# HDD head unit: a reasonably-priced, stylish alternative



## Guest (Dec 19, 2009)

Hi. I've been looking into changing the standard Audi Chorus cassette on my QS for a HDD head unit. I would have thought that the market would be literally flooded with offerings given that cassettes are obsolete, most people have an MP3 player and keep their CDs in a big box in the loft. How wrong was I?

I'll cut to the chase and mention a reasonably-priced and stylish alternative solution that doesn't involve having an iPod mounted somewhere or flying around loose on the front seat.

It appears that there are a lot of head units on the market with USB connections either on the front facia, or a flying lead at the back which would allow connection of a USB memory stick. These devices seem to be much cheaper than an SD card of equivalent size. A 64 Gb one which would take everything from my 60 Gb iPod photo can be had on eBay for £30-£75 pounds but full retail is near £135 (December 2009).

I eventually found a Clarion FZ409E which retails for between £116 and £135 mail order (December 2009) which is mechanism-free (what's the point of a single CD player I thought) and offers the advantage of being near immune to major vibrations and jolts from stiffly-sprung sports cars and, because it doesn't have rotary dials sticking out, should fit behind your aluminium flap without impeding full closure.

So, for about £300 (including about £30 for the necessary Bose/non Bose harness adaptor), you can change your standard Audi ICE for a stylish looking touch-screen head unit from a top-notch manufacturer and bang all your MP3 tunes on it. A slight nit-pick would be that the illumination is blue rather than red. Hopefully, I can find the cash and time in the new year to buy the kit and make the change.

Regards,

Doug


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## mikecrossuk (Sep 27, 2008)

Doug,

I've just this minute finished installing my new aftermarket head unit in. 
Its the Alpine IDA-X001 which has red illumination which is spot on to audi's red lights in the car, this unit is capable of playing ipods, any mp3 player of a usb stick. I use my ipod in my car which i have managed to neatly tuck all the wire away and have my ipod in the small console where the fuel release, alarm and bot lift buttons are.

If you want i can get you pics to show you what it looks like fitted.

Mike


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## UKRPG (Oct 14, 2009)

looks like this!

http://www.********.co.uk/forum/garage.php?mode=view_image&image_id=2110


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## DAZTTC (May 20, 2005)

I have been looking at these did you have any problems with fitting ?

DAZ 8)


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## mikecrossuk (Sep 27, 2008)

It does indeedy

where did you get the plastic side parts from??


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## mikecrossuk (Sep 27, 2008)

DAZTTC said:


> I have been looking at these did you have any problems with fitting ?
> 
> DAZ 8)


Not really!!

At first i left the unit with 2 permanent lives so i had to turn it on/off all the time which i got told would eventually drain my battery so i took a wire from the bus bar from the switched relay.

Mike


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## Guest (Dec 19, 2009)

Mike,

Thanks for highlighting that. I did see that model while trawling through, but I think must have been slightly put off from clicking the picture and reading the specifications by the look. I think I assumed the scroll wheel was a big sticking out button or something, which it obviously isn't.

I've just seen an Alpine IDA-X301RR which I see also has no mechanism, red illumination and is only about £130 which is enough to pay for a car head unit I think.

My intention was to keep the iPod out of the car completely and rely on solid state memory for holding the MP3 files, but I can see that if you can control it from the head unit, then it could just sit in the recess you mention. The only minor concern I had was where to dangle a rear USB flying from and would it be long enough? I need to have a poke about down in the footwell in daylight.

Thanks again for sharing another good solution.

Doug


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## mikecrossuk (Sep 27, 2008)

Doug,

As previously mentioned the cable for the IDA-X001 goes from the back of the head unit and i drilled a hole into the cubby hole to post the cable through, This cable has a usb end, which i have an adapter for it, which is from usb to ipod to play my ipod. Obviously you wouldn't want the adapter and just need the usb end for the usb sticks

Let me know if that doesn't make sense.

I bought my headunit second hand pretty good condition for £90 posted so not too much.

Mike


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## RichDean (Nov 24, 2009)

> by UKRPG on Today, 16:33
> looks like this!


UKRPG, think we were chatting about this the other day weren't we.

The Alpine IDA-X001 - the red illumination looks really nice, but is there a way to change the blue in the display screen?


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## triplefan (Sep 3, 2008)

How about making your own wall paper with this http://josh1.com/Projects/AlpineImageConverter/


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## RichDean (Nov 24, 2009)

> by triplefan on 1 minute ago
> How about making your own wall paper with this http://josh1.com/Projects/AlpineImageConverter


Shhwwweeeett!!

I'm thinking about getting the IDA-X305. I've just downloaded the manual from the Alpine site - you can change the display background to red, and you can upload your own graphics.

I'm thinking something Audi related could look awesome!


