heres a question for any of you guys that deal with alpine. i was running a cda-7897 in my car that sounded unreal, i was amazed with that deck. so when i decided to switch up to the cda-9835 i figured it would atleast have the same sound quality if not better considering its pretty much alpines flagship cd reciever. so anyways i install it while things are slow in the shop and it looks all sweet that biolite display is pretty rad an i'm getting all impressed. but then it happens, i throw in a cd and it sounds like absolute garbage. its probably one of the most terrible decks i've heard, the speakers sound weak and tinny, the sub sounds like its getting a distorted signal when you turn it up. i am pretty damn choked with it so i'm wondering what the hell is going on. a phone call to the alpine rep starting off with "why the hell does the 9835 suck so much" got a pretty interesting response. apparentlly he went through 3 9835's before he found one that sounded decent for himself. so what i am currious about is if anyone else is having this problem or anything similar to this with the 9835 or 983x units. if so post a response here an i'll tell my alpine rep and also give a call to your alpine rep so we can get a fix for this. so far my rep tells me that alpine wont admit to a problem since no one has really come forward about this. so lets see if we can get them to admit they pooched something up and get them to fix it up.

Ok, there are readback issues as far back as the 9815, when certain tracks are played with the x-overs above 12db/oct, there is a wierd thump that can rip through your system on a specific part on a track (black eyed peas, no doubt, storebought cd's) We have noticed this on 4 customer vehicles, 3 employee vehicles, and now on our 9833, 9835. The problem goes away @ 12db, or lower. But wait,I'm not done. When you boost a low freq on the p.eq, (50hz, and lower) the volume attenuates! What kind of 'competition' deck attenuates it's output?!
Anyone else noticed this?

I have major issues with 4 CDA-9835. The only way I could get them to sound good was to jack the crossover slop up to 18 or 24db/oct and drop the front and rears down to like -5 -6.

AM/FM tuner in the 9835 sucks ass. Very poor reception.


Two of the 9835 when pushing on the lower part of the face around the presets 1 2 3 the display cuts in and out.

Oh yes on one the real nice display is all distorted looking. Almost like someone jacked the contrast up full and the text is really hard to read.

I as well talked to my Alpine rep and he said there is no known issues with the 9833 or 9835.

Think he might be telling me what I want to hear.

Ouch, I am glad that I checked in here on this post, as I am considering a 9833. Hmmm.

oh boy alpine again! the head units that work well in there line up are quite awesome. however i know what u guy's are talking about as far as denial goes. get used to it with alpine. it is definatly something that they are told to do. i.e. the 150r alarms that they were putting out a couple of years ago now while there was still a security division in canada, was netorious for it's radar sensor problems. out of five that i installed 4 came back with the same problem. soooooo frustrating. by the way there were (no) problems with them that they had herd of. lol. any how that is my beef with alpine and i ran in to it a few times. sucks cause the rep is a great guy. oh well.

^typical radar sensor tho.

yeah i havnt found very many radar sensors that all all that reliable. and that was a little off topic. i'm not trying to rally alpine to fix thier security line. i want to get them to admit there is a problem with the new 983x line and resolve it cause i dont want to start getting pissed off customers when they realize thier 600 dollar deck doesnt sound much better than the factory unit it just replaced.

sell something else that you are more comfortable with. does everyone here run a new constant power lead on the v-drive cd players, is it a votage related issue that is causing the dsp section to do wierd sh!t, maybe, just a thought, i wonder if its a software issue that can be remedied with a software update?

I still want one

i'm not saying that theres a serious functionality problem with the 9835, its an awesome deck as far as the user interface and the biolite display is concerned, and i am sure that most people would never noticed the difference in sound. i'm just a picky bastard.