Alpine HDA-5460

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Value Rating
 4 of 5

Used product for
More than 1 year

Visitors rate this review
5.00 of 5, 1.00 votes

Price Paid:  $250.00 from Crutchfield blowout

Year / Model Reviewed:
2004 hdd-5460

Summary:
I've read several reviews (both positive and negative) over the past year covering the Alpine HDA-5460 hard disk drive music player. As an owner of one for over a year, I thought I'd offer my opinion. Granted, Alpine no longer makes the unit, you can still find new & used models on auction sites and various retailers. I would definitely buy another if I found a good deal on one. Over all, I think Alpine's hdd music player is a great machine. In my experience, it has more positive aspects than negative. Lets start with the negative and end on the positive. Negative #1: Once you learn how to use the MM-Driver software to load music on the hard drive, its pretty simple. However, I do agree with other reviews that the upload process is slow. Negative #2: While the MM-Driver software does look for multiple copies of the same file during the upload process, my music inventory on my PC was very messy (double files resulting from single character differences in the title, artist or album). Unfortunately due to my own shoddy data maintenance, MM-Driver recognized these files as "different". In the end, I had several issues with multiple copies of the same songs. And this is where Negative #2 comes in: It seems that the MM-Driver software will not completely delete music files unless you do a complete disk format. As many times as I attempted to delete data from the HDD unit, they would not disappear. Because of this issue, I advise having 2 computers with the MM-Driver software loaded on it: 1 to load music & manage your music files and one to format the disk drive in case you ever need to "start over". Anytime the HDD unit is connected to what it sees as a new or different PC, you must register it with that PC. In that process, it will format the disk, thus completely erasing it. Once I re-organized and corrected my own PC's music files, I re-formated the HDD on my wifes PC, then reloaded the music on my PC. Since doing that, the HDD has performed wonderfully. Now for positives: Once I learned how to use the unit, it has been great. The music files are easy to access by either Artist, Album or Title. The ergomics of the unit for that purpose via a metal lever over a button is easy, especially while driving. The bio-light graphics are very cool and easy to see (7 choices). I especially like the active graphic equalizer/frequency level screen. The 16gb capacity is plenty large for my music tastes. I've had it over a year, add music to it on a regular basis and still have 11 gb left open. Sure, you can buy iPods with more room, but I rarely run into anyone who actually has more than 10 gb of music on their players. And while you can't take the hdd unit with you to listen to as a stand alone unit, you will be less likely to drop it or get it stolen. I honestly believe that Alpine stopped making the unit because iPods became so popular and cheap to integrate into their AI-NET systems. Consumers already knew how to operate their iPods and weren't going to be happy learning how to operate a different system that accomplished the same thing. Plus, the cost of the HDA-5460 was extremely high when they came out ($1k+), which also tells me they must have been expensive to produce. This unit was connected to an auxillary input on an older Alpine head unit and worked just fine. The newer AI-NET units will communicate back & forth from the player, even allowing some control of the HDA-5460 from the HU itself. I've recently upgraded the hu to a CDA-9835 which shares the same display as the HDA-5460. As a triple Alpine combo, this systems cool factor is very high. The CDA-9835, HDA-5460 and CHA-634 integrate seemlessly with one another via Alpines AI-NET system.

Strengths:
Ease of music selection via Artist, Album or Song. Options to mix, preview, repeat, etc on any level (Artist, Genre, Playlist, Album, Song) MP3, WMA or WAV file compatable. Easy to read graphics with all song info(artist, album, title, time, format), and cool ones to boot. 16gb offers plenty of music space.

Weaknesses:
MM-Driver software issues: no complete file delete without reformating hdd unit; slow upload.

Similar Products Used:
Apple iPod, Sony MD, Pioneer & Alpine disk changers

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
1 to 3 months

Price Paid:  $300.00 from Crutchfield

Year / Model Reviewed:
1993 Honda Accord

Summary:
I was trying to figure a way to have my entire music collection in the car at all times w/o using cd's. My main idea was to create a carputer w/ a 40gig HD. Then I stumbled onto this gem. I already have an Alpine CDA-7897 (Phantom Face), and this seemed to make a great addition. It has a 16gig HD and integrates via Ai-Net or RCA's for non Alpine HU's. It was definitely cheaper than building a carputer and the significantly reduced priced made this a no brainer. ($1000 original msrp.) The hard drive is removable and connects to your home pc via USB which makes life easy. However, the included software (MMDriver) is sloooooooow. It would seem that with a USB connection, the time to transfer from PC to HD would be minimal. But it isn't. And even updating your music collection within the software can be very time consuming. I have found that it is a lot better to just let it work over night. Especially when first starting out and loading everything onto the HD. After the initial load, it isnt bad at all when you only have a handful to upload at a time. It looks great in the dash w/ the Bio-Lite display that makes it very easy to read. The controls are pretty easy once you get used to them, and it has a nice feature of being able to search by artist name/ song name/ or album name. But this can become tedious when you have over 2000 songs on there. I have found the best way to combat this is to create a playlist. There is also a music DJ which will play music according to its genre, but you have to make sure you have your ID tags correct. All in all, I would buy the unit again for $300. Definitely wouldn't pay $1000 for it, I'd build a computer.

Strengths:
Holds a lot of music Functions are pretty easy to use

Weaknesses:
Software performance