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## mikecrossuk (Sep 27, 2008)

If you look on the second page on the gallery there are 2 Audi Pics, which look pretty good. One with the four rings and audi underneath and another which looks similar to the steering wheel centre.

Mike


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## mikecrossuk (Sep 27, 2008)

Just tried downloading a pic now, but don't seem to have anything to open the picture. Its an APN file does anyone know what these are?

Mike


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## KentishTT (Jun 28, 2007)

Just a quick comment about Clarion.

They look very good quality and well finished and indeed they were excellent but since the mid 90's they have not been very reliable at all.

I used to sell ICE equipment and they were one of the makes we used to see a lot of returns with and the sound quality was generally not as good as many others.

In contrast, Alpine are excellent and always have been.


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## UKRPG (Oct 14, 2009)

I quite like the blue screen as it adds contrast. I also have a Parrott 3100 with a similar coloured backlight so goes well. The blanking plates are just ebay specials for a couple of quid


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## mikecrossuk (Sep 27, 2008)

UKRPG said:


> I quite like the blue screen as it adds contrast. I also have a Parrott 3100 with a similar coloured backlight so goes well. The blanking plates are just ebay specials for a couple of quid


I've seen them on eBay and i've just bought some

Cheers


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## Guest (Dec 20, 2009)

Thanks for the insider info Kentish. Looks like more research is required but on reflection, the Alpine looks like a better bet all round whether it's iPod or USB stick.

Ta.

Doug


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## UKRPG (Oct 14, 2009)

It certainly manages both very well plus you get the reliability and sound quality yod want and expect from the brand


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## Guest (Dec 30, 2009)

I eventually ordered an Alpine iDA-X311RR from Car Audio Direct. After initial concerns, I think I'm in good shape with the installation. RichDean's thread on installing the Alpine iDA-X305 makes a lot more sense now that I've worked through the installation myself! Thanks Rich.

First, I managed to buy a counterfeit 64 Gb Kingston Data Traveller 150 from a reputable seller with over 270 positive feedbacks & 100% score. Thankfully, I've obtained a full refund and bought a Novatech one for £113 instead which is great.

Second, the Alpine iDA-X311RR only has two RCA preout female connections which initially worried me enough to want to send it back, but doesn't actually matter (see later). The next concern was the enormous Alpine harness:










Now see later post...


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## Guest (Jan 1, 2010)

Well... I've soldiered on with this and found out enough to get me a powered up and working unit that I'm happy with the sound of. To summarise what I found:

1. For power, the head unit requires the red (switched live), black (ground) and yellow (battery permanent) live inputs. Red and black only won't do. I therefore had to connect up the yellow plug to the second red socket to make it work. I could probably get away with yellow and black, but didn't try that combination.

2. I cut all the speaker wires off the large Alpine harness plus some other redundant inputs which drastically reduced the size of the harness such that with a bit of careful cable tieing, it should fit in the dash aperture.

3. When I power up the Bose amplifier using the blue lead, I get a background hiss and loud banging noises on connection of the RCA leads. Looks like a ground loop isolator will be required as suggested.

4. When I plug in the front RCA plugs to the back of the head unit with the Bose amplifier powered up, ALL the car's speakers receive sound so I guess I can lop the two rear RCA leads off the AIS2251 adaptor harness too. I noted the following advice from Wak on RichDean's iDA-X305 thread: "A coupe with Bose only uses the front line out and only has a single line in to the amp for all 7 speakers."

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=160192&p=1628840&hilit=Bose+RCA#p1628840

5. When I adjust the head unit's audio settings, increasing the subwoofer setting makes a massive difference to the sound. Sounds really beefy and as per OEM/better than OEM with subwoofer at +6 and bass adjusted up to +3.

6. RichDean routed his iPod cable into the glovebox which is a neat solution, but I'm going to try routing the USB extension cable down to the long thin shelf in the passenger side footwell.

To anyone who knows about the Bose system and car audio in general, I guess none of this is a surprise. I'm very much an ICE newbie. It's been frustrating but fun, in a masochistic sort of way.

Doug


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## Mondo (Feb 20, 2009)

Mate, I feel your pain with the fake USB drive. I got stung on eBay too for one, and eventually got a refund. In the end I got a mate who was visiting the States to bring back a Kingston DataTraveler DT150 64GB stick and I have that plugged into the back of my iDA-X100, thanks to some nifty wiring work from the WakMeister. It's even far enough back to shut the flap without having to take the front of the head unit off.

I had a 60GB USB-powered external hard drive in for a bit but, althought the HU could power it, it was diabolically slow. And, TBH, the USB stick isn't that much faster. Plus, being USB and not iPod, the album art doesn't show up and the options for seeking/searching/playing are, well, pi$$-poor. Might have to buy a 2nd hand iPod just to get use of all the iPod-related features of the HU. But it's a great little unit and looks well 8) in the TT.


