an MP3 stacker sorry.. Do you have two DINs? Why not just get an mp3 head unit?

I spent some time yesterday looking at HU's but was undecided over how much I was willing to pay. A good quality basic HU would cost a little more than the Alpine changer at the moment.
Still undecided.

I have an old Alpine CD Stacker and HU which went into about 5 different cars I owned, and now lives in my sisters XF. As far as build quality goes I cannot fault it, it has been given a thrashing and has never let me down.

It just looks very dated now.

Well here's the thing about the Changer. If I was just trying to play a CD with MP3's only then a HU would easily be enough and no need for a MP3 stacker. However, I also have a s**t load of regular CD's and enjoy listening to them often. I don't like to keep case full of CD's in the cabin and have to be changing them as they finish playing so a Changer that plays regular CD's and MP3's is a bonus. If the new one can work with the original factory unit and be done for minimal cost then it's a good alternative to my needs.

Yep, as alluded to previously the stock "Ford" head units and CD stackers in the EF/EL are Alpine jobbies. You can fit pretty much any Alpine M-BUS compatible CD stacker without replacing the head unit. A few months back I had an S634 (which is compatible with both M-BUS and the new Ai-Net giving buyers an upgrade path they can follow if they wish in the future. Connecting it via M-BUS though requires a second adaptor cable in addition to the one needed to convert the Ford plug to Alpines 5 pin DIN standard) fitted to my EF Fairmont wagon and can't really fault it.

The stock head unit was designed before MP3 was even heard of my the majority of people so there's no provision for reading MP3 metadata (so no track titles etc) making it a pain to find specific tracks on a crowded CD but I usually just pick a CD, hit random and let it go. This does give rise to the only real, if only quite miniscule, problem I have with it: If I leave it in random and turn the ignition off the head unit will "forget" that it was in random but the changer will "remember". The solution is just to hit random, let it go through the theatrics of winding up the track numbers and finally settling on the one it was playing initially and then hitting random. Once the initial confusion wears off and you're aware of the problem it's easily dealt with.