I have an Alpine CDA-7892, and recently decided I wanted hook up my
portable cd player to it (which supports mp3 and wma). I got in under
the console and found the installer had left two RCA connectors nicely
accessible for me, so I hooked it up. The connectors say Alpine on
them, and have a plastic sheath that sticks out a bit to keep the
connection dry and clean.

I enabled AUX input in the setup menu for the deck, and can now choose
AUX as one of the inputs. When I do so, I hear the output of the
portable CD player just fine.

The problem is that the Alpine volume control has no effect. If I turn
it down to zero, it is muted. If I turn it up one setting to one, I get
a medium amount of volume. If I adjust the volume higher than this I
hear no change whatsoever, which the exception of some background hiss
if I turn it up very high.

With the line out from my portable cd player, I have this
non-adjustable medium volume. If I use the headphone out from the
portable cd player and set the portable to max volume, it is *slightly*
louder. I considered a little bit of preamplification before going into
the Alpine, but this doesn't seem like a good idea if it is designed to
use line level voltage.

To give you an idea of the volume, I can understand spoken word just
fine if the car is idling. Once I am cruising on the freeway, I can
understand most spoken word (say the news, for instance), but not all
of it. So I'm not looking for huge volume, just loud enough to
understand the stuff

Any idea what I could be doing wrong?
I tried turning Int Defeat off (it was originally on), but it makes no
difference.
The radio input, as well as the Alpine's cd player inputs work perfect.

Thanks!
Adrian

I don't recommend using portable CD player into HU unit for average
car audio
geek. It only good for a simply emergency listening for portable CD
player.
The sound is not good. Remember that horrible sound using walkman tape
into the HU CD unit. It's damn horrible. There was a more noise coming
from the cassette tape hissing than the music itself. So forget the
portable CD player.
Don't use in car. No good.

Hi,
Thanks much for the post back.

I'm actually only using the portable cd player to listen to Bible
sermons, so it is perfectly acceptable for me if it is of low quality.
I don't want to go through the hassle of burning another CD for every
80 minutes of audio. I have a 20-30 minute commute, so that is nearly a
CD everyday.

However, I would expect that the quality should not be all that bad. At
least, not any worse than using a 6 disk changer or something that
supports mp3.
Either one of these methods will be sending the audio into the HU at
line level voltage. Both of them have one D=A conversion, and then
amplification.
For the tape deck scenario, you have to do (cd output to headphone
jack) D=A (headphone jack to analog for tape deck) A=A (tape deck
input on HU to line voltage) A=A and then finally amplification. So
you have two extra analog=analog conversions, which is obviously
horrible

Thanks!
Adrian