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## Guest (Jan 1, 2010)

Thanks for the empathy. Much needed. TT Forumers don't do hugs, but if they did, I guess they'd be the best hugs in the world... 

Anyway, I'm experimenting with USB sticks. I originally transferred all my 6,000+ files on my laptop as a direct dump from the iPod Control folder. Then I used MP3Tag software to give them human recognisable filenames with artist & title. Then I spent about 3 days reorganising them into folders according to artist & album title. A very simple MS Excel VBA macro was handy for creating the 360+ folders in the correct hierarchy.

However, I'm not sure now whether it makes searching easier to have them organised into folders as I have done, or just leave them as a massive list and let the Alpine just do its banking stuff. At first sight, it looks like the files have been dealt out into 6 banks of the maximum 1,000 tracks plus the seventh bank with the rest (say 350 tracks). BUT, each bank looks like it has got a set of artists ordered alphabetically by artist and track name because if I want The Eagles, say, the search skips from Def Leppard to Foreigner so that I have to select a different bank. :?

As I say, some experimenting is required. My wife's laptop still has all the unorganised songs in one folder, so I'll try dumping them in that format to see if the unit's banking deals out the artists in a more logical fashion when it sees them as one long list. I hope that makes some sense.

Doug


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2010)

I thought it might be useful to show the amount of gubbins required to fit behind the aftermarket stereo:
















The Alpine harness has been hacked down to the bare minimum and bundled up with small cable ties.
The Shark branded Maplin ground loop isolator is massive; about the same as a D size battery.
I've had to get a couple of right-angled RCA adaptors because of the limited clearance on the back left of the unit.
I still haven't connected up the blue lead to power the radio antenna signal filter.
Think twice if you want to install one of these, or any aftermarket stereo as there really isn't that much room in the dashboard aperture.


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## liffy99 (Feb 28, 2007)

Hmmm - tempting but loadsa questions;

I currently have a std Concert HU / Bose with a Phatnoise Hard Disk system in place of the CD changer.
Works great - still get all the info on the HU and dash display, can search all the files (and the system plays / speaks the track / artist at the start ) and does all I need. All my music files though are in lossless FLAC format, not lossy MP3.

I'd like to upgrade the HU for something of higher quailty but presume I'd lose all the functionality and not be able to handle FLAC files. I suppose I could convert all the files to Apple Lossless and use an IPod but I would still lose all the functionality and no longer have a conveniently and rigidly mounted interface (ie the HU) to choose music from (flying leads / IPod on passenger side somewhere etc.)

Anyone tried to set up a high quality, hard disk (or flash memory) system based on lossless audio files ?


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## triplefan (Sep 3, 2008)

I don't see what the H/U has to do with replaying the files you have on your Phatnoise, surely the only consideration is the lead that connects the two, so you would need a replacement H/U that has an input for a CD changer or possibly a USB socket and the correct patch lead from Phatnoise


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## Guest (Jan 3, 2010)

liffy99 said:


> All my music files though are in lossless FLAC format, not lossy MP3.


This will be of no help to you, but I don't believe there's no justification for lossless formats unless you're an audiophile and have a special room with a superb surround sound set-up.

I made a decision early on to burn all my music at 256 kBps instead of the 'normal' 125 kBps because most of my listening would be done at home in low background noise conditions and I consider myself a discerning listener but not an audiophile. Frankly, when I was testing my new set-up in a quiet car in the garage, it sounded superb. When you factor in any surrounding noise such as NVH in your car, no-one can surely argue in favour of burning at CD quality bitrates or using lossless formats unless you're memory rich?

I wondered about converting mine down to a lower bitrate, but when I looked into it, there wasn't an easy way to do it well so I gave up and bought bigger memory.

Doug


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## liffy99 (Feb 28, 2007)

Hi
Quite agree there's no real need for lossless audio in the car, given the acoustic envirnment. But I do appreciate lossless quality at home, especially driving electrostatic 'speakers.

Thing is quite simply I don't really want to have to keep two copies of my music - one in FLAC and one in, say, MP3. It would just lead to confusion on the PC !

So want to stick with one format and by default that has to be the highest quality one.

So FLAC in the car is just a practical, not a quality, choice.


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## Guest (Jan 4, 2010)

Yeah, I totally appreciate the issue. It takes a bit of forethought when you go down one road because it's usually difficult to change. Hmm. How many MP3 files/albums have you got? I presume 000s. I've got about 360 albums equating to just under 6,000 tracks at over 50 Gb. Until recently, I didn't have a back-up on the computer but got very paranoid very quickly and banged them on the laptop. They're chewing up a lot of my 100 Gb (gross) HDD so thats why I opted for the solid state storage & playback option offered by the USB memory stick. I reckoned £113 for 64 Gb was pretty reasonable.

