I find it very hard to take Clarion's Music Catcher seriously from a SQ perspective. Music Catcher is essentially CD-ripping + encoding functionality built into the HU plus a memory store. However:

1. Clarion doesn't tell you how much memory you actually get on each deck.

2. Clarion doesn't tell you what the encoder does at each quality setting.

So basically your music gets encoded at some mystery bitrate into some mystery format to fit a mystery amount of memory. If I'm listening to compressed music, I'd prefer to at least know what bitrate and compression level was used so that if it sounds bad I can account for it.

 

I would send them an email if there was one listed on their web site, but that's not the point.

The point is that Clarion has chosen not to make the details readily available, which makes it difficult for me to take the feature seriously.

It also leads me to assume, correctly or not, that the compression level is high and therefore quality is low.

If a camera manufacturer offered a camera without publicly listing the lens specifications, would you it take it seriously? Would it be reasonable to assume that the lens was of poor quality?

 

I know the Clarion sales representative in my territory & he hasn't been told the difference between "low" & "high" quality recording or what size memory is available.
We also both agree that there's hardly, if any, difference in the "low" vs. "high". They both didn't sound that good at a dealer we attended an event together at earlier this month.
Cool idea, but I think MusiCatcher & SQ are mutually exclusive.

 

Go with an alpine cda-9835, or 9855. You will be happy with these im sure.