Alpine 2011 Goodness

Here’s a weighty start! Our Human Condition is about people and love. We are about those we love and our relationships, our passions and feelings. All the hardware I am so deeply enamoured of, is only beloved because it can cause a psychotropic response far more immediate and powerful than any Cannabinoid. For it gives us access to music, surcease and joy. Let alone keeping you involved with the grand social network of the media via Marconi’s clever wheeze Radio – and letting us find our way via satellite.
And that same hardware doesn’t spring into existence spontaneously like some kind of spore-fed growth. It is designed. By people.
And each hardware house has a personality dictated by approach and philosophy. Do they want to provide the widest possible population with astonishing value for money, or do they want to push back the barriers of excellence and thus have top end priced products? Of course that is simplistic and all the big Japanese companies have offerings from entry level to damn serious but the fact remains that each house of ICE has a different feel and flavour.
And for me, Alpine is the brand I recall being in awe of as a lad. Yes, Trio were brilliant (any of you lot even old enough to recall that Kenwood used to be called Trio? Which to this day if I am honest I feel is a better UK branding than the Kenwood one that has their reception getting phone calls from irate food mixer owners from time to time.) and Pioneer, legendary for their Centrate. It was a ground breaker at the time

But somehow Alpine have this aura that I still love and it’s all about the whole approach and looks and thus the feel and looks of their stuff. So I was dead chuffed to go along to Alpine’s UK HQ and as well as getting some mad video about their RF Shielded test room


I also got a chance to check out their range for 2011.
I understand that the 2011 season is not a massive revolution for headunits, with mostly HMI changes to kaizen and further pretty-up the user experience but that on the subwoofer, speaker and amplifier front, there have been some real developments.
But there is some deliciously tweaky tech as well. The IVA-D800R looks pretty normal but has been breathed upon a little inside to make the output a fat slice more upmarket for the use of AV fans who really want their on-the-road movies to sing. This’d be the one for the rock touring bus
IVA-D800R

Another really cool thing is the Smartphone memory use function. This has been developed with Microsoft’s MTP or Media Transfer Protocol, specifically for Nokia phones and is all about talking to the device as though it were ‘˜like’ an iPod, such that you can connect and search your smartphone as though it was directly upon the display by artist, album or song. The system is also used by many other manufacturers apart from Nokia, so that by default, although Alpine cannot say so I can the system will run just about any phone, like Sonys Blackberries and Samsungs and others as though they were full-access-to-controls iPod style items. That is, you can control them from the headunit! How clever is that?
Another little wrinkle is a ‘˜favourite’ key on headunits. So many sources, from SD to phone to disc to aux and radio stations, you could be off on another source and just want to get back to the SD card. So just like any radio preset, you choose and key it in and you can have any source arranged to come up as your ‘˜fave’ upon one button-push. This can save a lot of source selection screens.
The PXA-H800 and its RUX-C800 controller look bloody sexy. They have changed a bit of the internal digital jiggery pokery and addressed some of the issues with all other Alpine processors. The main one was that once you have used the amazing Imprint system, you might want to adjust it a little for taste and the last one would not let you do this. Now you can, plus all the best stuff from previous processors is included and the price is keen. I for one would love one!
PXA-H800 processor

RUX-800 controller panel

But the main story obtains.
Alpine use superior components and stuff like Surface Mount Design circuit boards.

They have slightly different voicings for speakers for different regions and we get some of the finest. The Yanks get some more balls but the Japanese ears are said to be the most keen on detail, without worrying about sheer power. Atsuhiro Takeda, who was the gentleman at Alpine who was taking me through the technicalities revealed that he had a set of Japanese-market speakers and let slip that the Japanese version probably wouldn’t be appreciated by UK ears. Which I of course took as a challenge, so as well as reviewing speakers, amps and all sorts else from Alpine in the upcoming months, I shall also try out these terribly refined components as soon as possible to see why the Nipponese version is less muscular and why
There was lots more I learned on the day but for now, press the button on the lovely slide show gallery I spent some time uploading for you and have a look at the new Alpine stuff.
If you are reading this soon after publication, we have a week’s window when the pictures here will be the spy shots as the brochure is not officially launched until the trade show next week.
Oh you lucky people!
By no means a comprehensive collection but an awful lot of the best looking shots of Alpine’s new 2011 kit can be seen in a slideshow on our cool gallery system right here:
link