We live in great times, technologically speaking.

Doug


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## Guest (Jan 9, 2010)

...and finally the head unit fitted with facia surround still to source and fit:








Some more installation notes:

All the wires and kit fitted o.k. in the available space with some rough and ready pre-arrangement, but I had a problem with stuff catching on the lip of the plastic housing when pulling the stereo out to reposition the wires. I had to yank it free and in doing so pulled one of the connectors out of the Alpine harnesses' plug. I managed to fit it back in but because the plastic retaining lug had sheared off, I had to turn it around and jam it back in.

Rather than fit the cage and then jam it in using an interference type fit as some people have chosen to do, I fabricated some small L brackets out of 3 mm thick aluminium curtain track guide brackets that we happened to have left over and fixed these to the two dash trim retaining bolts seen in the picture. I removed the Alpine facia surround and its mounting brackets and I found that the brackets I made fitted nicely into the recess that was left. I was rather surprised to find that this stereo didn't come with any mounting brackets as other aftermarket units I have bought (a JVC in 2008) had some.

Although I'm very happy with the sound quality of the unit, there's plenty of features that niggle me with it including:
- Unwieldy wiring harness;
- Lack of a built-in ground loop isolator and radio signal filter
- Flimsy build quality;
- Some fiddly buttons;
- LCD type multi-element display rather than a dot matrix display so making identification of track information unnecessarily difficult;
- When the unit is playing from a USB memory stick source, it laboriously allocates tracks to its memory in banks of 1,000. I gave up with the 64 Mb stick with all my MP3 files on and just filled a 16 Gb stick with various compilations up to the limit of one bank (1,000 tracks) which I'll play on random mix mode to avoid the need to change banks or do any searching. I think it only does this after the power supply is interrupted which isn't so bad. Also, like most people, I tend to listen to the same songs in the same compilations, so no great loss.

All in all though, I can put up with most of the niggles for the price of £130. If you can afford another ton or so, go for the iDA-X305 or newer models with the dot matrix colour display.

Doug


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## Guest (Jan 10, 2010)

Could anyone specify the correct surround facia for this installation? As you can see, I've removed the Alpine head unit's own facia so will need a one piece facia with thick sides (21 mm) and a top/bottom (5 mm). I had a quick look at various internet suppliers and saw a number on offer.

Doug


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## jas6004 (May 4, 2009)

How about an OSIR fascia from TT Shop, not the cheapest answer but just the job.

Jas


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## Guest (Jan 10, 2010)

Good suggestion, but I went for the OSIR black machined aluminium one for subtlety rather than the carbon fibre job. £40 so right enough, not the cheapest option.

The TT Shop did show the dimensions which were 24 mm by 6 mm (top) and 5 mm bottom so near enough.

The fitted item:










Thanks.

Doug


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## KentishTT (Jun 28, 2007)

Doug Short said:


> Could anyone specify the correct surround facia for this installation? As you can see, I've removed the Alpine head unit's own facia so will need a one piece facia with thick sides (21 mm) and a top/bottom (5 mm). I had a quick look at various internet suppliers and saw a number on offer.
> 
> Doug


Doug;

You can still fit the fascia and use the dedicated adaptor fascia for the TT - it just fills in the ends where there is a difference in the width between the DIN size aftermarket unit and the OEM headunit.

I have a spare new one in the garage if you need one.

Good choice with the headunit btw, much better than the clarion :wink:

Cheers,
Kevin


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## triplefan (Sep 3, 2008)

I have the Osir, it fits really well


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## rustyintegrale (Oct 1, 2006)

Doug Short said:


> I wondered about converting mine down to a lower bitrate, but when I looked into it, there wasn't an easy way to do it well so I gave up and bought bigger memory.
> 
> Doug


But if you're gonna do it why not do it all at 320kbps/stereo/44.1KHz?

Apologies if I've missed a point here but I can't understand why anyone would rip MP3s at a lesser bitrate given the price of disk space these days. This option sounds as good as CDs but occupies less space. 

Cheers

Rich


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## Guest (Jan 11, 2010)

Rusty: for me, the price of memory in November 2009 isn't an issue, it was the price five years ago in November 2004 when I bought my iPod (60 Gb photo). I think I chose wisely on bit rate because I still have about 7 Gb left 5 years later and am very happy with the sound quality.

But, yes, if I was making the decision now, I would probably go for the CD quality as I'd be buying a 120 Gb iPod. Interesting how times change in five years.

November 2004: 60 Gb iPod photo, £380.
November 2009: 120 Gb iPod classic, £175.

Doug


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